Barbara Ehrenreich was scheduled to deliver her lecture about classism at Amherst College on Sept. 11. The lecture was cancelled, along with all other campus activities, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At an all-campus meeting addressing the day’s events, several professors spoke about the political ramifications of the attacks, and the appropriate psychological responses. Ehrenreich took a different route, and delivered an impassioned plea to the US government not to “bomb a bunch of Afghan civilians who had nothing to do with this.” She also described her fear that the government would curtail civil liberties, and referred to George W. Bush as “our supposed president.” Her comments drew a large ovation, but also infuriated many attendees. Ehrenreich spoke to the Collegian on Wednesday, and described her feelings about the bombing campaigns against the Taliban.
Collegian: What is your reaction to the government’s response to the attacks?
Ehrenreich: I am dismayed. What I said on Sept. 11 was that I was afraid that this would turn into a war that would hurt civilians. My fears were justified. We want to see the terrorist network eliminated, but the network is dispersed, and worldwide – and that’s assuming that there’s just one. The way to go about uprooting them would be through intelligence – and I mean that in all senses of the word – and through cunning and espionage. What we’re doing seems a little off the mark. We know that this network reaches to places like Germany and Malaysia. Why don’t we bomb them too? The way we’re going about this, we’ll just generate a lot more fanatics. I’m really worried.
Collegian: Polls have repeatedly shown that at least 90 percent of Americans support the bombing campaigns. What do you make of that?
Ehrenreich: There’s a natural, “rally around the flag” response. We understand that we’re all Americans, and Osama bin Laden has said to kill all Americans, so this is a natural response. In recent weeks, though, there have been more doubts expressed about this war – if not here, than in the rest of the world. Unfortunately, a lot of the mainstream media are not allowing dissident views to be voiced. The head of CNN has said that they’ll downplay casualties in Afghanistan.
Collegian: You said on Sept. 11 that you were concerned about the potential for a massive loss of civil liberties. Do you feel that this has happened?
Ehrenreich: Yes, particularly for immigrants. This is very worrying. Others have written a lot about that. I certainly respect the need for some sort of sacrifices for security’s sake. But I think you can go too far.
Collegian: You recently were quoted as saying that it bothers you tremendously that the group that’s standing up to globalization is so oppressive to women.
Ehrenreich: I had an op/ed in the Los Angeles Times, raising this issue. I think it’s bizarre, and in an intellectual way, kind of fascinating. Bin Laden claims to speak for the downtrodden of the world, but he belongs to a religion that has no respect for the downtrodden gender.
I should point out that the Clinton administration was friendly with the Taliban, and Bush was friendly with them up until last spring. All of this time, a lot of people were screaming about the treatment of women there. What’s fascinating is that, in the 1950s and ’60s, in Third World liberation movements, they almost always talked a good line about women’s rights. What a switch! We have a group that pretends to represent the downtrodden, but is the most misogynist group of people I can think of in history.
But I don’t believe in bombing their victims. A lot of women’s groups don’t, either – they’re protesting the bombing, saying it’s a big mistake. I think this is a time when we need an anti-war movement. We need to say, “Take a cleverer, less costly approach to fighting terrorism.”
But, this is not Vietnam, and Al-Qaeda and bin Laden are not the Viet Cong. They are misogynist and anti-Semitic. We can’t imagine that we’re back in the sixties or something.
Collegian: You just said that bin Laden believes in a religion that has no respect for women. Is that an accurate description of your feelings about Islam?
Ehrenreich: Islamic feminists say there are no roots for this in the Koran. There are sexist things in the Koran, just as there are in the Bible. But they insist that this fundamentalism is not representative of Islam, and I’ll take their word for it.
Collegian: You feel that the media isn’t covering the anti-war movement fairly. Do you have any hope that it will?
Ehrenreich: It’s a problem. In the Gulf War, I was an activist. I was going to rallies and getting people involved. At one point, the media decided that they wouldn’t cover anything we did. If this goes on and on, and the war continues to involve a shameful loss of civilian lives, we’ll have to do what we did in the Vietnam days. We’ll have to go door-to-door, and person-to-person. You have to be your own media, and get the message out.
