Imagine, for a moment, that the United States was militarily occupying a country where a certain kind of ethnic prejudice was endemic among traditional segments of the population. Imagine that as part of its occupation plan, the U.S. was allowing these traditionalists to assume greater political control. And imagine that one of the things the traditionalists were choosing to do with their new power was to enforce heavy restrictions on the ethnic group they despised.
Imagine that members of the despised ethnic group were now barred from holding most jobs. Imagine that they were being denied basic legal rights. Imagine that members of the ethnic group were no longer allowed to drive or to be outside after dark. Imagine that if they did go outside (during the day only, of course) they were required to wear an identifying piece of clothing — perhaps a yellow star or a bag over their heads. Imagine that the penalty for breaking these rules was beating or death.
Imagine that a wave of terrorizing murders was taking place, with members of the despised ethnic group kidnapped, tortured, maimed, killed, and then left with notes pinned to their corpses explaining that the same fate awaited any other rule-breakers.
Got all that pictured in your mind? Good. Now, imagine hearing something like this as an explanation for why the U.S. wouldn’t be getting involved:
“In terms of what they’re doing within their own culture, I don’t think we’d intervene in that.”
I wasn’t reading the Blogger Boyz back when the Iraq invasion was a-cooking, so I don’t have muscle memory of their bellicosity. But in Bad Mother, Anglachel makes a persuasive psychological case that war guilt is partly behind the BB’s hatred of Hillary:
Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, Mark Kleiman, Kevin Drum, and any number of other high profile bloggers were all rah-rah war supporters when it first began. They had no real reason to support it besides wanting to kill people and get some revenge. They were reading the New York Times and Judith Miller and gulping the White House kool-aide as avidly as they gulp Obama’s kool-aide today. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, we gotta get Saddam! They swore by Colin Powell. If Powell said there was proof, well, by golly, that was good enough for them.
~snip~
Then the war goes tits over teakettle and they realize that they are on the losing side of the argument. They are guilty as hell for having brought their considerable intellectual talents to bear on promoting an unjustified war and they want to blame someone else for their bad judgment. I know, Hillary made me do it! She should have been a better mommy and kept me from indulging in my murderous desires! Bad Mommy! Bad!
The fact that she will not join in their villification of her, refusing to be badgered into admitting that she made her decisions on the same basis as they did (reasons they project onto her), saying clearly that she made what she thought was the right decision at the time, drives them even more batshit insane. They want Mommy to kiss it and make it better and she said tough luck, kiddos, learn to live with your mistakes. They want someone else to take on their guilt, to relieve them of their sins against the body politic, and she is not going to let them off the hook. Their fanatical identification with Obama in no small part is because of their wishful thinking that if they glom onto someone who denounced the war when they were beating the war drums, this someway, somehow, will absolve them of their trangressions.
I’ve long believed that a mommy complex is part of the Hillary problem for a lot of men, so this rings true to me. What do you think?
I’ve written before about how the rape of women is an indissoluble part of war, but Professor Shortell makes the same point in about one-twentieth of the space. He quotes from this article in the New York Times about the war in Congo:
Every day, 10 new women and girls who have been raped show up at his hospital. Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair.
As Prof. Shortell says: “Rape and torture aren’t accidents that happen on the fringes of war; they are the essence of war.”
It is a conservative myth that men pay the price for war; that our brave boys are the ones who bear the burden of defending our whatever-the-fuck. I’m going to quote myself here, from a piece I wrote in February 2006 about Iraq:
Of course, the bigger point to be made here is that war exerts a profound and particular violence on women. Civilian females raped by maruading troops, female soldiers raped by their own comrades, military wives at home killed by their returning husbands — war and militarism hit women hard. This runs contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds that war is the special burden of men, the great sacrifice that males give for their country. Anti-feminists make a sort of fetish of this, claiming that war casualties are overwhelmingly male. That is, to put it politely, bullshit.
Despite the glorification of “our brave boys in uniform,” soldiers are not the main casualties of war. Civilian populations are. In the 20th century, 90 percent of all war deaths were unarmed women, children, and men.
I put that statement in bold because I think it needs to become a permanent fixture of everyone’s mental furniture. When we think about war, we need to think about its real effects. Forget John Wayne and Rambo; remember, instead, the citizens of Dresden, the women of Bosnia, the ash heaps/former humans of Hiroshima. Let’s say it one more time: soldiers are not the main casualties of war. Innocent civilians are.
Let us add now to that roster of raped and maimed civilians; let us add the Congo women lying in hospital beds with colostomy bags — colostomy bags, I tell you, because they have been so brutally raped their plumbing doesn’t work anymore.
That’s what war is.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under War, Rape on October 10, 2007, 4:53 pm EST
And it’s not just the “comfort” women; it’s all the enslaved and prostituted and raped women in that global apocalypse, that furnace of souls.
Heart includes the open letter to Ken Burns from Dr. Suki Falconberg, and I’m reproducing it here because I’d like you to read it in its entirety. I’d like you to read it and think about these women, think about what happens to women in war, think about what war means. What it really means.
One by one, the charges are being dismissed against the officers involved in the Haditha massacre. The latest is Capt. Lucas McConnell, who wasn’t on the scene of the massacre but had been charged with failure to report and investigate it. Not any more.
His attorney made a couple of fascinating remarks, which I suppose might make sense if he were talking about some other massacre in some other war, in some other galaxy long, long ago. This one, not so much.
“From our perspective he had been the public whipping boy, along with the rest of the Haditha Eight, for a year and a half,” said McConnell’s lawyer, Kevin McDermott.
The defense attorney said the proper focus should be on military commanders who set the basic rules of engagement for U.S. forces.
He wants it to sound sympathetic, like “don’t blame the GIs who are just following orders,” but note that he’s talking about field officers. Field officers are supposed to exercise initiative and to bear responsibility; they’re supposed to be accountable for their actions.
As for making the generals in Washington answer for the “basic rules of engagement,” hey, I’m all for it. Anybody want to take bets on the likelihood of that happening? Ever? For chrissake, in the Abu Ghraib case the charges against everybody above the level of photogenic torturer were dismissed. The message in that case was that accountability only applies to the grunts; the officers can’t possibly be held responsible for what those lower-level types get up to. Gosh, it’s just all so confusing. If I were a cynical person I might think that no matter who is charged in one of these horrific military misdeeds, the argument will be made that somebody else needs to be held accountable.
But back to McDermott, who is just chock full of interesting perspectives:
“You don’t want the lance corporal, the 19-year-old kid with the M-16, thinking twice about pulling the trigger for fear that he’ll end up being investigated if in fact he reasonably believes there are insurgents involved with the attack upon him,” McDermott said.
Oh, is that what happened at Haditha? Just some scared kids making do-or-die decisions to shoot at big bad insurgents? I could have sworn it was this:
During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.
“When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed … two more were behind the bed,” Mendoza said.
“I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat … they looked scared.”
After leaving the room Mendoza told Tatum what he had found. “I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said ‘Well, shoot them,’” Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan.
“And what did you say to him?” Sullivan asked. “I said ‘But they’re just women and children.’ He didn’t say nothing.” Mendoza said he returned to a position at the front of the house and heard a door open behind him followed by a loud noise. Returning later that afternoon to retrieve bodies, Mendoza said he found a room full of corpses.
But that’s old news. We have a whole new set of corpses. We need to hurry up and finish not finding anyone accountable for the old massacre so we can move on to not finding anyone accountable for the new massacre.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under War on September 20, 2007, 5:19 am EST
Some things in life are bad, they can really make you mad
Other things can make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle, don’t grumble — give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best, and…
Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life
If life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten
And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you’re feeling in the dumps, don’t be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle, that’s the thing, and…
Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life
For life is quite absurd, and death’s the final word
You must always face the curtain with a bow
Forget about your sin, give the audience a grin
Enjoy it — it’s your last chance anyhow, so…
Always look on the bright side of death
Just before you draw your terminal breath
Life’s a piece of shit, when you look at it
Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke it’s true
You can see it’s all a show, keep ‘em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you, and…
Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life…
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under War on September 11, 2007, 8:00 pm EST
LaVena Johnson, Private First Class, died near Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005. She was 19 years old.
According to the Army, her death was a suicide, the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Uh huh.
Here’s the evidence in the case:
Two loose front teeth and a “busted lip” that had to be reconstructed by the funeral home, though these were not mentioned in the Army autopsy.
A dislocated shoulder, though this apparently wasn’t mentioned in the Army autopsy either.
Severe bruising on her body, ditto.
The absence of psychological indicators of suicidal thoughts; indeed, testimony that LaVena was happy and healthy prior to her death.
Indications, via residue tests, that LaVena may not even have handled the weapon that killed her.
A blood trail outside the tent where Lavena’s body was found.
Indications that someone attempted to set LaVena’s body on fire.
The Johnson family and their supporters have been petitioning the Army to re-open its investigation, but so far the Army is distinctly uninterested in doing so. “Suicide,” says the Army. Open-and-shut case.
Uh huh.
Dr. John Johnson believes that his daughter’s murder (and surely that’s what it was) occurred in connection with a sexual assault. Either LaVena was raped and murdered in one attack, or she was raped and then later murdered in retribution for reporting it.
What Dr. Johnson doesn’t say in that clip is why he thinks sexual assault was involved, so I’ll tell you why: because our female soldiers in Iraq are getting abused and raped in astounding numbers.
Sexual assault in the military isn’t new: studies of female veterans from Vietnam to the first Gulf War found that 30% had been raped and 90% sexually harassed. And every indication is that it’s even worse in Iraq. Women make up a bigger percentage of our forces over there than they have in any previous war; something like 1 out of 7 American soldiers in Iraq is female. These women are right there in combat alongside the guys, riding in the tanks, doing the searches, facing the same dangers. But the shared risks don’t mean that the male soldiers are inspired to treat their female comrades as comrades. “Meat” is more like it:
Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” she told me. “It was for the guys on my own side.”
“There are only three kinds of female the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke,” said Montoya, the soldier who carried a knife for protection. “This guy out there, he told me he thinks the military sends women over to give the guys eye candy to keep them sane. He said in Vietnam they had prostitutes to keep them from going crazy, but they don’t have those in Iraq. So they have women soldiers instead.”
In the current Iraq war, which Pickett spent refueling and driving trucks over the bomb-ridden roads, she was one of 19 women in a 160-troop unit. She said the men imported cases of porn, and talked such filth at the women all the time that she became worn down by it. “We shouldn’t have to think every day, ‘How am I going to go out there and deal with being harassed?’” she said. “We should just have to think about going out and doing our job.”
Women soldiers in Iraq are in so much danger from rape by their own male colleagues that they are routinely instructed never to go the latrines or showers without a female buddy (or several). And it’s not just the so-called bad apples who commit these crimes. Commanding officers, team leaders, sergeants, lowly GIs — they all get in on the rape action. The obstacles to even reporting these assaults are so high that the vast majority of perpetrators get off scot free. Meanwhile the victims — those who have the courage to report what happened to them — are routinely ostracized and penalized for being “traitors.”
Given all that, it’s no surprise that the Army isn’t even remotely interested in justice for LaVena Johnson.
One more thing here, which I’m putting below the fold, as it were, so as not to get my rant poo all over the LaVena Johnson story and thus distract readers from their God-given duty to go sign the fucking petition. And that’s this: every time somebody suggests that all the raping of our female soldiers in Iraq is the result of the stress of combat and the way war turns people into predators, I wanna get up out of this blog and whack that somebody upside the head. ‘Cause dig it: our male soldiers aren’t assaulting each other, aren’t expressing their angst by attacking each other, are they? And our female soldiers aren’t assaulting male soldiers, aren’t ganging up to attack male soldiers. The stress of combat applies to everybody over there, but the rape violence is unidirectional and specific in its target: male soldiers assaulting female soldiers. And that’s because hatred of women, violence towards women, is interwoven into the fucking DNA of Western machismo and Western military culture. Women are the “other,” they are the despicable thing, the non-masculine thing, the thing to be used and abused, conquered and destroyed. I’m not a veteran but I grew up on military bases, and there is no more misogynistic culture on earth.
And that’s why, to be honest, whenever I hear the usual pablum about “supporting our brave men and women in uniform,” etc., I do a little virtual puke. I respect the women over there and some of the men, but I know damn well that a large percentage of the male soldiers in our military are pure grade-A asshats.
I’m overjoyed that the British sailors have been released. I’m not surprised at all that they were bullied while in captivity, though we can at least be glad they weren’t physically harmed. That said, here’s something I’ve been gnawing over for the past several days: why is it that the existence of Guantanamo Bay (and Abu Ghraib, for that matter) justifies any mistreatment that unfriendly nations might wish to mete out to captive soldiers from the U.S. or our allies?
Of course we all know that it does justify it, effectively; here in the U.S. people have been pointing out for several years now that our treatment of enemy captives has put every single U.S. soldier at risk for the same. That’s how the world works: you torture our captives, we’ll torture yours. And that governments behave that way is unsurprising, since governments are evil. All governments, even the ones that on balance do good. It’s something to do with institutionalism and the way actions that would be considered heinous crimes if committed by individuals become “policy” when committed by states.
But what I’m wondering is why normal people also take that line: that anything meted out to U.S. or British captives is perfectly justified because of Guantanamo. For example, read through this BBC forum where people are expressing their opinions on the release of the British sailors. Notice how many people say that, in essence, the British sailors had much worse coming to them because of Guantanamo. And this theme has been sounded repeatedly in the BBC forums throughout the crisis, people saying, “well, so what? Guantanamo!” How does that actually work inside a person’s mind?
Because: George W. Bush is a corrupt dictator and is served by sadists who have instituted illegal imprisonment and torture,
Therefore: a working-class British subject who happened to decide to make a career in the Royal Navy deserves to be illegally imprisoned and tortured.
As I said, I expect governments to use that kind of logic. But normal people? It’s frightening.
Posted by Violet under War on April 6, 2007, 10:18 pm EST
Increasingly the world media is reporting this as a back-door declaration of war; note the two lead grafs from the Independent this morning:
American forces stormed Iranian government offices in northern Iraq, hours after President George Bush issued a warning to Tehran that was described as a “declaration of war”.
The soldiers detained six people, including diplomats, according to the Iranians, and seized documents and computers in the pre-dawn raid which was condemned by Iran. A leading UK-based Iran specialist, Ali Ansari, said the incident was an “extreme provocation”. Dr Ansari said that Mr Bush’s speech on future Iraq strategy amounted to “a declaration of war” on Iran.
There were indications yesterday that Congress would push back on this, but how much can they do? El Comandante controls the military, his administration has shown no reluctance to raid the rest of the federal budget for funds (so much for the power of the purse), and impeachment is too slow.
What do you do when the world’s scariest rogue dictator is the president of your own country?
At this point you’re probably thinking, “Well, I don’t know, Violet, but this is a pretty half-assed post. No analysis, hardly any commentary; just some links, a blockquote, and question marks. Geez.”
But see, that’s because you’re in the reality-based community. I, on the other hand, am one of history’s actors. I create my own reality. And my reality says this isn’t a half-assed post; it’s an open thread.
Have at it.
P.S. I’ve just seen that our embassy in Greece has been attacked, so hey, maybe Armageddon will come early this year.
“I’m George Bush, and the fact that I’m making this speech from the White House Library means that everything will be different now in Iraq. But I’m still a homicidal maniac.”
Most bizarre moment in the speech: “To step back now would force a collapse of the Iraqi government, tear that country apart and result in mass killings on an unimaginable scale.'’
Okay, George? That train left the station about four years ago, when you invaded the fucking country. Remember?
Collapse of Iraqi government? Check!
Country torn apart? Check!
Mass killings on an unimaginable scale? Check!
Bush says failure in Iraq would be “a disaster” for the United States, cleverly omitting to mention that we’ve already failed in Iraq; that Iraq is already a disaster for us, for them, for the entire world; that Bush’s obscene and criminal invasion of that country is one of the most disastrous missteps in the history of American foreign policy.
But 20,000 more soliders will turn it all around he says, blah blah, crucial moment, blah blah, al-Maliki, blah blah, I believe, blah blah.
What the fuck is going on here? Seriously, what is the real reason for this absurd escalation? Why does Torture President insist on sending more soldiers to Iraq when even his own generals think it’s a shit-for-brains move? Dan Froomkin explains:
[A]s Abramowitz, Wright and Ricks point out: “In going for more troops, Bush is picking an option that seems to have little favor beyond the White House and a handful of hawks on Capitol Hill and in think tanks who have been promoting the idea almost since the time of the invasion.”
So how did it come to pass? Well, during White House deliberations, “How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme.
“As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton.”
And: “In the end, the White House favored the idea of more troops as one visible and dramatic step the administration could take.”
Do you suppose any of that will make it into the official condolence letters to the families of the soldiers who will die as a result of this “visible and dramatic” political maneuver? Sorry your husband was killed in action. Good news, though: he died so the President could look “distinctive” from the Iraq Study Group. A grateful nation thanks you.
Here’s your drinking game for the evening: count how many times Torture President and the bobble-head pundits use the word “surge” to describe the escalation of the war in Iraq.
As Vali Nasr wrote late last month at TPMCafe—making a point few have made in the mainstream press—the new troops being sent to Iraq aren’t meant to prop up the Malaki government or provide more security, but rather as a greater offensive force. “New troops will be in Iraq not to police the streets and hold the line against the creeping violence,” he said, “but to expand the war by taking on the Shia militias. This is an escalation strategy.”
But don’t tell that to CNN’s talking heads. They continue to cast the move in purely partisan terms. Correspondent Elaine Quijano declared on Monday that not only are Democrats seemingly the only opposition to the “surge” plan, but they’re “seeking to cast a surge as an escalation of the unpopular Iraq war.”
No, actually it’s the Republicans who are seeking to cast the escalation as a surge.
Truth is, the Democrats don’t need to “seek” to cast the escalation as anything other than reality shows it to be—namely, a ramping up of a war that, according to every major opinion poll, long ago lost both the confidence and support of the vast majority of Americans.
Media Matters noted earlier this week that while Quijano made it sound like Democrats were trying to inject politics into the heightening of the war, CNN’s own Bill Schneider noted that the term “surge” is political in its own right. “Why ‘surge’? Why not ‘escalate’?” Schneider asked. “Because ‘surge’ sounds temporary. Waves surge and decline. ‘Escalation’ sounds long-term.”
“Surge” also sounds a lot sexier. As Stephen Colbert explains: “‘Surge’ is masculine. It’s aggressive. Like, ‘he tore off her space bodice and surged into her loins.’ ‘Escalation,’ on the other hand, is what old people do at a mall.”
Don’t just throw things at your television set. Sign this petition to block the escalation of the war in Iraq. MoveOn has already collected 160,000 signatures and is delivering comments to Congress every few hours.
Posted by Violet under Politics, War on January 9, 2007, 4:05 pm EST
The cease-fire that ended World War One was signed at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918. The holiday that commemorates this event is still referred to as Armistice Day in the U.K. but is now known as Veterans Day here in ‘Murka, where with typical American can-do-ism we decided to honor the veterans of all wars (including ones we haven’t started yet) in one fell swoop and get it over with.
In Britain they mark the day by observing a two-minute silence. In the U.S. we buy sheets for half-off at Bed Bath & Beyond. Wonder what they do in Canada? Some kind of hybrid thing, like buying sheets in silence?*
I would say “Happy Veterans Day” but that doesn’t seem to be quite the point, so I’ll just say to all you veterans: “I’m glad you made it out alive.”
*Actually I believe the Canadians observe something called Remembrance Day, a moveable feast that falls on the second Sunday in November and is also observed in Britain, where it appears to have cornered the market on poppy-wearing and wreath-laying. Poppies and wreaths used to be the province of Armistice Day proper, so I imagine there’s a bit of rivalry there and tense moments in the faculty lounge where holidays go to have a smoke.
Needless to say I’m just an American so actually I have no fucking clue about any of this.
Posted by Violet under War, Holidays on November 11, 2006, 7:45 pm EST
The outrage Wednesday about photographs of German troops posing with a skull in Afghanistan swept through parliament just as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s administration announced a major restructuring of the military to handle increased international missions.
The five pictures appeared in Bild, a paper known for titillating scoops, under the headline: “German Soldiers Desecrate a Dead Person.” They show the skull in various positions, including mounted on a jeep and held near the waist of a soldier with his fatigues unzipped. The newspaper blocked out the troops’ faces.
My reaction to this story, aside from the obvious revulsion and outrage, is three-fold:
Fold the first: War dehumanizes. No news there. Soldiers become inured to the spectre of death, callous to suffering and indignity. See Abu Graib, the Haditha massacre, and, well, basically the entire history of warfare.
This desensitization can also take the form of morbid humor, the purpose of which is to provide the soldiers with some kind of psychological anesthetic to the horror that surrounds them. I’m reminded of how trenchmen in World War One adapted to the constant presence of corpses, skulls, and assorted body parts by making gruesome jokes. In one British trench a hand sticking out was dubbed “Jack,” and all the men routinely shook “Jack”’s hand whenever they passed by.
Fold the second: War and sex go together. Again, not news. A comment made at Twisty’s the other day is apt:
Ron, Mandos: For some reason your discussion is making me think of an article I read not long ago. The reporter was interviewing a soldier about “how does it feel to be here” or something like that. The soldier commented, “Fucking and shooting, it’s the same thing, right?” He felt good, I guess.
The thread in question is a wide-ranging discussion on Halloween, war, and whether someone named MaggietheWolf is an asshole, with no reference to this German business. But the comment sums up the fucking-shooting nexus with admirable brevity. Stan Goff’s Sex and War explores the connection at length, building on both the 30-year radfem critique of war as sexual conquest and Goff’s own Special Forces background. It’s no coincidence that the link page for the book features a photo from Abu Graib.
Fold the third: It’s interesting that the soldiers’ sideline in corpse desecration is somehow more disturbing than their main job, which is to create corpses in the first place. To desecrate living bodies, as it were, and turn them into dead ones. It’s curious, isn’t it? It’s as if the response is something like, “Oh, sure, killing people is understandable — but don’t mess with the bodies afterwards! That’s just sick!”
It’s powerful, this taboo against defiling a person’s physical remains. And transgressing that taboo is, historically, an effective way of expressing extreme contempt for the vanquished: traitors’ heads on pikes, enemies’ skulls made into drinking cups. Somehow these acts obliterate the human being even more than the actual physical death. You’re not just dead; you’re no longer even human. You’re somebody’s drinking cup, somebody’s lampshade, somebody’s — god help us — sex toy.
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues, War on October 27, 2006, 6:24 am EST
