Maureen Dowd ha publicat al New York Times un revelador article titulat "La lluita de les Valquíries" on explica com les dones han derrotat els homes a l'administració Obama, empenyent-los a plantar cara a Gaddafi. Explica com la secretària d'Estat, Hillary Clinton, l'ambaixadora nord-americana a l'ONU, Susan Rice, i les assesores de seguretat nacional Samantha Power i Gayle Smith, s'han imposat davant el cagadubtes d'Obama i les especulacions estratègiques de Robert Gates. Dowd diu que ens trobem ben lluny dels estereotips feministes sobre l'aggressivitat del mascle i la conciliació femenina. "Al llarg de la història -escriu- hem vist dones que han trencat els esterotips de gènere, des de Cleopatra a Golda Meir o la Dona de Ferro Margaret Thatcher, que els crítics de l'esquerra menystenien dient que no era realment una dona. Madeleine Albright va empenyer la intervenció als Balcans i Condi Rice la invasió de l'Iraq". Seguiu llegint:
There is something positively mythological about a group of strong women swooping down to shake the president out of his delicate sensibilities and show him the way to war. And there is something positively predictable about guys in the White House pushing back against that story line for fear it makes the president look henpecked.
It is not yet clear if the Valkyries will get the credit or the blame on Libya. But everyone is fascinated with the gender flip: the reluctant men — the generals, the secretary of defense, top male White House national security advisers — outmuscled by the fierce women around President Obama urging him to man up against the crazy Qaddafi.
How odd to see the diplomats as hawks and the military as doves.
“The girls took on the guys,” The Times’s White House reporter, Helene Cooper, said on “Meet the Press.”
Rush Limbaugh mocked the president and his club of “male liberals,” saying: “Of course the males were opposed. It’s the new castrati. ... They’re sissies!”
Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador and former Clinton administration adviser on Africa, was haunted by Rwanda. Samantha Power, a national security aide who wrote an award-winning book about genocide, was thinking of Bosnia. Gayle Smith, another senior national security aide, was an adviser to President Clinton on Africa after the Rwandan massacre. Hillary Clinton, a skeptic at first, paid attention to the other women (putting aside that tense moment during the ’08 primaries when Power called her “a monster”). She also may have had some pillow talk with Bill, whose regrets about Rwanda no doubt helped shape his recommendation for a no-fly zone over Libya.
How odd to see Rush and Samantha Power on the same side.
We’ve come a long way from feminist international relations theory two decades ago that indulged in stereotypes about aggression being “male” and conciliation being “female.” And from the days of Helen Caldicott, the Australian pediatrician and nuclear-freeze activist who disapprovingly noted the “psychosexual overtones” of military terminology such as “missile erector” and “thrust-to-weight ratio.” Caldicott wrote in her book “Missile Envy:” “I recently watched a filmed launching of an MX missile. It rose slowly out of the ground, surrounded by smoke and flames and elongated into the air — it was indeed a very sexual sight, and when armed with the ten warheads it will explode with the most almighty orgasm.”
There have been women through history who shattered gender stereotypes, from Cleopatra to Golda Meir to the “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher, whose critics on the left sniffed that she was not really a woman. As U.N. ambassador, Madeleine Albright pushed back against Colin Powell on a Balkans intervention — “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” she asked him — and Condi Rice pushed ahead with W. and Dick Cheney on invading Iraq.
