Posted on 11/15/2005 4:28:01 PM PST by CareyRoberts
Ten years ago a recrudescence of age-old ethnic tensions spilled over into the worst bloodbath that Europe had witnessed since World War II. The United Nations report duly noted the grisly details of the Srebrenica massacre:
“The mortal remains of close to 2,500 men and boys have been found on the surface, in mass graves, and in secondary burial sites. Several thousand more men are still missing…Numerous eyewitness accounts, now well corroborated by forensic evidence, attest to scenes of mass slaughter of unarmed victims.”
Apparently that report never made it to desks of the UN bigwigs in Turtle Bay.
Because a few years later the Security Council came out with a resolution that made this surreal claim: “women and children account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict.” [www.un.org/Docs/scres/2000/sc2000.htm]
Were the framers of the UN Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace, and Security blissfully unaware of the Srebrenica carnage? Was the Bosnian massacre a quirk of history?
Or is it possible the UN Security Council got it all wrong?
Last year political scientist Adam Jones came out with Gendercide and Genocide, a gem of a book that combs the historical record and comes to conclusions that will certainly jolt the smug complacency of the politically-correct. [www.gendercide.org/g_and_g.htm]
The tome documents historical cases when women were targeted for gendercide, including the practice of female infanticide, the witch-hunts in Europe, and war rapes. But, horrific as they were, it turns out those events are exceptions to the rule.
Professor Jones recites the grim litany of human tragedies that have plagued our planet over the last 100 years. The Armenian genocide of 1915-1916. Stalin’s Great Terror. The 1971 liberation war in East Pakistan. Cambodia under Pol Pot. The Kurds in Iraq. Delhi, India after the assassination of Indira Gandhi.
The tale of horrors continues to the present era: Peru, 1990. Sri Lanka, 1991. Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1991. Rwanda, 1997. Colombia, 1998. Kosovo, 1999. Kashmir, 1999. And of course, Srebrenica.
The pages of history reveal an awful truth: in each case, it was innocent civilian men who were targeted for elimination. Jones concludes that “noncombatant men have been and continue to be the most frequent targets of mass killing and genocidal slaughter.”
Why are men being targeted for this gender carnage? First, chivalrous social mores seemingly place a higher premium on the lives of women. As Leo Kuper put it, “While unarmed men seem fair game, the killing of women and children arouses general revulsion.”
Second, civilian men in the 15-55 year-old age range are prime recruits for civil conflicts, so wiping out the male population becomes a pre-emptive military tactic.
Some persons dismiss these facts, noting that since the perpetrators were men, the deaths of their male victims are somehow less consequential. Professor Jones evinces little patience for that attitude, branding it “bigoted and dangerous.”
Consider the practice of female genital circumcision, a procedure that is performed by women. Has anyone ever dismissed the barbarity of this ritual with the riposte that “after all, it’s women who are brutalizing their own kind”?
Likewise during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, Hutu women played a prominent role in the brutalization of the Tutsi populace. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, the former Rwandan minister for family and women’s affairs, personally handpicked the “nicest” Tutsi women to be taken away and raped by the Hutu militiamen. Nyiramasuhuko was later tried for war crimes by the International Criminal Tribunal.
Did anyone in their right minds discount the anguish of those women who were raped at the behest of Ms. Nyiramasuhuko because she was female?
Of course there are those who arrive at a vastly different interpretation of world events. Hillary Clinton once told an astonished audience, “Women have always been the primary victims of war” for the reason that “Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.” [http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/generalspeeches/1998/19981117.htm]
Yes, imagine those cold-hearted cads, allowing themselves to be tortured and murdered, subjecting their mothers, wives, and daughters to such inconvenience.
UN Resolution 1325 foreshadowed the pro-feminist hysteria that envelopes the United Nations to the present day.
Just last month the UNESCO approved a resolution that proposes the UN should pay greater attention to the health of women -- but ignored the dire health problems of men. To make sure the irony didn’t pass unnoticed, UNESCO anointed its resolution with a grandiose title: the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights. [http://portal.unesco.org/shs/en/file_download.php/b0f1e8f1dc4a4e8990faff370608cac2declaration.pdf]
Yes, human rights and sexism are comfortable bedfellows at UNESCO.
Earlier this week UN ambassador John Bolton likened his first three months on the job as being “caught in a time warp, with discussions they could have had in the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s.” Bolton then called for a “revolution of reform” at the world body.
But given all the foolishness and falsehoods that regularly emanate from the UN, maybe it’s a little too late to be talking of reform.
The UN has been pretty dam pathetic all around with the one exception of creating the state of Isreal...
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