Anu Bhagwati

I feel very conflicted about Anu Bhagwati's talk. I found myself agreeing with a lot of what she said in class and in her talk, and I really admire everything that she does with SWAN. But a lot of her more militarized and pro-military opinions are puzzling to me. In her talk, when she identified her hero as a woman [Martha McSally] who fought against U.S. servicewomen having to wear a veil while on duty in Saudi Arabia, I couldn't understand why that woman, out of all the strong women in the military fighting for women's rights, would be her hero. What really bothered me, however, was when Bhagwati was casually talking about female marines going into Iraqi women's homes and gaining their trust in order to determine the "appropriate" time and place for an airstrike.

The idea that an airstrike would ever be appropriate rubs me the wrong way, and the casual way she discussed exploiting these Iraqi women made me very angry. I'm conflicted about my anger because I think that it's great to have people with different opinions visit our class. Our class, like most at USF tends to be very liberal and pacifist. So I think it's good to present the other side of the conversation. But the militarism and dehumanization of Iraqi women just did not sit well with me.