Why peace is the business of men

[Dover]

Why peace is the business of men
By Ann Jones

Looking for a way out of Afghanistan? Maybe it's time to try something entirely new and totally different. So how about putting into action, for the first time in recorded history, the most enlightened edict ever passed by the United Nations Security Council: Resolution 1325?

Passed on October 31, 2000, more than a decade ago, that "landmark" resolution was hailed worldwide as a great "victory" for women and international peace and security. In a nutshell, SCR 1325 calls for women to participate equally and fully at decision-making levels in all processes of conflict resolution, peacemaking, and reconstruction.

Without the active participation of women in peacemaking every step of the way, the Security Council concluded, no just and durable peace could be achieved anywhere.

"Durable" was the key word. Keep it in mind. Most hot wars of recent memory, little and big, have been resolved or nudged into remission through what is called a power-sharing agreement. The big men from most or all of the warring parties - and war is basically a guy thing, in case you hadn't noticed - shoulder in to the negotiating table and carve up a country's or region's military, political, and financial pie. Then they proclaim the resulting deal "peace."

cont'd
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MA15Df03.html

[truedelphi]

1. Only problem is that even as a place like the United States has more women than

Ever in Congress, and other positions of power, the women there feel they have to "prove" themselves as being as "rational" as men, so they adopt more of a war like stance than the men.

Sure there are exceptions, but for every Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee, there are two or three junior Hillary Clintons in the making who really wanna find some place to bomb.

And often the reason that women who are so inclined to fight wars offer up to us pacifists is that "The women in Afghanistan are second class citizens." Trying to point out that dead women are even less of a citizenry than second class citizens doesn't seem to work, from the times I have tried to make that point.

[Dover]

2. So true. Women are operating within a masculine system where feminine values

are suppressed or rejected. So it seems that what we need to work on is readjusting our value system and ways of being in the world, to rebalance what has gotten out of balance. Then I think we will be able to manifest new forms of governance and systems. I don't know that things can truly change structurally until we make that internal shift or repolarization that integrates synergistically both the masculine and feminine. And in the process perhaps that will raise the level of the masculine principle to its 'higher octave' expression.