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Feminists go to war: Christine Stolba says feminists are between a rock and a hard place.

Article Excerpt
"WAR IS a contagion," Franklin D. Roosevelt said, just four years before he led the United States into one that changed the course of history. But what is war today? For contemporary feminists, war is neither contagion nor geopolitical reality. War is simply the ultimate breakdown in communication. "I feel like I'm standing on a playground where the little boys are all screaming at each other, 'He started it!' and throwing rocks," the novelist Barbara Kingsolver opined recently in the Los Angeles Times. "I keep looking for somebody's mother to come on the scene saying, 'Boys! Boys!' Who started it cannot possibly be the issue here. People are getting hurt."

Feminist organizations, most notably the Feminist Majority Foundation, urged the destruction of Afghanistan's repressive Taliban regime for years. But when presented with the opportunity to do just that, they flinched from what was required: war. Peace and women's rights activist Hibaaq Osman, who heads the Center for Strategic Initiatives of Women in Washington, once advocated the use of force against the Taliban. But when war actually broke out, she took it back, confessing to the Village Voice. "I said it, but I was just making a point. War is not okay under any circumstances. The whole thing simply breaks my heart."

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