BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 6 — The United States ambassador and the top American military commander here together issued an unusual apology on Thursday for the rape and murder of a young Iraqi woman and the killing of her family, saying that the crime, in which at least four soldiers are suspects, had injured the “Iraqi people as a whole.”
I’ve seen many U.S. media stories make the same mistake the Times makes here. In virtually any context other than a crime committed by US soldiers, a 14 year old girl who was raped and murdered would be called a girl, not a “woman.”
“We understand this is painful, confusing and disturbing, not only to the family who lost a loved one, but to the Iraqi people as a whole,” the two senior officials said in a written statement. “The loss of a family member can never be undone. The alleged events of that day are absolutely inexcusable and unacceptable behavior.”
The statement is all the more unusual because no soldiers have been convicted yet or even formally charged.
What I find unusual about the statement, as quoted, is that whoever wrote the “apology” didn’t even read the news reports, or he’d know that four people — Abeer Qasim Hamza, who was raped before she was shot in the head; her parents Qasim Hamza Rasheed al-Janabi and Fakhriya Taha Muheisin al-Janabi, and her six-year-old sister Hadeel Qasim Hamza al-Janabi — had been murdered.
Not “a loved one.” Four loved ones. (Abeer’s two younger brothers were fortunately not home, which is presumably why they’re still alive.)
Does it need to be mentioned that all five soldiers arrested so far have been men?
Heart has been doing outstanding blogging about this appalling hate crime (here, here, here). In her first post about the rape/murders, she quotes the lyrics of a song written by an American soldier. A video that found its way on to the internet showed “The song… performed before thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq who could be heard wildly cheering and laughing in the background.” In the song, a seductive Iraqi woman tempts an American Marine into her home, where she and her insurgent family attempt to murder him.
They pulled out their AKs so I could see
And they said…
Durka Durka Mohammed Jihad
Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah
(with humorous emphasis:)
So I grabbed her little sister, and pulled her in front of me.As the bullets began to fly
The blood sprayed from between her eyes
And then I laughed maniacallyThen I hid behind the TV
And I locked and loaded my M-16
And I blew those little f*ckers to eternity.
The soldier had been planning to release a recording of his song, but in light of recent events he’s put off (or perhaps been ordered to put off) those plans. Not canceled them, mind you. Put them off.
A couple of right-wing bloggers (here here and here) find it ridiculous that Heart sees a connection between an ever-so-funny song about shooting an insurgent and her family to death, and the actual rape and murder that took place.
Seelhoff quotes the Hadji Girl song, and (with typical Feminist logic) segues from a discussion of a humorous skit of a Marine turning the tables on insurgents who attack him, to the case of several soldiers from the 101th Airborne Division of the US Army, not Marines, who have been accused by Iraqis of participating in an incident of rape and murder in the Iraqi city of Mahmoudiya.
(Note the author’s emphasis on the word “Iraqis” – the implication being that the story is not true. When this rape/murder was first reported in American media, the initial reaction of some in the rightosphere was to assume that it couldn’t possibly be true. See, for example, here and here: “…to take seriously the notion that FIVE soldiers gang-raped a girl, murdered her, burned her body, and then murdered her family to cover up the crime is simply beyond the pale. It would make a good movie script, but it’s just too far out there to even begin to take seriously.”)
I think Heart’s point is actually pretty simple: A culture in which a wacky novelty song about killing a seductive Iraqi insurgent and her family is popular and liked, is a culture that is encouraging misogyny and hate against women, and racist hate against all Iraqis. Did “Hadji Girl” cause these five soldiers to rape and murder? No, of course not. But the same cultural racism and misogyny that has (wrongly) convinced thousands of soldiers that “Hadji Girl” is acceptable as entertainment, also convinced these five (or possibly more than five?) men that it was acceptable to rape and murder an Iraqi family.
Oddly enough, right-wingers make this sort of connection all the time, when they (correctly) suggest that hateful anti-Israel propaganda stems is connected to murderous attacks on Israelis, even when there’s no evidence that any particular article was a direct cause of any particular attack. So why is the connection so hard to make when the hatred is directed at Iraqis and Iraqi women in particular?
I am in no way saying that this sort of thing is unique to Americans, or unique to soldiers. Gang-rape is always a weapon used against civilians — nearly always women and girls — in war, but it’s also used against civilians — nearly always women and girls — at home. Ms. Jared, in a comment left on Heart’s blog, linked to this recent story:
More arrests are likely in the rape of an 11-year-old girl by as many as 10 men, most of whom are football players at local community colleges, Fresno police said.
It’s not a coincidence that so many gang rapes are committed by young men in organizations – football, frat houses, the army, etc – which teach the young men that “being a man” is all-important. The sense of entitlement and manhood that convinced the young men in Fresno to rape is the same as the sense of entitlement and manhood that convinced the young men in Iraq to rape; the main difference, I would guess, is that the young men in Iraq had been subjected to a racist regime, devaluing Iraqi lives, which convinced them that it was all right to murder as well.
Please go read Heart’s posts. A lot of the info and links above came from Heart, and also from Feministing, Abyss2Hope, Feminist Law Profs, Footnotes From a Small Village, and Capitalism Bad Tree Pretty.
UPDATE: Ms. Jared, in comments, points me to this post from Riverbend, an Iraqi blogger:
Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it’s not really the latest- it’s just the one that’s being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don’t report rapes here, they avenge them. We’ve been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can’t believe their ‘heroes’ are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?
…Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes…
UPDATE 2: Punk Ass Blog has more on the misreporting of her age.
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Comments on this post are open only to feminists and feminist-friendly people. Cross-posted on Creative Destruction.
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baghdad burning has a really heartbreaking post up regarding the latest atrocities in iraq and how her perspective has changed considerably since the war started. here’s a snippet:
i encourage everyone to read it.
xoxo, jared
Since far too many American soldiers rape other American soldiers, often with no punishment for doing so, nobody should be surprised when some of those American soldiers decide to rape the “enemy” especially when they are immune to prosecution for war crimes. However, some of those who attempted to deny this rape and multiple murder seem to suffer from general rape blindness.
As I understand the song in question, the girl is killed by her family when they shoot at the soldier (they ambushed him, using her as bait).
oops. not that anyone cares, but my previous comment linked to a defunct blog. i’m no longer connected to it and wish to distance myself from it.
that’s what i get for leaving a comment without checking my information.
xoxo, jared
Kai, and that’s really funny, huh, a soldier following a woman he says he’s “in love with” (whom he just met) to her house, walking into her house — a member of occupying troops — and then when her male family members, alarmed, defend their home against invasion, he grabs a little girl and lets her take the bullets instead of himself. A real thigh-slapper.
If a soldier, a member of occupying forces, walked into your house with your daughter, would you pick up a gun?
If the soldier then grabbed your little girl and she took bullets meant for the soldier, would you be your little girl’s murderer?
And would any of this be funny? Something you’d want the soldiers just yukking it up about?
Heart
Amp,
Thanks for this post.
This puzzled me, though:
That’s probably true, but why is it important? Is raping a woman, then murdering her and burning her body to cover up, any less monstrous than doing the same thing to a “girl”?
The language might not provoke the same level of outrage amongst the average newspaper reader: sexual assault against children or adolescents tends to be treated as if it were more of an outrage than sexual assault against adult women. But if it doesn’t provoke the same level of outrage, then that’s a problem with the audience, not a problem with the newspaper.
And this is part of a long military tradition, illustrated also by the pamphlet ‘The Gambler’s Songbook’, which was ‘accidentally’ (according to the US Air Force) on display and for sale at an open day in England in 1987. It was compiled by a group of pilots from the USAF 77th Tactical Fighter Squadron stationed in Oxfordshire at the time. The pilots themselves described the songbook as a ‘collection of over 75 years of tradition.’ (And of course, soldiers from other countries do have similar written traditions.) Without posting any of the graphic lyrics, suffice to say the songbook contains multiple examples of violent and extreme racism and misogyny, often equating women and sex with rotting body parts and death. It’s all part of the old, familiar homosocial theme (bro’s before ho’s) in which men use ‘othered’ and dehumanised women as currency between themselves (in both mild and extreme ways) and out of which, as Amp said, also arises the domestic and ‘peacetime’ pack rape phenomenon which no woman escapes an awareness of. This is just calling it as it is, not being ‘shocked’ by the very obvious cultural origins of these attitudes and acts, and that’s the very least of what’s required to begin reducing the violence.
Heart’s posts were great. The con bloggers will defend anything to show they’re “pro military”
What amazes me about the con blog take on this is the assertion that this event is a “few bad apples” or the work of “a nutcase” or someother way of saying this is an anomoly. It flies in the face of ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY. This shit happens in war. It always always does. Its happening now more than we hear about. If you are for war, you are for the gang rape and torture of 14 year old girls and the murder of entire families, because that is what war is. I think its dishonest, or at least amazingly naive, for the con bloggers to act so surprised.
“But if it doesn’t provoke the same level of outrage, then that’s a problem with the audience, not a problem with the newspaper. ”
It’s definitely a problem with the audience, but it is also a problem with the newspaper. There is a pattern to the way the newspapers use woman/girl boy/man to manipulate their audiences’ level of outrage. The use of “woman” by the newspaper is not coincidental or innocent, it’s deliberate.
and that’s really funny, huh, a soldier following a woman he says he’s “in love with” (whom he just met) to her house, walking into her house — a member of occupying troops — and then when her male family members, alarmed, defend their home against invasion, he grabs a little girl and lets her take the bullets instead of himself. A real thigh-slapper.
If a soldier, a member of occupying forces, walked into your house with your daughter, would you pick up a gun?
(1) I was clarifying, not expressing my opinion. Interesting that you think the only reason someone would offer you additional facts is if they disagree with you.
(2) Yeah, I think it’s funny. Accepting the premise of the song (which I think is the only fair way to interpret it in this instance), the family used the girl as a lure to ambush soldiers, and it’s ironic that when they tried to shoot him, they shot one of their own. That’s funny, and points out the faulty planning as well as the low value of women in that culture (they didn’t do anything to protect her, nor did having her in front of the soldier stop them from shooting).
(3) If an occupying soldier walked into my house with my hypothetical daughter, I’d ask questions first. Shooting first assumes evil intent, and an occupying force is not something I’d mess with absent evidence that I needed to defend myself–after all, they will certainly shoot if they feel threatened even without evidence, so starting a fire fight won’t end well for me. On the other hand, my daughter wouldn’t be out luring soldiers home. As a responsible adult I’d be out there getting food or water or medical help for my family rather than sending my kids to do it. Nor would my kids be playing outside unsupervised in occupied country.
Kai wrote:
I’m a bit confused as to why you bring this up. It sounds like you’re correcting something I wrote in my post, but in my post here’s what I said:
I then quoted the lyrics of the song in which the narrator describes using the younger sister as a shield and the sister getting shot. How did what you wrote add any information to, or contradict in any way, how I described the song in my post?
In the song’s worldview, the marine is entirely blameless, and the Iraqis he shoots are entirely evil. But the song is fiction, and the values it encourages – such as seeing all Iraqis as evil insurgents, and making killing Iraqi insurgents a jolly fun thing – are extremely compatible with human rights violations.
the values it encourages – such as seeing all Iraqis as evil insurgents, and making killing Iraqi insurgents a jolly fun thing
As a side note, the song also condones, even encourages, the idea that using children as human shields is a good thing. Last time I checked, using young children–who are not insurgents or terrorists no matter what their families’ views or actions–as human shields was not considered good form in the US. But clearly I haven’t been paying close enough attention to the culture.
Back up a step here, please and think about this:
Why are they called “insurgents”? They are Iraqis, protecting their homeland against an occupying Army. We are an occupying force, people. Forget “the war on terror.” There is no war, the mission was accomplished three years ago. Now it’s us–The US– occupying a country, killing and oppressing their people, raping their women and children and stealing their oil. This is what occupying Armies do.
Put the shoe on the other foot–Imagine if you will that another nation decided that Bush was too dangerous to be allowed to run the US; he has massive WMD’s and isn’t afraid to use them, etc. Another nation comes in forcefully, streaming accross the Canadian border, imprisons Bush, dismantles the military and sends the government officials packing. Then they establish another government in its place, one that we “voted” on, and meanwhile they are taking all our oil, crops, etc. and selling them to Europe, taking the money as payment for “liberating us from Bush.” Their army stays here, an occupying force, until we can get our lawless contingent back in order after all this chaos. They refuse to leave and refuse to set a timetable for leaving.
Now. What do you call the true blue Americans who fight these oppressive monsters? Insurgents? The Second Founding Fathers? True Patriots?
>>Yeah, I think it’s funny.
That’s your choice. Glad you find murder, ambush and the slaughter of innocent children funny.
Have a lovely day.
Why are they called “insurgents” They are Iraqis, protecting their homeland against an occupying Army
They are called insurgents because they are in arms against a legitimate elected government.
“they are in arms against a legitimate elected government.”
Oh come one, you’re not all seriously going to let him get away with that one, are you?
Well, yeah, I’ll object to Robert’s characterization. Especially since, as I recall, an insurgent is, to quote the websteronlinethingy, “ person who revolts against civil authority or an established government.” The government need not be legitimate for the opposition to be labeled “insurgents.” Now we can argue about whether or not the Iraqi government is legitimately elected or legitimate at all. Yay!
Not quite following you, Jake. You appear to be saying that my characterization is exactly accurate.
from wikipedia:
I don’t think that you can argue, whether you consider the government of Iraq to be legitimately elected or not (I’d say it is), that it is not “established.” Indeed, the American occupation is also an established political authority (legitimate or not). Legitimately elected governments aren’t part of the definition of insurgency, just established.
For that matter, I can’t see complaining about the term insurgents. It is about as neutral a term for an irregular military force as I can think of.
Anyway, at this point there is more of a civil war than an insurgency. Paramilitaries or militiamen might be better terms at this point.
Robert,
I think Jake objects to your characterization (that the government of Iraq is legitimately elected) but not to the term insurgents, since legitimacy is not a criteria for insurgency. Your characterization is irrelevant to the question, whether it is objectionable or not.
Thanks for the additional info, Charles. I’m leery of using “insurgent” for fighters against unelected states but I guess I don’t really have a rational basis for that; as you note, it’s a neutral term.
They’re called insurgents because they’re killing civilians of their own country. Period, full stop. The fact is, the country is in full civil war stage, and we’re in danger of killing as many civilians as Hussein did.
There’s a lot more to this case than meets the eye. The two soldiers who were tortured and killed recently were almost certainly done so in retaliation. The military made no effort till recently to investigate this case, and that’s only because someone confessed in grief counseling for the dead soldiers.
I’d also liked to point out that this is infantry. Please don’t judge the whole military by these assholes. I served with an incredible bunch of guys, which nevertheless included some huge assholes. What was so disturbing was that their assholishness was not even noted by higher.
I frankly think they should turn these guys over to the Iraqis. They were drunk, in civvies, used their weapons in commissoin of a crime. Typing the sperm and IDing the bullets ought to be effortless. Problem is, for months, the other guys concealed that this had happened. I’m sure it was talked about in the village, though—–you think this is going to go unnoticed? They planned this for days. They harassed this girl for days. She had a birthday coming up. She couldn’t even look forward to that.
I agree that the rape of a woman is heinous, but also think the rape of a child is more heinous. In both cases the person is horribly violated, but I believe that a woman has more experience and emotional maturity to deal with her rape — and I don’t mean sexual experience. There’s an emotional difference between a 14 year-old and a 25 year-old that will provide the 25 year-old with greater context and more resources to process and survive what happened to her, unless of course, the rapists murder her, her parents and family.
Yes, the rape of any woman should be a cause for outrage. It was an outrage when people believed she was 25. It simply is more outrageous knowing she was 14. Raping a child is more outrageous. If this were not so, then the media would not make such a sustained effort to obscure that fact.
Typing the sperm and IDing the bullets ought to be effortless.
ginmar, the problem is that ‘Abir Hamzah’s body was taken to an American hospital within a few hours of her rape and murder. Those who wrote about this first, including Iraqis, said they could think of only one reason for that: to remove any evidence of the rapes (because it was obvious she had been brutally raped; according to the neighbor who found her, she was still bleeding heavily from her vagina a full half hour after she’d been murdered, when he went in and found her body). AFTER that, even though she’d now been dead for hours, she was taken to an Iraqi hospital. Then she was buried. Now the U.S. wants to exhume her. (And god, how all this shit about how they want to be culturally sensitive sends me right around the bend. It would be hysterically funny if it wasn’t hysterically horrifying.)
As to your post, Kai, it, too, is horrifying.
Heart
“Insurgency” may be a neutral term but in the face of great outrage the very neutrality of a term is hypocritical. Nay, it is colluding. In the example of a foreign power occupying the United States, how would we Americans feel to read, let us say in Le Monde or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, such a report:
Insurgents in De Moines, San Antonio and Jacksonville have killed soldiers and peacekeeping forces in retaliation for the gang rape and murder of Sandra Stevenson, age 14, in Cinncinnati, Ohio. The murder of Ms. Stevenson and her family, including her five-year-old sister, Lesley, is under investigation.
The newly elected President, Hilary Clinton, expresses her concern. “This insurgency is plunging the country into chaos and civil war. We will be working closely with Brussels to ensure the restoration of order. ”
Wouldn’t we all find this feigned neutrality from the media of an occupying nation infuriatingl? Does anyone believe that a wartime election masterminded by the occupying government can be valid or represent the will of the people?
Of course we have to look at the facts and take in as many perspectives as we can, but this one is pretty much clear cut. Where’s our famed good ol’ common sense?
The one remaining explanation for continued support of the war would be that we do, not so very secretly, wish to occupy Iraq. In which case this would indeed be a holy war, as holy as the American war of Independence. And we then deserve the fate of any illegitimate invader. Is that who we are as a nation? Is this the real American Dream?
I think Kai’s finding it funny makes absolute sense. It is a perfectly normal reaction in this scheme of things. The victor in war – always men – have no hesitation to assert his supremacy. And that has always been expressed through the rape of women and the murder of civilians, especially the young and the old. These acts, when performed in great numbers and on blatant display, can serve to cower the conquered into submission and consolidate the occupation.
Of course, apart from utility, rape and civilian murder is the carnival of war – think of it as Happy Hour. It’s 4:45, you’ve been fighting your enemy the whole week and TGIF. Time to forget the horror of losing control and getting killed by someone bigger and stronger than you are. You must restore your sense of order. Time to go out and sport with your AK-47 and your other big thick tool. Time to kill some women and children and elderly.
Pulling a little girl in front of you as a human shield, and finding hilarity in it, is only one of the moves from this arsenal of strategy. You find it funny, and you may wish to publicize it, because in this scenario the conquered is both weak and stupid, with the latter ensuring the former. You laugh because you are so much more powerful than they are, and all their fighting back is child’s play. But deeper down inside the laughter is triggered by anger: how dare these people fight me and resist me? Don’t they know that I am the strong and that their trying to turn the table on me would mess up everything for me? Probe deeper yet and you will find fear. And cowardice. Cowardice that is at the same time the hatred of those who would not allow us to do to them whatever we want.
We have become nazis, people. Let the party begin!
As someone said upstairs, there is nothing unusual about this. Americans did not invent war; it has always been like this. What we have perfected is a shameful ignorance. Big tracts of an educated population insisting in a degrading naivete that this is a just war. That we are saving the Iraqis from themselves. We are, in our love of SUVs and unjustifiable levels of consumption, deliberately turning our soldiers over to living hell. While collectively as the victor they embody our sins, in the grand scheme of things they are as unfortunate as the Iraqis we are commissioning them to kill, rape and maim. We are watching our soul as a nation blacken minute by minute, day by day.
In the example of a foreign power occupying the United States, how would we Americans feel…
It would depend on the identity of the conquerors, and the reason for the conquest, obviously.
If we were a republic that had been taken over by (say) an oddball offshoot of a losing WWII ideology, and had a savage totalitarian “government”, and were subsequently liberated by (say) Britain – with bloodshed and horrible incidents, but liberated from tyranny nonetheless – and had a new Congress that was empowered to write constitutions, and were held by an occupying military force whom (however flawed and human) nonetheless managed to operate with the maximum attainable level of benevolence, and we’d had a couple of elections and things seemed to be sorting out at least kind of democratically – and we had things like gun rights and press rights and business rights and education rights – the kinds of things that let us define our own destiny – I imagine most of us would be managing to resist the temptation to pick up a gun and start exporting British soldiers one at a time.
Of course, that would be a highly hypothetical situation. No same person could believe such a scenario.
Gee, you sure seem to be viewing your hypothetical situation through very rosy hypothetical lenses.
Indeed.
Frankly, the occupation force would have to be pretty fucking bad before I would consider people who committed mass murder of anyone who colluded with the occupation by trying to get a job with the new government as anything other than monsterous murdering fuckwits. Likewise, when my glorious liberators turned on each other and began murdering my neighbors purely to support their grands dreams that people like me should only live over there, and not over here, and vice versa with people like you, I think I’d start struggling to come up with terms even worse than that. Not that I’d have anything other than a river of abuse for the morons and monsters who planned and carried out the invasion and occupation and used nothing but hope and happy talk to prepare against the insurgency.
And Jesus fucking Christ, are there actually people on this thread trying to do a “the insurgents are the liberators of their occupied land” argument? A fucking pox on every asshole out shooting and bombing people in the ruins of Iraq, and a fucking pox on anyone who makes excuses or glorifies a single fucking one of them.
I hate cheerleading posts, and don’t like seeing them on “Alas.”
That said: Amen, Charles, Amen!
I am so relieved that some of my fellow Americans would gladly subject themselve to benevolent foreign rule. Unfortunately, the democracy bestowed by an occupying power wears rather thin as soon as it is painted on:
and had a new Congress that was empowered to write constitutions, and were held by an occupying military force whom (however flawed and human) nonetheless managed to operate with the maximum attainable level of benevolence, and we’d had a couple of elections and things seemed to be sorting out at least kind of democratically – and we had things like gun rights and press rights and business rights and education rights
Have you ever heard or seen a sovereign state which can guarantee its people any of the rights you so blithely talk about, when there is an occupying force? This is so basic it’s laughable. How can the violation of any of these rights be punished? Where are the checks and balances on American power?
Please do not bring up WWII, Germany and Japan. They were aggressors and inflicted untold misery. The invasion of Kuwait is not at all on the same scale, and nobody asked us into the Middle East.
Do you have trust in the maximum attainable benevolence of your Congressman, or your local policeman, or your father, that you would give them unchallenged authority over you? Well, the Iraqis want and deserve the same.
What is the difference between your assumption and that of the former Soviet Union? They, too, said they were a benevolent empire. The only thing that distinguished us from them was that we had institutions that assumed rulers and those in power to be capable of great evil unless they are constantly checked and ruled by law and force held in reserve. Now suddenly that principle is no longer valid the moment it crosses our border? What makes this nation benevolent to those within another? To what is due this superhuman incorruptibility by power? We have shown, by invading Iraq despite UN resolutions, that we are not bound by international law as our army is domestically by our own laws. What gives?
What the insurgents are doing to their own people is terrible too, but we are to blame for at least some of that. By being there we automatically create collaborators and divisions. We are sowing the seed of destruction, and it does not make us look good to be inveighing against the Iraqis when we are not yet done with them ourselves. At least some of these are motivated by patriotic impulses – if your cousin is Sandra Sanderson, wouldn’t you want to go out and make sure the same thing does not happen to your own five-year-old sister? And does that make you an asshole?
Where does your anger come from? Are Americans being attacked and killed in our own backyard? No. They are killing American soldiers because we are in their backyard. Fuck, we are in their bedrooms. That’s what you are really angry about, isn’t it? But what the fuck gives you the right to be angry about that when we were the aggressor?!? Unprovoked!
————
No same person could believe such a scenario.
I hope and assume you mean “sane,” because we need more of that. Of course the song is a fantasy and a caricature. But stranger things have already happened – this liberator turning rapist and killer, for example, and even more absurdly, people believing that he is there only to liberate in the first place. You must excuse the rest of us whose sense of humor is fading fast.
I hate cheerleading posts, and don’t like seeing them on “Alas.”
I was not cheerleading the insurgents, but I understand the motivation of some of them. And those who have the rosiest picture of the occupation have as their underlying impulse a blind patriotism which holds that America can do no wrong, that we are intrinsically good. This in turn comes from denigrating people from other countries, who implicitly do not share our absolute moral superiority – how can we be so good if others are not at least a bit if not a lot worse? That blind patriotism can at least be turned to good use, I hoped, by showing that at least some Iraqis are driven by the same noble patriotism.
We create the moral ambiguity with which they must contend. One of the reasons China turned into a dictatorship after 1949 was that the communist party used the extensive collaboration which took place under the Japanese invasion to justify the stomping out of dissent. And people responded to that – no one wanted a repeat of the semi-colonization by the West or Japanese brutality. So they agreed that some sacrifice must be made in their freedom to root this out. The Japanese were every bit as benevolent as we have ever been, Vietnam, Philippines, you name it: They wanted to have one unified Asia in order to deter Western aggression, which was a threat real enough. Why should they be suspect and not us?
And gun rights! That is beautiful. You love your freedom so much, sir, you’d want your own gun under the pillow so you can hold on to it better, don’t you? But then suddenly if the insurgents want to do that they are scum of the earth.
Kai:
I read several versions of the lyrics and watched a video of this song being performed and could find no evidence of this assertion. For me the key to evaluating the song is the basic premise that the Iraqis described in the song speak no English and the soldier speaks no Arabic. This soldier was captured in a single glance across a Burger King.
It was called love, but it sounds like obsession to me. She lured him by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Hearrt, the thing about the bullets is this: the M-16 round cannot be confused with anything else. We’re the only ones firing those. This case is a slam dunk.
The insurgents in Iraq are what happen when you unleash conservatives with guns on a population they’ve long yearned to dominate. They’re just like Fred Phelps except more numerous and with guns.
Youze are a buncha libril pussys!!! Soders risk theyre lives to they cin spred dimocracy wheddter them ragheds like it or not coz we ain/t da saveggez they are. We’r numbah one. Cock is king, American cock that is.
[Geez, how’d that slip through the filters? Anyhow: Banned. –Amp]
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This is bullshit. If any of you have actually been in the military feel free to share your conflicting experiences, but it seems like most of you are guessing what the military is actually like based on hearsay and anti military sources(they are shock alert biased against the military). I guess that is excusable if you haven’t been in or known someone who has its all you have to go on.
When I was in the Air Force(I am now a civilian) there was no pro rape environment and no sense of male entitlement or manhood. I was actually a little dissapointed at first, because I was expecting an ultra macho environment, but its like any government job that you might have at the post office or the dmv except a lot more yelling and it is generally agreed that there is more on the line if you mess up and also you can’t go home and get away from it at night your in it all the time.
I sat through hours of rape sensitivity and sexual harassment and conduct classes. There were at least 5 separate classes on different days from different instructors(that ranged between 3-4 hours each). There was so much of it it rivaled the first aid training in length. I am not complaining some of the stuff was important and some of it was pretty eye opening. Each class was different.
There were classes taught jointly with people working through exercises together to discuss what did and did not constitute sexual harassment.
One class had the girls and guys separated(the most graphic class). I can’t say what they learned in theirs(probably defensive strategies to fight off rapists but I have no idea). In ours we talked about what constituted rape. What to do if placed in a situation where you expect a girl might be endanger of being raped.
Naturally after hours of hearing horrible things rapists had done to women everybody in the room was pretty gloomy.
Then the instructor tried to cheer us up.
The quote that we learned that sticks in my mind is “most rapists are guys, but most guys aren’t rapists.”
That is true, and it rings perfectly true when I am hearing horrible things like
“It is a perfectly normal reaction in this scheme of things. The victor in war – always men – have no hesitation to assert his supremacy. And that has always been expressed through the rape of women and the murder of civilians, especially the young and the old. These acts, when performed in great numbers and on blatant display, can serve to cower the conquered into submission and consolidate the occupation.”
Yes there is a historical precedent for that in WWII Japan’s invasion of mainland China and WWII Russia’s rape of Berlin, but I can never recall a single war or battle in American history where the American forces were given carte blanche to rape everyone. Maybe you can I cannot. If you can it’s probably pre world war I example. The military has modernized with the rest of the country and it isn’t a pack of barely contained barbarians on a leash.
No American soldier has ever used civilians as a human shield regardless of what perverse songs the troops have taken to humming. I have actually read witness accounts of an army medic using himself as a human shield to shield a wounded taliban fighter who moments ago had been shooting at him.
Another thing is your misunderstanding the song. It’s a tradition in wierd (dark humor or perverse)way to sing very morbid and gory songs when on a match and platoons will often attempt to outdo each other in audacity. I have heard men and women(yes there are women in the military too and sometimes we being not total barbarians actually let them be in charge double shocker) gleefully sing a song about a paratrooper whose chute doesn’t open and after slitting his own throat and making a huge mess on the landing strip below has to be scraped off the concrete by Airman who are glad to finally have something to do to cut the boredom.
Yes that sounds very creepy, but its the same principle that causes some people to laugh albeit nervously when watching extreme scenes of torture or dismemberment like Saw 2. Its a wierd “if I laugh about it isn’t real or can’t happen” type of thing.
Then we have this
“Since far too many American soldiers rape other American soldiers, often with no punishment for doing so, nobody should be surprised when some of those American soldiers decide to rape the “enemy” especially when they are immune to prosecution for war crimes. However, some of those who attempted to deny this rape and multiple murder seem to suffer from general rape blindness.”
First American soldiers are not immune to punishment for warcrimes that just isn’t true. There are soldiers who are in military prison right now for things they did in Iraq or Afghanistan. I am not gonna say that every American soldier who commits a crime in the theater gets punished and I am sure some get swept under the rug that is just the way things are. Americans are always concerned for other Americans first afterall.
The thing about raping other American soldiers and not getting in trouble for it seems like you’ve been watching too much The General’s Daughter(that movie was fucked up). First there are plenty of women in the military they wouldn’t continue to join up if they were in constant danger of getting raped. Yes some american soldiers have raped other american soldiers, but they have done serious time for it. These are also the reason the military is so adamant in its no tolerance policy for rape and sexual assault. Some rapes in the military go unreported and thus unpunished, but that is a problem all of society needs to work on not just the military.
Finally we come to the situation at hand. We have 5 soldiers accused of raping a 14 year old girl killing her entire family and then trying to dispose of the bodies.
If it is all found out to be true(I hate to put the burden of proof on the accuser but it is just the way the legal system works) then it’s an unspeakable crime. It will most likely go down in military cases as the worst abuse of the uniform and force in the recent military history of the United States.
I know your argument is based around the fact that there is some huge pro male pro rape culture inside the military, but it simply doesn’t exist. I kind of went in expecting one and if it did exist I would tell you, but at the end of the day we have 5 horrible people out of a group of over 600,000. I really don’t think it is fair to say the actions of 5 represent or diminish the service of the 600,000, but that is how the world works and that is how the military is viewing this situation. The military will be recovering from this for a long time and it will probably lead to a rework of the current rape training. The insurgents will be using it as a means to claim retaliation strikes and endanger more people iraqis and american soldiers.
In all this the argument that baffles me the most is…
“If you are for war, you are for the gang rape and torture of 14 year old girls and the murder of entire families, because that is what war is.”
Wtf I am sorry, but how does the argument pro war equals pro gang rape make any sort of logical sense at all.
I hate to play the victim here, but I am getting a vague sense of the military is all men who go to war in order to rape and kill as many Iraqi people as possible. On top of that some posters are claiming “We raped the country ” so the women were the next logical target. I don’t even know how to respond to “we raped the country” since that is hopefully a metaphor or artistic license.
Anyway I am pretty much done talking and I hope that I cleared up some misconceptions about what the military is actually like and not what people say it is like. I guess you can argue that I am biased because I am part of it, but I tend to see people who weren’t in or at least around it as unqualified or too ignorant of it to make proper judgements about it. Remember the military is not the same thing as hollywood’s military.
Two final things
1. I am a little biased because I am a Republican, but the Democratic party had a vested interest in making sure the war was unpopular during the 2004 and 2008 elections. Think about it why after they reclaimed the white house did suddenly the war cease to be a big deal and Barrack Obama has a business as usual type deal going on in Afghanistan. There were some genuine fuck ups during the Iraq war, and the Democrats pouncing on them is just a political reality I can’t fault them for, but all wars have genuine fuck ups its inevitable.
For the record Barrack Obama has been pretty good at commanding the war and he hasn’t bowed to pressure to pull out like people said he would instead opting to finish up first.
Finally I found this the other day. Only 20 percent of soldiers fire their guns at the enemy at all. Yes in combat 80% don’t actually want to kill anybody. Of those 20% some admit to intentionally missing.
It’s easy to think of the american troops reenacting modern warfare two in Iraq and Afghanistan, but at the end of the day they are normal people who don’t want to kill people anymore than you or I do. Even with all the propaganda and hatred for muslims only 20% are even willing to try and kill them. I think that is a better argument for all people being good at heart than anything else I have heard.
Anyway I am sorry to necro this 6 year old thread, but I really didn’t want to leave it on that note, and I think some of you may have changed your views with the change of commander in chief its easy to get over zealous when the other side is in charge.