The Hillary Doctrine - Democratic Underground

Beacool

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Sun Mar-06-11 03:23 PM
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The Hillary Doctrine

Edited on Sun Mar-06-11 03:25 PM by Beacool

In a time of momentous change in the world, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sets out on her most heartfelt mission: to put women and girls at the forefront of the new world order.

by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
March 06, 2011

Hillary Clinton seemed to be in a rare moment of repose while the Middle East erupted. She’d just returned from a surprise trip to Yemen and now sat for 30 minutes against a blue backdrop in the State Department’s Washington broadcast studio as reports streamed in of Libya’s violent crackdown on its own people.

But Clinton was far from a passive observer. She was in energetic discussion on the Egyptian news site Masrawy.com, where her presence excited a stream of questions—more than 6,500 in three days—from young people across Egypt. “We hope,” she said, “that as Egypt looks at its own future, it takes advantage of all of the people’s talents”—Clinton shorthand for including women. She had an immediate answer when a number of questioners suggested that her persistent references to women’s rights constituted American meddling in Egyptian affairs: “If a country doesn’t recognize minority rights and human rights, including women’s rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.”

The Web chat was only one of dozens of personal exchanges Clinton has committed to during the three months since Tunisia’s unrest set off a political explosion whose end is not yet in sight. At every step, she has worked to connect the Middle East’s hunger for a new way forward with her categorical imperative: the empowerment of women. Her campaign has begun to resonate in unlikely places. In the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, where women cannot travel without male permission or drive a car, a grandson of the Kingdom’s founding monarch (Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud) last month denounced the way women are “economically and socially marginalized” in Arab countries.

“I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century,” Clinton recently told NEWSWEEK during another rare moment relaxing on a couch in the comfortable sitting room of her offices on the State Department’s seventh floor, her legs propped up in front of her. “We see women and girls across the world who are oppressed and violated and demeaned and degraded and denied so much of what they are entitled to as our fellow human beings.”

http://www.newsweek.com/2011/03/06/the-hillary-doctrine.html

The shelter Clinton referred to is run by the Cambodian activist Somaly Mam, who herself was forced into a brothel as a little girl. Mam credits Clinton’s visit with making her work rescuing young victims respectable in the eyes of her government. “She protects our lives,” Mam says simply, noting that during her visit Clinton took the time to talk with the girls and that many of the shelter’s children now keep photos of her on their walls. “Our people never paid attention. Hillary has opened their eyes, so now they have no choice; by her work she has saved many lives in Cambodia—our government is changing.”

This brought tears to my eyes. If in many parts of the world things are bad for everybody, they are far worse for girls and women.

Thank you, Hillary. Thank you for forging ahead and thank you for caring.

:-)