Comments about ‘Foreign policy should focus on helping women’

Great writing.

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. So what kind of world do we want?

Maybe we shouldn't be so sexist in our approach and focus our foreign policy on helping PEOPLE in general.

Rape is terrible but it isn't the only problem going on in the world and there are people of all sexes we could help.

General lack of education is also a problem.

Unemployement.

Poverty (which is frequently the result of the 2 above).

Starvation.

Aids and other illnesses.

There is much sufering and there are many problems we can help without just focusing our help exclusively on one sex.

The problem with the US trying to prevent rape in other countries is we would be in the business of teaching morality... and that is a sticky problem that would be resisted intensly by many who post here daily.

RE: Focus on People
You call it SEXIST to focus on helping people being raped?
Its good to help all but certainly it isn't sexist to help women who are really oppressed in many countries.

To focus on people is to focus on morality, or the lack there of!
Too many suffer in this world because of the lack of morality.
Political and economic corruption, Aid's, Rape, Murder, theft, robbery, are all the fruits of immorality.
To refuse to accept the teaching of morality, is to refuse to take responsibility for others.

Christopher | 11:00 a.m

I didn't say it was sexist to focus on rape. I said it was sexist to say, "Foreign policy should focus on helping WOMEN", which was the title of the article.

I feel fighting rape is a noble cause. But one that must be mostly fought by local people, not some outside government like the United States stepping in. And Rape doesn't only affect Women. I'm not going to go into that here because it isn't the point.

I just resented the basic assertion that our government should focus on one sex to the exclusion of the other.

Could someone please explain to me WHY such an absurd number of women are daily raped in these countries? WHY do the husbands, fathers, brothers, simply look the other way and pretend it's not their problem? Why is no one pointing out the obvious- men MUST take responsibility for the women in their lives! It's just sick and wrong.

You can't give money that you haven't got and the "help" offered by the USA always seems to involve inflating the US dollar and robbing the taxpayer.

Help should be voluntary and the private philanthropist, small or great, will choose their own causes.

It should be borne in mind, though, that neither money nor guns will change the thinking of a people. That must come from within. Persuasion is the only method that works, and then not always.

"What kind of world do we want?"

The kind of world in which there are maternal hands that actually rock cradles, not a 'liberal' world of contraception and working mothers.

Michelle | 3:27 p.m.

The answer to your question is... culture. It's part of their culture to look the other way and for it to be frowned upon but at the same time almost expected.

Should it be US Foriegn Policy to change their culture? We tried that in Iraq and it didn't work.

THEY, need to change their culture, and whatever help they need to do this we can give them, but we can't go stomping in and start wagging our finger at them and trying to teach them to live by OUR morals.

focus on people; it was an article about a specific world-wide dilema. if she wanted to write an article about every problem in the world..she would have done so.
@talisyn; welcome to the 21st century! --it's a little nore advanced than the argument that women shouldn't work. your comment has nothing to do with the column.
good writing.