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I think you will enjoy this new article from Virtual Citizens titled "Rape of Women In Iraq: Byproduct of Militarism".

Setting the Table

Those who seek to discourage young men from enlisting in the military might want to remind them that, in addition to possibly getting killed, maimed or winding up with testicular cancer, they are even more likely to be forced to endure long periods of time without getting laid.  Indeed, there could be weeks or months, beginning with basic training or later, on foreign battlefields, when guys in the service are just not going to get any.  At least not from a willing female. 

A lot of enlistees know that when they put their signature on that paper in the recruiter’s office that they might get killed, but a wee voice of denial in their head says, “Nah, it isn’t going to happen to me.”  I wonder how many of hear another voice yowling, “if you sign that paper, you are gonna be crawling the walls!”

Regular Army Life?

Armies are made up of largely of young men in their physical prime.  Just when they should be enjoying life, dating, having sex, getting married or having children, in short, leading a normal life, they are inducted into the service where, for many, sexual activity comes to a screeching halt.  Many heterosexual soldiers have their first homosexual experience in the military, not because they are gay, but because it is, at the moment, to their way of thinking, better than nothing.  A warden once told me about this phenomenon is true of prisoners (male and female).  Life in a regimented barracks or on the battlefield is a form of prison life.

In civilian life, a young man gets to meet young women in his community, create friendships, and develop healthy, meaningful relationships.  A military career typically reverses the normal processes of social interaction or dramatically interferes with it.  Soldiers are commonly trained far from their homes, parted from their “girls” and wives, receive few passes to leave the base during basic training, have scant time or opportunity to meet women, and then are uprooted to a new base for advanced training.  Once trained in the military arts, soldiers are sent abroad to places like Afghanistan and Iraq where they don’t speak the local language and opportunities for the development of normal, loving relationships with the opposite sex are virtually nonexistent.

Young men in a state of sexual arousal, exacerbated by combat, with no normal outlet are more prone to commit the crime of rape.  Authorities on human sexuality point out that males have higher sex drives than females and there are some men who are aroused sexually when brutality is involved. 

Women are not the only victims in this process of structural rape.  Rape debases both parties to the act.  Most men do not enter the military as rapists, but after leading abnormal lives, filled with anger, hatred, suspicion and paranoia, as they are largely denied sexual opportunities with women, these trained killers become rapists.  Not only are American men raping non-Americans, they are attacking and raping females in uniform.

Casualties of War

Any internet search will turn up countless stories of armies of all nations that commit rape.  It is not just U.S. soldiers in Iraq who are committing the atrocity of rape.  Soldiers from every army in the world today, and probably of every army that ever was, rape members of the oppressed population.  Rape is an ugly, but expected by-product of militarism, invasion and occupation.  It is a spoil of war.

Putting weapons in the hands of sex-starved young males gives them infinitely more power over women than if they attempted to rape in civilian life without their weapons of individual intimidation and destruction.  Moreover, faced with the prospect they can be killed at any time, fighting men often feel entitled to “get some” before they get knocked off.  It is just harder for soldiers to exercise restraint than it is for men in civilian life.

During World War II, Japanese soldiers were notorious for the rape of Nanking and other Chinese cities and villages.  German soldiers raped widely as well, as did Soviet soldiers when they invaded Germany.   Rape was not unknown among U.S. soldiers in Viet Nam, either.  In recent “ethnic cleansing” wars in parts of Europe and Africa, rape by the conquerors has been widespread.  In May 2004, The Guardian (UK) reported widespread rape of Iraqi women by U.S. troops.  Iraqi attorney Amal Kadham Swadi told the paper sexual abuse of women inmates by U.S. guards is “happening all across Iraq.”

And not just Iraqi women. American female soldiers serving in Iraq are told not to go to the latrine or take a shower alone.  Some carry knives to protect themselves from their male soldier “buddies.”  Reuters reported on February 27, 2007, that 70 percent of the 284 American military women who suffer post-traumatic stress “said they had suffered sexual trauma in the military.” In the book Home Front: the Government’s War on Soldiers (Clarity Press) author Rick Anderson cites a Department of Defense study that finds of 556 women soldiers, 30 percent of them were either raped or subjected to rape attempts – by American men in uniform.

Boys will be Boys, Generals will be Generals

Prizing their warriors, generals are apt to look the other way when rapes occur and, when rapes cannot be ignored, the commanders mete out light penalties for rapists.  A Denver Post study found that by a ratio of two to one, Army sex-offenders receive administrative punishment instead of a court-martial.  “The military system is like a get-out-of-jail-free card,” the paper quotes a Colorado Springs rape victim counselor.  Adds social anthropologist Catherine Lutz of the University of North Carolina, the military has a big investment in its soldiers, especially elite units like Special Forces.  “That makes [military brass] very reluctant to take any action, knowing that the military would have to shrink quite a bit if they got rid of all the known abusers,” she told reporter Anderson.

Men are more prone to rape when social inhibitions against aggressive conduct are loosened by alcohol and/or drugs, and there have always been plenty of opportunities for U.S. soldiers to obtain these.  In fact, many troops are ordered to take stimulants, leading to a loss of inhibitions and moral compass.  Because of the terrible actions they must perform, many soldiers prefer to fight while on drugs, and some officers permit it, rationalizing that “anything that helps…”  Viet Nam veterans told me it was mentally easier for them to fight and to detach themselves from the horrors of the battlefield when they were high.  Add it all up --- sexual heat and extended frustration in young males, combined with booze and drugs, the possibility of imminent death, weapons in their hands, and the prospect their crime will not be reported, and the result is rape. This is not written to rationalize it, only to attempt to understand why rape invariably follows an army the way a vulture hovers over a highway.  Its existence is one more good reason to eliminate the scourge of war and the military machines that make them.

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(Sherwood Ross reports on military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)

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