[bluey]

[A bit old I know - but still relevant]

Rape, Murder, and the American GI

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Rape, Murder, and the American GI


Her birthday is August 19, her death day March 12.

We cannot let this crime, too, pass into oblivion.

When news surfaced that GIs allegedly stalked, terrorized, gang-raped, and killed an Iraqi woman, the U.S. tried minimizing this latest atrocity by our troops -- claiming the victim was age 25 or even 50, implying a rape-murder is less horrific if the victim is an older woman. Now, Article 32 hearings -- the military equivalent of a grand jury -- have ended at Camp Liberty, a U.S. base in Iraq (U.S. troops are exempt from Iraqi prosecution). In September, a general will rule whether the accused should be court-martialed. The defense already pleads post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): in four months preceding the crime, 17 of the accused GIs' battalion were killed; their company, Bravo, suffered eight combat deaths.

But as the U.S. spun the victim's identity, investigators knew her name: Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi.

Abeer means "fragrance of flowers." She was 14 years old.

The soldiers noticed her at a checkpoint. They stalked her after one or more of them expressed his intention to rape her. On March 12, after playing cards while slugging whisky mixed with a high-energy drink and practicing their golf swings, they changed into black civvies and burst into Abeer's home in Mahmoudiya, a town 50 miles south of Baghdad. They killed her mother Fikhriya, father Qassim, and five-year-old sister Hadeel with bullets to the forehead, and "took turns" raping Abeer. Finally, they murdered her, drenched the bodies with kerosene, and lit them on fire to destroy the evidence. Then the GIs grilled chicken wings.

These details are from a sworn statement by Spc. James P. Barker, one of the accused along with Sgt. Paul Cortez, Pfc. Jesse Spielman, and Pfc. Bryan Howard; a fifth, Sgt. Anthony Yribe, is charged with failing to report the attack but not with having participated.

Then there's former Pfc. Steven Green. Discharged in May for a "personality disorder," Green was arrested in North Carolina, pled not guilty in federal court, and is being held without bond. He's the convenient scapegoat whose squad leader testified how often Green said he hated all Iraqis and wanted to kill them. Other soldiers said Green threw a puppy off a roof, then set it on fire. The company commander noted Green had "serious anger issues."

Who is this "bad apple"? A good ole boy from Midland, Texas.

"If you want to understand me, you need to understand Midland," says President Bush. Steven Green understands Midland -- his home until his parents divorced and his mother remarried when Green was eight, already in trouble in school. A high-school dropout, Green returned to Midland to get his GED in 2003. Then, in 2005, he enlisted. He immersed himself in a chapel baptismal pool at Fort Benning, Georgia -- getting "born again" while being trained how to kill legally and die heroically. He was 19, with three convictions: fighting, and alcohol and drug possession.

Once, the Army would have rejected him. But he enlisted when, desperate for fresh recruits, the Army started increasing, by nearly half, the rate at which it grants what it terms "moral waivers" to potential recruits. According to the Pentagon, waivers in 2001 totaled 7,640, increasing to 11,018 in 2005. "Moral waivers" permit recruits with criminal records, emotional problems, and weak educational backgrounds to be taught how to use submachine guns and rocket launchers. Afterward, if they survive, they'll be called heroes -- and released back into society. (One ex-soldier praising the military for having "properly trained and hardened me" was Timothy McVeigh).

The U.S. military is now a mercenary force. In addition to hired militias and "independent contractors," we do have a draft: a poverty draft. That's why the Army is so disproportionately comprised of people of color, seeking education, health care, housing.

But the military inflicts other perks: teenage males, hormones surging, are taught to confuse their bodies with weapons, and relish that.

ne notorious training song (with lewd gestures) goes: "This is my rifle, this is my gun; one is for killing, one is for fun." The U.S. Air Force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. Military manuals are replete with such blatant phrases as "erector launchers," "thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness."

"Soft targets"? Civilians. Her name means "fragrance of flowers."

Feminist scholars have been exposing these phallocentric military connections for decades. When I wrote The Demon Lover: The Roots of Terrorism (updated edition 2001, Washington Square Press), I presented far more evidence than space here permits on how the terrorist mystique and the hero legend both spring from the same root: the patriarchal pursuit of manhood. How can rape not be central to the propaganda that violence is erotic -- a pervasive message affecting everything from U.S. foreign policy (afflicted with premature ejaculation) to "camouflage chic," and glamorized gangtsa styles?

This definition of manhood is toxic to men and lethal to women.

But atrocity fatigue has set in. Wasn't rape a staple of war long before The Iliad? Weren't 100,000 women and girls raped and killed in brothel-death-camps in the former Yugoslavia? Didn't warring Somali clans in the 1990s, sometimes joined by UN Peacekeeping troops, rape "each other's women"? Weren't the five surviving Somali women then stoned to death by Islamists for "adultery"? And weren't the earliest reports from another small, troubled country -- of rape attacks on villages by gangs called Interahamwe ("Our Heroic Boys") -- ignored? It was merely about women, and hardly anyone had heard of the place: Rwanda.

Yet the Pentagon is shocked. "Not our nice American GIs? Must be a few bad apples." Have we already forgotten Abu Ghraib? The photos of sexually tortured men leaked, but photos of abased and abused women prisoners are still classified, for fear of greater world outrage. Have we forgotten two U.S. marines and a sailor kidnapping a 12-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995, battering, raping, and abandoning her naked in a deserted area? She somehow survived and reported them, though her PTSD doubtless haunts still. So many military rapes have occurred in Okinawa, Korea, and the Philippines that Asian feminists organized entire movements in protest. Incidents keep occurring around U.S. ports and bases, including the hundreds of reported rapes of U.S. women soldiers by their fellow GIs (plus the joint epidemic of rape and evangelicalism at the U.S. Air Force Academy).

In 1998, a landmark UN decision recognized rape as a war crime -- though this raises the question: If rape in war is a crime against humanity, then what is it in peacetime?The International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia issued indictments and convictions on sexual-violence grounds.

Sometimes, a few nice American guys are found guilty -- as Green and his buddies might be. Then all returns to "normal." They're sacrificed to save the ranks of those who train them to do what they did, and to save the careers of politicians who sermonize obscenely about "moral values" while issuing moral waivers.

But this crime we cannot let pass into oblivion. She was 14 years old and her name was Abeer.

It means "fragrance of flowers."

[Arabesque]

Ah! You're awesome, thanks for sharing this.

You're thousands of miles away, but you're participating in all the vigils around the world with your heart. Masha'Allah, I really admire you. May Allah reward your sincerity and efforts. You're more interested than many people who live a few blocks away from these vigils!

You inspire me.

[YOUSUFofSD]

salaam,

wow its just so hard to read these things, but we have too. To understand that this is the real world that we live in. may allah grant them jannah and may allah protect the innocent.

salaam,
yousuf

[Timbit]

Astaghfirullah.
And yet, people still hate feminists and advocate war.

[roberto]

[quote=bluey;6486][font="Trebuchet MS"][A bit old I know - but still relevant]

Rape, Murder, and the American GI

AlterNet: War on Iraq: Rape, Murder, and the American GI


Murder and rape are terrible crimes regrettably they occur world wide and in a wide range of circumstance and obviously the hardening and brutalisation that occurs in war is one of them.

However this article goes beyond the justifiable lament and condemnation it seeks to promote a picture of the West military and political systems and people as uncaring , unfeeling and brutal savages and of course this is the agenda of the poster

[kenneth]

apologiosts for crimes against humanity should be banned.

[Musashi]

Assalamu 'alaikum wa rahmatulLahi wa barakatuh

That was /horrible./

A very disturbing read, but enlightening. Thank you.

[IbnMardhiyah]

Originally Posted by roberto

However this article goes beyond the justifiable lament and condemnation it seeks to promote a picture of the West military and political systems and people as uncaring , unfeeling and brutal savages and of course this is the agenda of the poster

Uh, newsflash roboto ... they are uncaring, unfeeling, brutal savages. How else do you explain the fact that they refer to the thousands of innocents they kill as "collateral damage" and how else do you explain their absolute disregard for half-a-million dead Iraqi children?

[ModerateGuy]

Originally Posted by IbnMardhiyah

Uh, newsflash roboto ... they are uncaring, unfeeling, brutal savages. How else do you explain the fact that they refer to the thousands of innocents they kill as "collateral damage" and how else do you explain their absolute disregard for half-a-million dead Iraqi children?

How silly. Of the hundreds of thousands of men and women and the military...to generalize all of them as monsters is akin to calling all Muslims terrorists. I'm sure I could dig up a few articles on Islamic atrocities if that would help.

Oh my goodness..."thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness.""Thrust" is a physics term that has been around for a while ladies and gentlemen. And "hardness" refers to constructs that are structurally durable enough to withstand a nuclear attach. I suppose all physicists and engineers are perverts.

Heck, I refer to plugin penetration when discussing the percentage of online users who have the Adobe Flash Player. Guess I'm not a multimedia developer.....I'm a walking sex abuse time bomb!!!

Give me a break....we hear what we want to hear....

Clearly this article draws from the far left of the political spectrum. While I've no love for Bush and his conservative right-wing followers...this source is hardly an example of unbiased journalism.

Prosecute and punish those responsible for this horrible crime, and punish them well. And punish any superiors in the chain of command who tried to cover it up.

But spare me the hypocritical generalizations. This article carries little weight toward any rational argument...and is merely designed to stoke and inflame emotions.

Next please....

[bluey]

Originally Posted by ModerateGuy

How silly. Of the hundreds of thousands of men and women and the military...to generalize all of them as monsters is akin to calling all Muslims terrorists. I'm sure I could dig up a few articles on Islamic atrocities if that would help.

Oh my goodness..."thrust ratios," "rigid deep earth-penetration," "potent nuclear hardness.""Thrust" is a physics term that has been around for a while ladies and gentlemen. And "hardness" refers to constructs that are structurally durable enough to withstand a nuclear attach. I suppose all physicists and engineers are perverts.

Heck, I refer to plugin penetration when discussing the percentage of online users who have the Adobe Flash Player. Guess I'm not a multimedia developer.....I'm a walking sex abuse time bomb!!!

Give me a break....we hear what we want to hear....

Clearly this article draws from the far left of the political spectrum. While I've no love for Bush and his conservative right-wing followers...this source is hardly an example of unbiased journalism.

Prosecute and punish those responsible for this horrible crime, and punish them well. And punish any superiors in the chain of command who tried to cover it up.

But spare me the hypocritical generalizations. This article carries little weight toward any rational argument...and is merely designed to stoke and inflame emotions.

Next please....

Are you trying to say that the U.S Military is innocent of what the article suggests?

I think you forgot to read this:

"The U.S. Air Force admits showing films of violent pornography to pilots before they fly bombing raids. "

[IbnMardhiyah]

Originally Posted by ModerateGuy

How silly. Of the hundreds of thousands of men and women and the military...to generalize all of them as monsters is akin to calling all Muslims terrorists. I'm sure I could dig up a few articles on Islamic atrocities if that would help.

The hundreds of thousands of men and women in the US military are not independents, they're just mere and very willing cogs in the machine. If you've been around as long as I have [which you clearly have not] then you would know that at all levels of the US military, there are two things:

1) A constant and pervasive lack of concern for innocents killed either deliberately or mistakenly. Starting from WW2 and onwards, its been documented beyond denial, to the point where terms like "collateral damage" are now standard.

2) The US military, in its training methods, routinely dehumanizes the enemy society by use of vulgar or sexual slang, and racist slurs to refer to the same. This is done to remove any inhibitions of killing the "enemy" who are human just as they are. Instead, their inhibitions are rebuilt from the ground up to simply follow their superiors' orders.

Thanks for trying anyways, and have a nice day.

[ModerateGuy]

Originally Posted by IbnMardhiyah

The hundreds of thousands of men and women in the US military are not independents, they're just mere and very willing cogs in the machine. If you've been around as long as I have [which you clearly have not] then you would know that at all levels of the US military, there are two things:

1) A constant and pervasive lack of concern for innocents killed either deliberately or mistakenly. Starting from WW2 and onwards, its been documented beyond denial, to the point where terms like "collateral damage" are now standard.

2) The US military, in its training methods, routinely dehumanizes the enemy society by use of vulgar or sexual slang, and racist slurs to refer to the same. This is done to remove any inhibitions of killing the "enemy" who are human just as they are. Instead, their inhibitions are rebuilt from the ground up to simply follow their superiors' orders.

Thanks for trying anyways, and have a nice day.

Actually, I've been around longer than you...but that's besides the point.

Every military in the world has been guilty of collateral damage. If the US is any worse it's because of the size and extent to which it's military is involved abroad (an issue that admittedly needs to change. But I would argue that any military, given the same circumstances, would pound for pound be equally as culpable.

You make a lot of statements about the US military and it's training methodology. Are you a former governmental official or analyst in the field? What is your profession?

[IbnMardhiyah]

Originally Posted by ModerateGuy

Every military in the world has been guilty of collateral damage. If the US is any worse it's because of the size and extent to which it's military is involved abroad (an issue that admittedly needs to change. But I would argue that any military, given the same circumstances, would pound for pound be equally as culpable.

No, they wouldn't. The reason why they wouldn't be is because the US operates on a different plane of ethics and morals than many other military entities, and this is documented in both public and private across multiple administrations.

You make a lot of statements about the US military and it's training methodology. Are you a former governmental official or analyst in the field?

Analyst in the field.

And "a lot of statements" is just hyperbole on your part. Cool your jets, ModerateGuy

[ModerateGuy]

Originally Posted by IbnMardhiyah

No, they wouldn't. The reason why they wouldn't be is because the US operates on a different plane of ethics and morals than many other military entities, and this is documented in both public and private across multiple administrations.

Analyst in the field.

And "a lot of statements" is just hyperbole on your part. Cool your jets, ModerateGuy

Exactly what jets need to be cooled? I was merely asking a question, and was wondering where you came into possession of the knowledge you have concerning military ethics and training protocols.