quiet submission: US and Saudi women

"As Allison Janney’s C.J. Cregg once fumed on “The West Wing” about Saudi Arabia: “This is a country where women aren’t allowed to drive a car. They’re not allowed to be in the company of any man other than a close relative. They’re required to adhere to a dress code that would make a Maryknoll nun look like Malibu Barbie. They beheaded 121 people last year for robbery, rape and drug trafficking. They have no free press, no elected government, no political parties. And the royal family allows the religious police to travel in groups of six carrying nightsticks, and they freely and publicly beat women. But ‘Brutus is an honorable man.’ Seventeen schoolgirls were forced to burn alive because they weren’t wearing the proper clothing. ... Saudi Arabia, our partners in peace.”    It would have been thrilling if Hillary 2011 had simply channeled Hillary 1995, when, as first lady, she made her bodacious speech in Beijing, declaring that “women’s rights are human rights.”  In her memoir, Hillary wrote that, despite pressure against it, she was determined to give that speech because she was fed up with “the crucial concerns of women” getting sacrificed “to diplomatic, military and trade issues.”  So it was startling on Monday when Saudi women activists, struggling to bring the Arab Spring to the medieval House of Saud by urging women to drive, chided Hillary for her silence.   Clinton’s office responded that the secretary had used “quiet diplomacy” — raising the issue, and more pressing ones, in a call with the Saudi foreign minister on the Day of Driving Dangerously."