For the first time in history, Washington’s war machine is mostly run by women. And the liberal media seems delighted.
A “stride towards progress”?
Women now occupy the three top positions of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They also manage four of the country’s five largest arms contractors. And they oversee the country’s nuclear stockpile.
NowThis described the CIA’s new appointments as “another stride towards progress”. MSNBC ran with the headline The military-industrial complex is now run by women while asking “who runs the world?” with an apparent sense of pride. Politico, meanwhile, called women taking over of the “military-industrial complex” a “watershed” moment.
The news that women now control the machinery of war, terror and torture in the US is wholly uninspiring. But it does reveal how feminism is deemed tolerable when it complements violent and patriarchal values. It also shows how the West exploits mainstream liberalism to promote mass murder – and how it works.
Feminism – CIA style
In recent years, the CIA has projected a liberal feminist stance with increasing enthusiasm:
One of the first female CIA case officers to serve behind the Iron Curtain, Marti Peterson, went to Moscow to be TRIGON’s handler. At the time, the KGB discounted the ability of women to conduct intel operations, so Marti went unnoticed for almost 18 months.#ReelvsRealCIA pic.twitter.com/pGhza6kHtm
— CIA (@CIA) May 29, 2018
ICYMI:
Eloise Page, prominent & well-respected #OSS & CIA officer, became our first female chief of a flagship station.https://t.co/R7UAN5m7vH pic.twitter.com/RXPGZqNuOE
— CIA (@CIA) April 1, 2018
Selective concern for women’s rights suggests no concern at all. But the efforts of the CIA – and wider US military apparatus – to package war with a smiley liberal face seem to have paid off. According to a recent Politico/Morning Consult poll, Democrats support ongoing US military occupations overwhelmingly more than Republicans.
In other words, those more sympathetic to liberal discourses currently find US foreign intervention more acceptable. Those on the receiving end of such intervention, meanwhile, will undoubtedly not care less if their murder was ordered by a man or a woman.
In short, Western elites are successfully using the language of social justice as a PR strategy. So anti-war Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are essential to countering this false narrative.
Gender parity in human destruction
The liberal promotion of gender parity in human destruction ensures the latter will continue.
As independent feminist journalist Caitlin Johnstone insists:
Women controlling the military-industrial complex is not feminism, it’s toxic masculinity… True feminism means turning away from the toxic valuing system which elevates the most ambitious sociopaths and toward one which values empathy, collaboration, nurturing and peace instead.
She continues:
The problem has always been that we’re trying to value women with a value system created by very few powerful men. By leaving in place the value system created by patriarchy (i.e. capitalism), we are now valuing women but only for their ability to play men’s games.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald, meanwhile, stresses that:
Militarism and aggression don’t become any more palatable because the institutions that perpetrate them let women and gays participate in those abuses.
Liberalism in the arms trade
Talking to Politico, Marillyn Hewson said her recent appointment to CEO of arms dealer Lockheed Martin is owing to “quieting that little voice in your head that doubts whether you can do that next job or take on that special assignment”. But what exactly are her company’s ‘special assignments’? Well, Lockheed Martin’s services are crucial to sustaining what the UN has described as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” in Yemen. In August 2018, the Saudi-led coalition used a 500-pound Lockheed Martin bomb to kill 40 Yemeni children. The Saudi monarchy, meanwhile, is notorious for its repression of women.
And Lockheed Martin’s complicity in Saudi repression only scratches the surface of the arms trade’s support for authoritarian states which oppress women.
Lifting the glass ceiling in the military-industrial complex only serves to hide the latter’s horrors. We must not let mainstream liberalism blind us to the horrors of war.
Featured image via Sergeant Joseph R. Chenelly
