Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Cultural Quagmire

by poputonian

You could make many jokes about the re-emergence of the mutaa arrangement (temp wife) in Iraq, but the situation is too tragic to laugh about.

Temporary ‘Enjoyment Marriages’ In Vogue Again With Some Iraqis

BAGHDAD — Fatima Ali was a 24-year-old divorcee with no high school diploma and no job. Shawket al-Rubae was a 34-year-old Shiite sheik with a pregnant wife who, he said, could not have sex with him.

Ali wanted someone to take care of her. Rubae wanted a companion.

They met one afternoon in May at the house he shares with his wife, in the room where he accepts visitors seeking his religious counsel. He had a proposal. Would Ali be his temporary wife? He would pay her 5,000 Iraqi dinars upfront — about $4 — in addition to her monthly expenses. About twice a week over the next eight months, he would summon her to a house he would rent.

The negotiations took an hour and ended with an unwritten agreement, the couple recalled. Thus began their “mutaa,” or enjoyment marriage, a temporary union believed by Shiite Muslims to be sanctioned by Islamic law.

The Shiite practice began 1,400 years ago, in what is now Iraq and other parts of the region, as a way to provide for war widows. Banned by President Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led government, it has regained popularity since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq brought the majority Shiites to power, said clerics, women’s rights activists and mutaa spouses.

I wonder if the mutaa is part of Cheney’s claim today of “enormous successes” in Iraq. The local thinkers don’t see it as such:

Many intellectuals consider ancient traditions such as these an obstacle to Iraq’s effort to become a more modern, democratic society. In recent years, extremist religious groups have gained more power in Iraq.

“These steps are taking the whole country backwards and are definitely hurdles to the advancement of the country,” said Hamdia Ahmed, a former member of parliament and a women’s rights activist in Baghdad. “The only solution is to separate Islam from politics.”

But, the guvmint sees it another way …

Shiite clerics and others who practice mutaa say such marriages are keeping young women from having unwed sex and widowed or divorced women from resorting to prostitution to make money.

They say a mutaa marriage is not much different from a traditional marriage in which the husband pays the wife’s family a dowry and provides for her financially.

“It was designed as a humanitarian help for women,” said Mahdi al-Shog, a Shiite cleric.

According to Shiite religious law, a mutaa relationship can last for a few minutes or several years. A man can have an unlimited number of mutaa wives and a permanent wife at the same time. A woman can have only one husband at a time, permanent or temporary. No written contract or official ceremony is required in a mutaa. When the time limit ends, the man and woman go their separate ways with none of the messiness of a regular divorce.
…
Opponents of mutaa, most of them Sunni Arabs, say it is less about religious freedom and more about economic exploitation. Thousands of men are dying in the sectarian violence that has followed the invasion, leaving behind widows who must fend for themselves. Many young men are out of work and prefer temporary over permanent wives who require long-term financial commitments. In a mutaa arrangement, the woman is entitled to payment only for the duration of the marriage.

“It’s a cover for prostitution,” said Um Akram, a women’s rights activist in Baghdad. “Some women, because they don’t want to be prostitutes, they think that this is legal because it’s got some kind of religious cover. But it is wrong, and they’re still prostitutes from the society’s point of view.” Um Akram, like the mutaa spouses interviewed, asked that only parts of her name be published.
…
Ali had a normal marriage once. It lasted only three months because the couple did not get along. Her chances for another permanent marriage, she said, were slim. Men often prefer virgins over widows and divorced women, she said.

She welcomed Rubae’s proposal because he was a well-known sheik in her neighborhood. Her family was fond of him. “He was a good guy, and he was a religious man,” she said.
…
Both Shiite and Sunni Muslims allow men to have more than one permanent wife, but they disagree over mutaa.

Most Shiites believe that the prophet Muhammad encouraged the practice as a way to give widows an income. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric, has sanctioned it and offers advice on his Web site.

Um Ahmed, a 28-year-old woman from Najaf, lost her husband in 2005 when he was caught in the crossfire of a fight between two Shiite militias.

Soon after his death, she had her first mutaa relationship, with a man who was in a permanent marriage. He paid her 50,000 Iraqi dinars upfront — or $38 — and gave her money whenever she needed it during their six-month relationship.

She said she needed it often. She is a tailor and the only one in her family of 10 who works.

“When a human being needs money, the need will make a person do anything,” she said. “It’s better than doing the wrong things. This is religiously accepted.”

Many Sunnis believe that the practice is outdated and ripe for abuse. They also see it as more evidence of Iranian influence on Iraqi life. Mutaa is widespread in Iran’s Shiite theocratic state.

“It is a big insult to women,” said Ibtsam Z. Alsha, a Sunni lawyer and the head of the organization Women for the Common Good of Women.

Women’s rights activists also bemoan what they say is an increase in mutaa on college campuses. Some female students do it for money. Others do it for love when their parents forbid them to marry a man from another sect.

A cultural quagmire … and we’re in the middle of it and about to send more.

My Two Moms

by poputonian

In the comments to the previous thread, Corrine notes that Mary Cheney and Heather Poe face a big dillema and could be SOL in Virginia:

… since Mary & Heather live in Virginia, under Virginia’s brand spanking new constitutional amendment that declares marriage to be exclusively heterosexual, [Heather] can’t claim any parental rights since the law doesn’t recognize any other relationship that approximates marriage.

What to do?

Well, the family could move to Canada.

Court rules that child can have two mums

TORONTO (Reuters) – A five-year-old Canadian boy can have two mothers and a father, an Ontario court ruled this week in a landmark case that redefines the meaning of family and examines the rights of parents in same-sex relationships.

In a ruling released on Tuesday, the Ontario Court of Appeal said the female partner of the child’s biological mother could be legally recognized as the boy’s third parent.

The biological father, named on the boy’s birth certificate, is a friend of both women and is taking an active role in the child’s life.

“It is contrary to (the child’s) best interests that he is deprived of the legal recognition of the parentage of one of his mothers,” Justice Marc Rosenberg wrote in the ruling, which did not name the three parents or the child.

“Perhaps one of the greatest fears faced by lesbian mothers is the death of the birth mother… Without a declaration of parentage or some other order, the surviving partner would be unable to make decisions for their minor child.”

On the other hand, Dick Cheney’s whole world is collapsing and he might invade up nort’ — Dena, Interrobang, Cathie, watch out — and it looks like he would get at least some inside nutball support:

The Alliance for Marriage and Family, a coalition of several groups that promote a traditional family structure, had filed as an intervenor in the case.

“We think there are many good reasons for continuing to uphold the definition of family as two parents,” said Joanne McGarry, executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, one of the groups represented by the alliance.

“Once you remove it from the realm of nature and the realm of traditional moral and religious teachings, who’s going to decide how many parents a child can have? What’s so magical about three, maybe there could be more.”

O Canada.

Crazy Man

Cheney went on Wolf Blitzer and demonstrated that he has totally lost touch with reality:

BLITZER: Here is what the president said last night. “We could expect an epic battle between Shia extremists backed by Iran and Sunni extremists aided by al Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence would spill out across the country and, in time, the entire region would be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario.” He was talking about the consequences of failure in Iraq. How much responsibility do you have, though — you and the administration — for this potential scenario?

CHENEY: Well, this is the argument, that there wouldn’t be any problem if we hadn’t gone into Iraq.

BLITZER: Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

CHENEY: Saddam Hussein would still be in power. He would, at this point, be engaged in a nuclear arms race with Ahmadinejad, his blood enemy next door in Iran.

BLITZER: But he was being contained, as you well know, by the no-fly zones —

CHENEY: He was not being contained. He was not being contained, Wolf. Wolf, the entire sanctions regime had been undermined by Saddam Hussein.

BLITZER: But he didn’t have stockpiles —

CHENEY: He had corrupted the entire effort to try to keep him contained. He was bribing senior officials of other governments. The Oil-for-Food Program had been totally undermined. And he had, in fact, produced and used weapons of mass destruction previously, and he retained the capability to produce that kind of stuff in the future.

BLITZER: Which happened in the ’80s.

CHENEY: You can go back and argue the whole thing all over again, Wolf, but what we did in Iraq in taking down Saddam Hussein was exactly the right thing to do. The world is much safer today because of it.

There have been three national elections in Iraq. There’s a democracy established there, a constitution, a new democratically-elected government. Saddam has been brought to justice and executed, his sons are dead, his government is gone. And the world is better off for it.

You can argue about that all you want. That’s history. That’s what we did, and you and I can have this debate. We’ve had it before, but the fact of the matter is, in terms of threats to the United States from al Qaeda, for example, attacks on the United States — they didn’t need an excuse. We weren’t in Iraq when they hit us on 9/11.

BLITZER: But the current situation there is–

CHENEY: The fact of the matter was that al Qaeda was out to kill Americans before we ever went into Iraq.

BLITZER: The current situation there is very unstable. The president himself speaks about a nightmare scenario right now. He was contained, as you repeatedly said throughout the ’90s, after the first Gulf War, in a box, Saddam Hussein.

CHENEY: He was — after the first Gulf War, had managed to kick out all of the inspectors. He was provided payments to families of suicide bombers. He was a safe haven for terrorism, one of the prime state sponsors of terrorism, designated by our State Department for a long time. He’d started two wars. He had violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions.

If he were still there today, we’d have a terrible situation.

BLITZER: But there is —

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There’s problems — ongoing problems — but we have in fact accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically-written constitution — first ever in that part of the world. They’ve had three national elections. So there’s been a lot of success.

BLITZER: How worried are you —

CHENEY: We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation, and the president’s put a plan in place to do that.

BLITZER: How worried are you of this nightmare scenario, that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then in the end, they’re going to turn against the United States?

CHENEY: Wolf, that’s not going to happen. The problem is, you’ve got —

BLITZER: They’re — warming up to Iran and Syria right now.

CHENEY: Wolf, you can come up with all kinds of what-ifs; you’ve got to be deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is, we’ve made major progress. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. There’s a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet.

There’s more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now, is the danger than the United States will validate the terrorist’s strategy, that in fact what will happen here, with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, where the pressure is from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorist’s strategy, that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task — That we don’t have the stomach for the fight. That’s the biggest threat.

Awesome, isn’t it?

His demeanor was extremely hostile and aggressive. Blitzer tried to inject some truth into the interview but Cheney would have none of it — much like his earlier showdown with harpy wife, Lynn.

What with the sophomoric salvo against Clinton in the WaPo yesterday by daughter Liz, it appears that the Cheney family is having a very public meltdown.

John Amato has a nice piece of the interview up over at C&L. You’ll especially like this:

BLITZER: []your daughter, Mary. She’s pregnant. All of us are happy she’s going to have a baby. You’re going to have another grandchild. Some of the — some critics are suggesting — for example, a statement from someone representing Focus on the Family, “Mary Cheney’s pregnancy raises the question of what’s best for children. Just because it’s possible to conceive a child outside of the relationship of a married mother and father doesn’t mean that it’s best for the child.” Do you want to respond to that?

CHENEY: No.

BLITZER: She’s, obviously, a good daughter –

CHENEY: I’m delighted I’m about to have a sixth grandchild, Wolf.

And obviously I think the world of both my daughters and all of my grandchildren. And I think, frankly, you’re out of line with that question.

BLITZER: I think all of us appreciate –

CHENEY: I think you’re out of line.

Right. He’s out of line for asking about it. James Dobson, on the other hand, is treated like royalty. These Cheneys are clearly the ones who invented conservative upside-downism, which shouldn’t be surprising since Lynn wrote the book on liberal moral relativism. Black is white — evil is good — conservatives are moral.

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“Well, I’ve been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard…”

by digby

Via TBOGG. As hard it is to believe, after being roundly ridiculed for his embarrassing “Shane” metaphor from four years ago, Howard Fineman is using those cowboy metaphors again:

George W. Bush wanted to be Harry Truman (patron saint of embattled presidents) in his State of the Union speech, but he may have reminded voters of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. You know the famous scene: the giddy pilot in a cowboy hat hops aboard his own payload to Armageddon.

Here’s the thing. Nothing Bush said last night was any more “Pickens” than what he’s been saying since 9/11. He never sounded like Shane.

Here’s his most famous moment:

“I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!”

Here’s Slim Pickens in “Dr Strangelove”:

Well, boys, I reckon this is it – nuclear combat toe to toe with the Roosskies. Now look, boys, I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches, but I got a pretty fair idea that something doggone important is goin’ on back there.

Bush’s famous bullhorn moment is no more moving and meaningful than Major T.J. “King” Kongs pep talk. Less actually. (And in fairness to Fineman, there were even more egregious metaphors: people were not just calling him “Shane,” they were comparing him to Shakespeare’s Henry V and Winston Churchill.)

Bush has also been making the same SOTU speech over and over and over again ever since 2002. He wasn’t Shane or Hal then any more than he is now. He always looked as if he didn’t understand half of what he was saying and he only got animated when he talked about boom-boom and evil.

Last night:

From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free-flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since 9/11 has never been the same.

Our success in this war is often measured by the things that did not happen. We cannot know the full extent of the attacks that we and our allies have prevented — but here is some of what we do know: We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terrorist cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an al Qaeda cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean. For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them.

Every success against the terrorists is a reminder of the shoreless ambitions of this enemy. The evil that inspired and rejoiced in 9/11 is still at work in the world. And so long as that is the case, America is still a Nation at war.

Here was 2003:

This nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature. And this nation is leading the world in confronting and defeating the man-made evil of international terrorism…

To date, we’ve arrested or otherwise dealt with many key commanders of al Qaeda. They include a man who directed logistics and funding for the September the 11th attacks; the chief of al Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf, who planned the bombings of our embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole; an al Qaeda operations chief from Southeast Asia; a former director of al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan; a key al Qaeda operative in Europe; a major al Qaeda leader in Yemen. All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let’s put it this way — they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.

We are working closely with other nations to prevent further attacks. America and coalition countries have uncovered and stopped terrorist conspiracies targeting the American embassy in Yemen, the American embassy in Singapore, a Saudi military base, ships in the Straits of Hormuz and the Straits the Gibraltar. We’ve broken al Qaeda cells in Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, London, Paris, as well as, Buffalo, New York.

We have the terrorists on the run. We’re keeping them on the run. One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

yee. hah.

Fineman and his little friends ate it up at the time. Now they think it’s foolish. It was always foolish.

It’s not a new insight, by a long shot.

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Up To Here

by digby

Joe McCarthy Lieberman and Richard Lugar have been braying once again about how Iraq war dissenters are helping the enemy and upsetting our allies by showing that we are in “disarray.”

Chuck Hagel is having none of it:

“If we don’t debate this we are not worthy of our country. We fail our country.”

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The Geico Supreme Court

by digby

I think Matt Yglesias should get the Nobel prize for this idea. Product placement (as we saw with the “Baby Einstein” colloquey in last night’s SOTU) as a way to close the deficit is brilliant. Why shouldn’t Disney pay for that effusive mention from the president of the United States on national television?

I don’t think Yglesias goes far enough, though. Every speech, every photo-op could also be sponsored by a different corporation. And just as the sports arenas named Viagra Park and Jonny Cat Field no longer have a civic identity, we could change the name of the White House to the “Halliburton House” (for now — the next president could have a different sponsor.) Companies would pay billions for that kind of daily mention in the free media.

It would also be much more transparent and equally efficient to have elected officials simply license their offices to industry to become the Senator from Pfizer or Congressman Exxon. At least we would know up front who we were voting for and perhaps we the people could start lobbying the industries directly for charity and pro-bono projects to patch up the safety net or do some basic scientific research and the like.

As Yglesias says, raising taxes on the rich is “desperately inside the box thinking.” Product placement to fund the government is the kind of creative brainstorming that makes America great.

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Webb Writer

by digby

It has come to my attention from several readers that I failed to properly praise Jim Webb’s speech last night. So, let me put on the record right now that I thought it was the best SOTU rebuttal I’ve ever heard and, moreover, it was the perfect speech at the perfect time by the perfect person. (How’s that?)

I have actually praised Webb effusively many times, often for his fearless and common sense attitude. I’m a big fan of his style.

But I’m also not surprised that Webb can give a great speech as he did last night. He is an award winning professional writer, after all. I would hope that Democratic politicians everywhere take a good hard look at that speech and figure out why it was so effective. It wasn’t just because it came from a manly man with a great story, as the chatterers would have it; it is because it is a very well written speech. They could all learn a thing or two from the pro in their midst about how to get these ideas across.

More of this please:

Like so many other Americans, today and throughout our history, we serve and have served, not for political reasons, but because we love our country. On the political issues — those matters of war and peace, and in some cases of life and death — we trusted the judgment of our national leaders. We hoped that they would be right, that they would measure with accuracy the value of our lives against the enormity of the national interest that might call upon us to go into harm‘s way.

[…]

As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. “When comes the end?” asked the general who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War II. And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

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Meanwhile Back At The Ranch

by poputonian

On the same day Bush (Conquistador-US) addressed the nation, the good citizens of New Mexico quietly went about more important business. David Swanson at afterdowningstreet.org reports:

Over 100 citizens showed up for the introduction, and there were over two hours of citizen speeches at the announcement event. Reporters from every New Mexico newspaper and the Associated Press were there, as well as ABC and NBC cameras. What they saw was a bottom-up movement for impeachment, exactly what inpeachment is supposed to be.

Like a snowball rolling.

Tuesday, January 23rd at 2PM, Senators Gerald Ortiz y Pino D-ABQ and John Grubesic D-Santa Fe introduced their resolution to impeach President George Bush and Richard Cheney. Based on a resolution crafted by Phil Burk of impeachbush.tv and the national impeachment movement, the resolution made four charges, three of which are violations of the US Constitution.

WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney conspired with others to defraud the United States of America by intentionally misleading congress and the public regarding the threat from Iraq in order to justify a war in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Section 371; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush has admitted to ordering the national security agency to conduct electronic surveillance of American civilians without seeking warrants from the foreign intelligence surveillance court of review, duly constituted by congress in 1978, in violation of Title 50 United States Code, Section 1805; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney conspired to commit the torture of prisoners in violation of Title 18 United States Code, Chapter 113C, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Geneva Conventions, which under Article VI of the United States constitution are part of the “supreme Law of the Land”; and

WHEREAS, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney acted to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights by ordering indefinite detention without access to legal counsel, without charge and without the opportunity to appear before a civil judicial officer to challenge the detention, based solely on the discretionary designation by the president of a United States citizen as an “enemy combatant”, all in subversion of law…

Back to Swanson:

The New Mexico resolution will go to three committees in the Senate: Rules, Judiciary, and Public Affairs. Three of the eight sponsors chair those three committees. Four of the eight sit on the Rules Committee, which is the first stop, and where five votes are needed. Ortiz y Pino expected to serve on Rules but has been moved to another committee. The fifth Democrat and the needed vote will be a Navajo representative yet to be appointed.

A Navajo representative. Sweet!

The Senate Committee hearings will have to happen over the next four weeks or so to leave time for introduction and passage in the House during New Mexico’s 60-day legislative session. Local organizer Leland Lehrman is confident it can be done.

Webb’s SOTU response was nearly perfect. I agree. But I’m keeping an eye on the [snow]ball, since only impeachment will stop the Cowboy President … from killing off more of the human race.

Grown-ups

by digby

I’ve got to agree with Atrios Thers about this (and not just because he mentioned me in the post.) This new found ardor among the cognoscenti for macho Democrats is predictably shallow, but it’s also the only way to get the codpiece obsessed pundits to notice that the Democrats have something important to say.

I have written a lot about the fact that ever since the hippies grew their hair long and women fought for their right to be full members of society, the Republicans have successfully broken the parties into archetypal masculine and feminine tribes. I have long thought that this was one of our more difficult challenges. Public leadership archetypes are mostly male, after all, and the right appropriated them all.

But that’s about to change, isn’t it? While we justly celebrate Jim Webb’s strong no-nonsense speech tonight we also saw a rising Democratic party led by powerful, intelligent women. If there’s an archetype at work now it’s a healthy modern family — mom and dad are equals.

I don’t know how long it will take the media chatterers to get over their odd, adolescent testosterone fixation, but most of the rest of the country, as usual, is way ahead of them. The Democrats are the party of adults, male and female. The Republicans and the media are the only ones still stuck in Junior High waiting for the football captain to ask them to the dance.

* I realize that this tracks with Lakoff’s “nurturing parents” meme, but it didn’t really have any meaning until women rose into leadership positions. Otherwise, it’s one male working, nurturing parent and an absent mom. That’s not exactly an archetypal leadership model. (And nurturing is not a good political leadership word for either gender — it should be saved for other purposes.)

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He’s Always Been Naked

by digby

As we await the magic moment when the Codpiece enters the capitol and wades through the adoring crowd to take to the podium and tell us what the state of our union is, I can’t help but be reminded of what it used to be like when Bush made a speech or held a press conference and people like Howard Fineman said things like this:

If he’s a cowboy he’s the reluctant warrior, he’s Shane… because he has to, to protect his family.”

This was the tenor of the political discourse for years. Luckily, the country has seemed to finally noticed that this man’s been walking around stark raving naked and babbling like an idiot for years. But it was a very depressing and disorienting time when the entire press corps and official punditocrisy insisted that this illiterate fool was on the par with with Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. Sometimes I felt like I was losing my mind.

There have been a lot of arguments in recent months about whether those of us who were against the war are due any particular respect for having been right. I suppose that will sort itself over time. But it behooves the critics who insist that the fact we were right does not say anything important about our judgment, to also acknowledge, at least to themselves, that we were also right about Bush.

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