Foreign Policy In Focus

President Obama said during his State of the Union address that he would focus on things he could do alone — without having to depend on a badly divided, partisan Congress. And the powerful imagery he summoned in support of voting rights — real, implementable voting rights, based on the example of a 102-year-old voting rights hero, could and should indeed be a critical focus of executive energy. His story of Desiline Victor waiting six hours to vote in North Miami even brought members of Congress — at least some of them — to their feet in a powerful ovation.

But Obama didn’t seem to include in the list of “things he could do alone” the solo, individual decisions that are fundamental to the role of commander in chief. And that role could include, without Congress having to have any role in it, bringing home all the troops from the failed war in Afghanistan. Ending it. Totally. Quickly.

Bringing home half the troops this year reflects the pressure of massive public opposition to the war — but it’s far from enough. All 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be pulled out by the middle of this year. And that role of the president, without Congress, could include announcing that the “winding down” of the U.S. war in Afghanistan won't be transformed into an expanding drone war waged in shadows across the world.

When Obama claims that budget cuts “would jeopardize our military readiness,” he is signaling a rejection of what his own nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, acknowledged is the need to cut the “bloated” military budget.

And crucially, when we look at areas in which the President can make executive decisions, independent of the whims of a paralyzed, partisan congress, is there any clearer example than the Obama administration’s strategy of targeting and killing “terror suspects,” along with unknown numbers of civilian “collateral damage” in Obama’s Global War on Terror 2.0? 

We heard a claim about those drone assassinations during his address, that “we have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts.”

There's no way that would fly, given recent revelations of the administration’s efforts to claim a legal right to murder anyone, U.S. citizen or not, who they “believe” may be guilty of something they identify as a terrorist attack. So Obama went on. “I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take my word that we’re doing things the right way. So, in the months ahead, I will continue to engage with Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”

What about the KILLING of the people he calls terrorists, beyond detention and prosecution? The reference to checks and balances referred back to the Justice Department’s claim that “due process” didn’t necessarily mean anything having to do with courts and judges, the claim that a decision by a “decision-maker” — not even necessarily the president — was enough to qualify as due process sufficient to take someone’s life, way beyond taking their liberty and their pursuit of happiness.

Focusing on the executive actions you can take without Congress is a great idea, Mr. President. But not unless that focus includes reversing the individually taken military actions that brought such disgrace on your administration’s first term.

Phyllis Bennis is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. Her books include Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN. www.ips-dc.org

The Senate must pass the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, an international agreement that affirms principles of human rights and equality for women everywhere.

Cross-posted from Other Words.

This year I came up with the best Valentine’s Day gift ever for my wife and daughter. It’s inexpensive and, unlike a bouquet of flowers, should last beyond their lifetimes. They’ll love it! I can’t think of a better way to express how much I love them.

Rather than chocolates or jewelry, I am going to join a One Billion Rising rally to end the violence against women that has shattered lives and torn the fabric of societies around the world.

A billion women — one out of every three on the planet — will be raped or beaten sometime in their lifetime. That’s one billion moms, sisters, daughters, and friends violated, one billion lives shattered, one billion hearts broken, and one billion reasons to rise up and put an end to this violence.

On February 14, rallies around the world are giving a billion women, and those who love them, an opportunity to dance, speak out, and say, “Enough!” There are many ways to make a difference, but here in the United States we have a 32-year-old obligation that I’m focused on: Senate passage of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

This landmark international agreement affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for women around the world, including the rights not to be raped or beaten. But ours is one of only seven countries — including Iran, Sudan, and Somalia —that haven’t ratified this treaty.

This accord offers countries a practical blueprint to achieve progress for women and girls by calling on each ratifying country to overcome barriers of discrimination. Around the world it has been used to reduce sex trafficking and domestic abuse, provide access to education and vocational training, guarantee the right to vote, ensure the ability to work and own a business without discrimination, improve maternal health care, end forced marriage and child marriage, and ensure inheritance rights.

Although the Obama administration strongly supports its ratification and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted in favor of it twice with bipartisan support (in 1994 and 2002), it has never been brought to the Senate floor for a vote. It’s time to change that.

Why? Joining this convention would continue our nation’s proud bipartisan tradition of promoting and protecting human rights. Ratification requires two-thirds of the Senate to stand together. The good news is that in this time of tight budgets, it would cost us absolutely nothing.

Ratifying it would strengthen the United States as a global leader in standing up for women and girls around the world. Unfortunately today, our diplomats who speak out to end violence against women are too often told that since we are not part of the women’s treaty, we should mind our own business. Under the leadership of Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, we ratified similar treaties on genocide, torture, and race.

Finally, bringing it to a full Senate vote would open up important conversations. While American women enjoy opportunities and status not available to most of the world’s women, few would dispute that more progress is needed. A Senate vote would provide an opportunity for a national dialogue on how to address persistent gaps in women’s full equality regarding closing the pay gap, reducing domestic violence, and stopping human trafficking.

This is something that I know my wife and daughter would love. So I’m speaking out to end violence against women. It will be the very best Valentine’s Day gift ever.

Don Kraus is the chief executive officer of Citizens for Global Solutions.

The Western press has been heavily criticized for orientalizing India's rape culture while downplaying its own.

Since the brutal rape and subsequent death of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in mid-December ignited widespread protests throughout India and garnered the attention of international media, the topic of sexual assault has featured prominently in recent headlines. India itself has received the bulk of this attention, with reports of subsequent attacks in Kolkata, Kanpur Dehat, and New Delhi generating widely circulated commentaries and receiving constant media attention while the case of "Damini"—the fictional name for a rape victim in India—continues to unfold.

Arising cases in other countries—which ordinarily would not have generated international coverage—have also risen to prominence in the wake of the attack on Damini, such as the filmed gang rape of a 14 year-old in Romania, the rape of a 17-year-old in South Africa, and the ongoing investigation of a 16-year-old raped in Steubenville, Ohio.

The coverage of the Damini case has sparked a lively debate about how the Western media portrays rape culture abroad. The U.S. and U.K. press specifically have each received heavy criticism for their penchant to orientalize India's rape culture and downplay—or outright ignore—the degree to which this culture features in their own societies.

Owen Jones of the Independent was one of the first to point out this hypocrisy in Western media, observing of the Damini case that "it’s comforting to think that this is someone else’s problem, a particular scandal that afflicts a supposedly backward nation." He goes on to highlight the problematic rape cultures of both France and Britain, where in the latter, victim blaming continues to thrive: "A third of Britons believed a woman acting flirtatiously was partly or completely to blame for being raped," he writes, citing a 2005 survey by Amnesty International. He concludes by placing the focus on a global scale, reiterating that "There is nothing inevitable about violence against women, here or anywhere."

As another example, take an article on rape in South Africa by Andrew Harding of the BBC, rather appallingly titled, "Will South Africans ever be shocked by rape?" It relates South Africa's rape epidemic to India's, claiming that South Africa seems "numb—unable to muster much more than a collective shrug in the face of almost unbelievably grim statistics—seemingly far worse than India's."

In addition to quickly robbing South African women's advocates of agency, this piece underscores the problems Jones addresses with relation to Western media coverage. It almost attempts to compete with the international attention on India, to highlight a place where the rape culture is even worse and to expose the failings of that particular society. "Perhaps the only certainty is that South Africa is a violent society," he asserts, claiming that South Africans have gotten "used to" violence and that "In many communities young women talk of how they almost expect to be assaulted—and young men grow up with a dangerous sense of entitlement," as if such attitudes manifest singularly in South Africa instead of every nation on Earth.

Harding's article is by no means atypical. Emer O'Toole of The Guardian builds on Jones' criticism of Western media, labeling the coverage "uncomfortably neocolonial."

O'Toole singles out Libby Purve's article in The Times as being a "particularly blatant example" of this neocolonialist attitude. Purve asserts early in her article that "We in the West enjoy an image of India: industrious ambition, rising economy, colour and vigour. We romanticise it, cooing at garlands and tuk-tuks in films such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," rather overtly recalling a certain book (Orientalism by Edward Said) written in the late 1970s about the West’s problematic attitudes toward "Eastern" nations. But while Purve and others seek to highlight problems elsewhere, O'Toole provides rather compelling statistics to bring the argument home:

For example, this BBC article states, as if shocking, the statistic that a woman is raped in Delhi every 14 hours. That equates to 625 a year. Yet in England and Wales, which has a population about 3.5 times that of Delhi, we find a figure for recorded rapes of women that is proportionately four times larger: 9,509. Similarly, the Wall Street Journal decries the fact that in India just over a quarter of alleged rapists are convicted; in the US only 24% of alleged rapes even result in an arrest, never mind a conviction.

Of course, O'Toole and Jones are not suggesting that India's rape culture is less significant, or that the focus should be only on Western nations by any means. Nor are they, as Cathy Young of Newsday claims, meant to suggest that "singling out non-Western cultures for critiques of misogyny is 'colonialist' and 'Othering.'" What they are suggesting is that the sensationalist headlines the Western media continues to publish about violence against women in the developing world would perhaps be more meaningful if they contributed to, instead of ignored, a dialogue on these issues at home—just as Damini's case has been able to do for India.

Leslie Garvey is an intern at Foreign Policy in Focus.