Americans should be outraged over the abusive, brutal, and horrific death of Colleen Hufford. Many Americans might not recognize the name until how she died is mentioned:  she is the working mother and grandmother who was beheaded on September 25th in Oklahoma by a Muslim extremist. State Representative Lewis H. Moore feels this is the real war on women, referring to the terrorist’s website. Hufford’s peers, prior to the beheading, told Moore that he terrorist screamed that stoning women is all right.  American Thinker interviewed others who agree with Moore’s description of the “real war on women.”

But Moore is not alone. There is a bipartisan feeling that women have to wakeup to the real war. The headline in the Washington Times on September 28th stated “Bill Maher Slams Liberals For Phony war On Women”. Maher went on to say, “But Saudi women can’t vote, or drive, or hold a job or leave the house without a man. Overwhelming majorities in every Muslim country say a wife is always obliged to obey her husband. That all seems like a bigger issue…”

Retired Air Force Colonel Martha McSally, who is running for office in Tucson Arizona, has personal knowledge of just what Maher was referring to. She noted to American Thinker, “I had my rights as an American women threatened while serving when cultural norms were forced upon myself and my peers.  American women deployed in Saudi Arabia could not travel without permission of a man, had to sit in the back seat of a car, had to be covered with a headscarf, as well as what Mr. Maher noted. It was like a female apartheid. Not only did it go against military values of good, order, and discipline, but goes directly against American values of equality. There is already harassment against women in the military so what message did this give, that it was all right to treat women serving as second-class citizens.”

McSally is someone who should be admired by all women, since she actively tried to get the treatment changed over a period of six years. She had to face the threats of disciplinary charges if she did not obey the regulations. While complying, she filed a lawsuit in December 2001, and worked to have bipartisan support. The bill she fought for was signed into law on December 2, 2002.

Another woman who is fighting this war is Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who wants women to understand that the extremist Islamists “want a society that would keep women down. Many countries do not believe in freedom, equal opportunity, and human rights for women. We need to question some of the rhetoric here in America compared to how others are treated around the world.”

She makes a very good point, considering current events in the headlines recently. Democrats are concentrating on birth control and abortion as issues while women around the globe are fighting for basic rights and their lives. This past Saturday, a twenty-six year old woman was hanged in Iran. Her crime: stabbing a forty-seven year old surgeon who had worked for the intelligence ministry and had attempted to sexually abuse her. During the trial she had her rights violated time and again.

In Syria and Iraq, British extremists have boasted on Twitter and other social media that Yazidi women had been kidnapped and used as "slave girls". The men sexually abuse, beat, and threaten them when they try to resist. There is also the case of Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl, and the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was nearly killed when a Taliban gunman boarded her school bus in the Swat Valley district of Pakistan and shot her in the head for blogging and speaking publicly in support of education and women’s rights.

Last June, In Nigeria two hundred schoolgirls were kidnapped by the Boko Haram terrorist network because they were of the Christian faith. Currently they are being forced to marry their Islamic extremist abductors, a medieval form of slavery. They capture the women, sell them off, and force them to marry. 

Democrats use the "War on Women" as a political message, not caring that it diverts attention from those who are suffering horrifically. Their campaign does not speak of women in the U.S. who suffer from abuse and rape, but only refer to issues involving contraception and abortion. Women in this country and abroad do face major challenges today, but not the ones many Democrats espouse with their claims of victimhood politics and policies. In fact, in a recent Rasmussen poll, 52% of likely U.S. female voters said they believed the "war on women" slogan is primarily used for political purposes.

Hopefully more American women will agree with McMorris Rodgers and McSally that the rhetoric and slogan of “war on women” is phony. The real War on Women is looking how women are abused and killed, especially within the Islamic extremist mindset.  This should not be seen as a Democratic or Republican issue, but as one where all women can come together to solve it. 

The author writes for American Thinker. She has done book reviews, author interviews, and has written a number of national security, political, and foreign policy articles.