War, gender, silence:

...They seem to take it for granted," said Mary Holland, political columnist for the Irish Times...

...Have they helped to advance the cause of peace...

...actions in the Gulf...

...Or should I be glad that a woman, Mary Robinson, has been at long last elected president of strife-torn Ireland...

...The point was brought home to me forcefully in talking with women from abroad attending an International Women's Media Foundation conference...

...Have they-in a word-acted any differently than men...

...No prominent feminist has been heard on the Gulf, nor have women's organizations other than peace or religious ones raised a cautionary word...

...They shared the sense of columnist Dorothy Gilliam that they were on a runaway train...

...In comparison, media women from the emerging countries and Eastern Europe felt that they could influence what happened in their communities and that they had a responsibility to do so...

...We do have a standing peace resolution," said a spokesperson vaguely, "passed some time in the 1970s...

...These nurses thought it "sick" that so many of the children of Vietnam veterans are in the Saudi desert or on their way there...

...The American media women who made the conference possible, were so wonderful and seemed so powerful and to have such rich resources that I was shocked to discover that they felt impotent about shaping the agenda of their society...

...Women's organizations are no better...

...Why are the voices of women in power not raised on behalf of those 18- and 19-year-olds so likely to be sacrificed in the Gulf...

...And indeed I thought I glimpsed a change in coverage as for example when Judy Woodruff interviewed the mother of a marine killed in Lebanon about her views on the Gulf...

...They were struck by the apparently passive acceptance by U.S...

...There seems to have been no recent allusion to this resolution...

...This seems in striking contrast to the Catholic bishops, who were largely silent on Vietnam, but who have moved to the forefront of protest by raising questions about a military solution to the Gulf crisis...

...Despite growing opposition in Congress to the build-up and stirrings in the peace movement, George Bush, according to news reports, believes that he has the authority to go to war under the UN Charter...

...women media stars of the prospect of war...

...Surely the majority of the population-nurturers, mothers, responsible citizens-must want to find theirs...

...Individual women without the responsibility of power are, to be sure, quick to question the terrible cost of war, especially those who have seen it up close...

...Women and their organizations might well study how the bishops, once mute on matters of war and peace, have found a voice...

...It will probably take a great deal, however, to alter the perspective of these American women...

...I sit here wondering if nations must have combat and if, no matter how absurd the reasons, they will always choose war over peace...

...Although they may have standing resolutions, they seem to have no idea of how to affect international policy, or even whether they should...

...Frustrated soldiers already in Saudi Arabia wave at the TV cameras saying, "Let's get it over with-take him (Saddam) out and go home"-apparently oblivious to the likelihood that they and tens of thousands of their fellows might go home in body bags if we do attack Iraqi forces massed across the border...

...Archbishop Roger Mahony, chair of the USCC's International Policy Committee, in a letter to Secretary of State James Baker, wrote, "My concern is that the pressure to use military force may grow as the pursuit of nonviolent options almost inevitably becomes difficult, complex and slow...

...Some of them, of course, may have given careful thought to their support for U.S...

...Individually some are concerned, but don't seem to think they can do anything about it-or should...

...To be sure, there have been calls for a halt to the build-up, but they have not come from women of influence or their organizations...

...In such a context I wonder, too, if I can rejoice over the election this week of a smart and capable woman, Sharon Pratt Dixon, to be mayor of the city we call the capital of the free world...

...The Americans seemed helpless in the face of the headlong rush to war, the trivialization of the news, and the commercial bias of the media...

...The bishops affirmed that letter at their annual meeting...

...Wanting to be hopeful about her hosts, Holland detected in the last days of the conference that the American women were beginning to be emboldened by the example of the media women from the emerging countries...

...For TV that means an attitude of the detached, uninvolved spectator-often a jesting one...

...My basic question, of course, is this: Have women political leaders made any difference in getting governments to focus on the human needs of their peoples...

...When questioned about the Mideast crisis, they were uncompromisingly blunt in speaking of the anguish of Vietnam...

...In fact, the National Organization for Women (NOW) at its September board meeting, passed resolutions calling for equal treatment of military women being sent to the Gulf, but did not question the president's action in sending troops...

...But it seems more likely to me that women who have risen to positions of influence in a male-dominated government or media either have done so because they share the prevailing views or because they have taken on the attitudes of their male peers...

...With them go the tanks and the artillery suited to a land war...

...On Veterans' Day, three women veterans who served as nurses in Vietnam visited the Washington war memorial...

...A former army nurse, Judy Herrington, whose memories of Vietnam come flooding back in nightmares, sees a connection to the young men and women sent to Saudi Arabia, "I'm scared to death for them...

...And they expressed skepticism of any objective except that of protecting oil supplies (Washington Post, November 11...