Civil Liberties: After Afghanistan, Can We Ever Neglect Women's Rights Again?

What a difference a war makes. George W. Bush entered the Oval Office determined to repeal some of the rights won by American women activists during the last three decades. Then came the terrorist attacks and the war against terrorism. Within a few weeks, the language of women's rights had slipped into the lexicon of foreign diplomacy.

"The rights of the women of Afghanistan will not be negotiable." With those few words, Secretary of State Colin Powell moved women's rights onto the global stage and established a foreign policy precedent that will be difficult to disavow.

In another historic first, first lady Laura Bush used the weekly presidential radio address to promote the right of Afghan women to help shape a post-Taliban society. A few days later, the president's advisers practically begged the Afghan delegations to include women in the councils that will create a new government. Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, not only sponsored legislation to provide educational resources for millions of Afghan women and children, but called for women's equal representation in any newly formed government.

Consider, too, how much the issue of women's rights has entered popular culture. CNN has repeatedly broadcast the documentary film"Beneath the Veil," an expose of women's lives under Taliban rule. Time magazine not only featured a cover story on Afghan women, but also described the small but vital feminist movement that has resurfaced in Kabul. In an episode of the television series"West Wing," the feisty communications director, C.J. Cregg, dissolved into tears at the prospect of selling weapons to a mythic Persian Gulf state that routinely kills women for adultery and beats them for all kinds of minor infractions.

But, you may ask, will anything really change? Not right away. The Afghan tribal chiefs probably won't grant women full participation in a post-Taliban government. And Bush, who simply appropriated the language of women's rights to justify America's war in Afghanistan, remains just as committed to his earlier anti-feminist agenda.

Still, this is a historic moment. Once such words are uttered, they take on a life of their own. The idea of women's human rights has now entered mainstream global politics. And it won't be long before women activists, both here and abroad, use this language to condemn America's hypocritical support for -- and sale of weapons to -- nations that condone such gender crimes as"honor deaths," sexual slavery, genital mutilation and forced marriages.

In response to this rapid change, some critics have accused the United States of cultural imperialism and criticized it for imposing its values on Afghan society. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who famously declared that women's rights are human rights at the Women's World Conference in Beijing in 1995, strongly disagrees."As liberators, the U.S. has an opportunity and an obligation to insist on an equal role for women in Afghanistan's future."

It is also insulting to Muslim women, Clinton adds,"to assume that women's rights are simply Western customs. They are universal values which we have a responsibility to promote throughout the world."

History unfolds in strange and unpredictable ways. As a result of the Taliban's enslavement of women and Bush's need to justify a war against religious terrorists, the world's women have just gained a new opportunity to defend and protect their human rights. Seize the moment.