Wednesday, July 05, 2006
The women of Kuwait respond
This, I think, falls into the category of underreported news:
While it is true that all 28 women candidates in Kuwait were severely defeated in the parliamentary elections, the recent vote showed that more women voted than men did. More than two hundred thousand women went to the polls for the fist time in Kuwait’s history, out of a total of 340 thousand voters. What an amazing percentage, especially when confronted with those who claimed that no more than 25% of eligible women would cast their votes because of the religious and moral debate concerning the participation of women in elections.
Convincing any segment of society to vote is difficult, let alone in a conservative country such as Kuwait. As women flocked to the ballot boxes, they achieved a remarkable victory!
The initial figures reveal the importance of the female vote. Women decided parliament’s fate. In Kuwait, more women than men voted. More women took part in the elections than any other Arab society.
The democratization of the Arab Middle East is essential to our security, but not for the superficial reasons most frequently articulated by the administration. The point is not that democracy per se will put an end to terrorism -- it obviously does not -- but that popular sovereignty is the only political philosophy that still has the credibility -- the mojo, if you will -- to compete with Islamism. Monarchy is idiotic, fascism naked in its oppression, the world knows communism to be both incompetent and cruel, and Arab nationalism was insufficient to integrate two million Palestinian refugees. None of these political philosophies will inspire people to take up arms against the jihadi insurgency within Islam. Only popular sovereignty can do that.
If you are new to this blog, you might be interested in reading my elaboration of this theme, the "realist case" for our democratization strategy.
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