The Boss Lady is Still a Boss
Sorry to throw cold water on your popcorn, but can we please stop lionizing female operatives in the US State/intelligence/defense establishment just because they’re women?
I know it’s fun watching Marie Yovanovitch kick Twitler’s butt on network TV. Yes, she’s poised and well spoken and yes, embassies do some good things. And oh, yes, it’s fun to see a boss lady take on the hated Twitler minions and make mincemeat of them without even breaking a sweat. But we also need to understand what most high ranking US diplomats and foreign service agents do in the real world.
They are not “non-partisan” except in the sense that they are in complete partisan accord with both major parties in the shared project of imposing “free market economics” on the entire world. Rewind the tape and listen, really listen, to the subtext of what she is saying. She literally says that part of her job was to support the “free market” economy in foreign countries, That is not a meaningless term.
“Free market” literally means the unimpeded extraction of every drop of dead dinosaur that can be gouged, sucked or exploded out of the earth, every inch of timber raped out of the rainforests and every scrap of rare metal scratched out of the ground by a child slave. Not to mention every ounce of labor that can be extracted from a worker paid at the lowest rate that can be forced upon her in the global sweatshop.
And what does it mean that we provide “law enforcement” or “investigative” support to foreign governments? It’s not some innocuous thing. Sure, sometimes, maybe it means investigating an out of line oligarch here and there, but mostly what we help them with are search and destroy missions against uncooperative peasants and indigenous people unfortunate enough to be sitting on resources some corporation wants, or crushing popular revolts and dragging leftist students out of their homes and disappearing them.
It’s time to pull back the curtain and stop admiring women for doing things you would be horrified at if they were men. The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend.
That goes for Valerie Plame, too, even though I guess for some people it’s inspiring to watch a woman skid a speeding car sideways and then get out and strut away with the wind blowing in her blonde hair. Really?
