Kevin, what you’re saying cannot be overstated. War hurts everybody it touches, including its perpetrators.

Since America invaded Iraq, an estimated 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed as a direct result. Surely everyone realizes that this means we’ve killed over half a million women in the bargain?

As far as I know, the large majority of Iraqi casualties are male. See the chart on page 4 of the Lancet study (pdf link).

For just one (and by no means minor) example: Rape is a frequent weapon of war. Against both the oppressed and even among the instruments of oppression, the soldiers themselves. As has been reported elsewhere, female U.S. soldiers and contractors in Iraq have also been victims of rape by the men they serve with. The culture of war is inherently anti-woman - and I would argue, anti-man, because it requires men to shut down their individuality, their humanity, their rationality in order to submit oneself as one part of a giant killing machine.

Then again, maybe it’s like advertising. The results could be there, they’re just hard to prove.

It may be that most feminists are anti-war, and furthermore understand that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. But is it fair to say that not all anti-war feminists would agree that opposing war is a way of serving feminism? If so, it’s to those people that my post was directed. If not, then I was being stupid and patronizing, and if persuaded of this, will be happy to apologize.

I guess I probably am veering dangerously close here to being the kind of privileged white male asshole liberal Lisa mentions, who keeps telling feminists to keep putting off their causes while the “important” stuff gets taken care of. After all, to be honest, there’s not much else I would rank as high in importance to our world right now as getting the US to stop fucking around where it isn’t wanted. Just environmental and energy issues, really. Global warming, peak energy, and America’s continuing quest for worldwide hegemony on behalf of multinational corporations everywhere: these are the three interacting points of the deadly triangle that I fear could well spell the end of civilization as we’ve gotten to know it. It’s not that any other issues aren’t important; it’s just that they don’t seem as much such existential crises for our species.

If it turns out that I, in fact, am, just being a privileged white asshole here, I have at least one saving grace, and that’s that I really have no idea what can be done to solve any of my self-deemed “most important problems”. (Of the three, I guess environmental advocacy seems to me to hold the most hope for concrete changes, but even with that I feel like just throwing up my hands most of the time.) So I can’t very well get on my megaphone and say, “OKAY, ALL YOU PETTY LITTLE ACTIVISTS OF ALL KINDS AND STRIPES! I AM ONLY AGREEING TO EVEN TALK TO YOU BECAUSE I THINK YOU MIGHT BE OF SOME TEMPORARY USE TO ME! NOW JUST LEAVE ASIDE YOUR PETTY LITTLE PET ISSUES FOR A WHILE AND DO WHAT *I* TELL YOU TO DO!!” I can’t say this, since I don’t actually know what I would tell them to do.

Meanwhile, they tend to have a pretty good idea of how to go about things, so I think I should just stay out of their way.

That said, I don’t (can’t, who could?) disagree with any of your material points above.