Word: souhail
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There was a cheap metaphor to be had in the remarkable moment when Safia al-Souhail, who had just voted in the Iraqi elections, and Janet Norwood, whose U.S. Marine son was killed in Iraq, embraced during the President's State of the Union speech last week. Norwood was holding her son's dog tags, which became entangled in al-Souhail's cuff. The two struggled at disentanglement. Laura Bush had to help them. It was an image with some resonance, to be sure...
...Then why is it cheap to see it as a metaphor? Because nothing should detract from the emotional truth of the moment, the magnitude of Norwood's loss, the exhilaration of al-Souhail's ballot. Yes, disentanglement will be difficult. And, yes, we shouldn't "overhype" the election, as John Kerry clumsily suggested. But this is not a moment for caveats. It is a moment for solemn appreciation of the Iraqi achievement-however it may turn out-and for hope...
...Minutes after the President finished his speech, Ron Reagan-a de facto Dem since he spoke at the party's convention-was opining on MSNBC that the al-Souhail- Norwood hug was exploitative and staged. Others soon expressed similarly mingy thoughts. This was a symptom of a larger disease: most Democrats seemed as reluctant as Kerry to express the slightest hint of optimism about the elections. Congressional leaders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi diminished themselves by staging an unnecessary pre-buttal and a misleading rebuttal to the President's speech...
...activists to venture into the political arena; the only chance they have to eliminate honor-killing laws, they say, is to flood political parties with women who can win positions in the government and fight from the inside. "Nothing will change unless we get elected," says al-Souhail, who has emerged as a leading women's-rights campaigner. "It's going to be a big fight because no one in Iraq declares it a crime...
...total in the hundreds. (By comparison, in neighboring Jordan, where women's-rights advocates have succeeded in bringing attention to the issue, activists report an average of 20 honor killings a year.) "This isn't just an issue about women. It's about the whole society," says Safia al-Souhail, a female Iraqi politician who was appointed ambassador to Egypt last week. "We have to stop it. It's going on everywhere, and no one is speaking about...