Does Military Service Turn Young Men
Into Sexual Predators?

10/22/09

Penny Coleman, AlterNet
This article originally was published on AlterNet.

Every day, for four years as a West Point cadet, Tara Krause lived and worked alongside the men who had gang-raped her.

Still, she managed to graduate in 1982. She served as a field artillery officer during the Cold War and was attached to the 518th Military Intelligence Brigade during the Gulf War. In what she calls "an act of incredible self-destruction," she married a three-tour Vietnam vet in 1985 and, for the next eight years, lived "the private hell of his PTSD."
"Suicidal behavior, violence and degradation were common threads of daily life," she told me. She survived only because when he put his gun to her head one day, it finally gave her the courage to flee. "Like Lot’s wife," she says, she struggles not to look back.

It’s been almost 30 years since the rape, and Krause says she still "dance(s) the crushing daily struggle" of her own PTSD: "The nightmares, panic attacks, flashbacks, cold sweats, suicidal thoughts, zoning out, numbing all emotion and desperately avoiding triggers (reminders)—I have become a prisoner in my own home."Krause is rated 70 percent disabled by the [Department of Veterans Affairs] and has been in treatment at the Long Beach [Calif.] VA for the past six years.

For all the work she has done to heal her own injuries, she still has no answer for the question: "How do you get a group of Southern white teenagers, all of whom were Eagle Scouts, class presidents, scholars and athletes, to be capable of raping a classmate?"
The question deserves an answer, and not a simplistic one. A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the Gulf War found that almost 8 in 10 had been sexually harassed during their military service, and 30 percent had been raped.

Yet for decades, in spite of the terrible numbers, the military has managed with astonishing success to get away with responding to grievances like Krause’s with silence, or denial, or by blaming "a few bad apples." But when individual soldiers take the blame, the system gets off the hook.
And it can be shown that the patterns of military sex crimes are old and widespread—for generations, military service has transformed large numbers of American boys into sexual predators.

So it seems reasonable to ask whether perhaps there is something about military culture or training or experience that can be identified as causative, and then, perhaps, changed.

The correlation is difficult to dismiss. The majority of veterans behind bars today are there for a very specific type of crime: violence against women and children. That fact has held true since the first Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) surveys of veteran populations in the nation’s prisons in 1981, and there is evidence that those surveys only identified a much older problem.

The orgy of demonization, however, that both fueled and justified the disgraceful neglect of veterans in the aftermath of Vietnam makes this an especially fraught issue to take on.

But—without making any excuses for behaviors that cause irreparable harm to those who are victimized—there is little hope of change unless the tacit complicity of military institutions and culture is acknowledged. And that complicity most certainly did not begin recently.

World War II is remembered as a crucible and a coming-of-age ritual for the baby-faced boys it turned first into men and then into the "greatest generation."

The butchery, the civilian atrocities, the summary executions, the appalling racism and the breakdown of hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been largely erased from communal memory. And so have the rapes perpetrated by American soldiers on our female enemies and allies alike.

In August and September 1944, when the fighting eased, French women were raped by their American liberators at three times the rate of civilian women in the U.S. And during the final drive through Germany in March and April 1945, more than 900 German women were raped by American soldiers, causing Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to issue a directive to Army commanders expressing his "grave concern" and instructing that speedy and appropriate punishments be administered.

According to Madeline Morris, the Duke University law professor and military historian who uncovered that lurid fragment of history, those numbers are almost certainly on the low side.

"Rape is particularly likely to have been undercounted because it is less serious than murder," Morris explains, "it is reputedly the most underreported violent crime, even in the domestic context, and it was perpetrated in the ETO (European Theater of Operations) almost exclusively against non-Americans."

Those women, especially German women, could not easily have found the courage—or the opportunity —to file complaints.

The memories of rape brought home by World War II soldiers surely changed their lives forever.

"What does rape do to the rapist?" is a question Krause has struggled with for 20 years. "Somewhere out there is that Rotarian, happy grandfather, son-done-good, solid citizen. Does he block it out, does he remember, does he feel a shred of guilt? Is it truly done with impunity?"

It is important to note that during World War II, according to Morris’ research, patterns of violent crime in the United States’ civilian population underwent sharp changes as well.

"While civilian murder and non-negligent manslaughter rates decreased 7.5 percent from prewar rates, aggravated assault rates increased substantially (19.9 percent), and forcible-rape rates increased dramatically (by more than 27 percent) above the prewar average."

Similarly, since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, BJS statistics show a 42 percent increase in reported domestic violence and a 25 percent increase in the reported incidence of rape and sexual assault.
Except for simple assault, which increased by 3 percent, the incidence of every other crime surveyed—including violent crimes overall—decreased, but once again, mirroring Morris’ World War II data, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault showed daunting increases. The first BJS survey of incarcerated veterans found that two-thirds of those veterans had been convicted of rape or sexual assault. In military prisons as well, the report noted, "sexual assault was the most common offense for which inmates were held … accounting for nearly a full third of all military prisoners."
That chilling aspect of soldiers’ criminal behavior held true in subsequent BJS surveys.

In 2000, veterans in state and federal prisons and local jails were twice as likely as non-veterans to be sentenced for a violent sexual crime. In the 2004 survey, 1 in 4 veterans in prison were sex offenders (1 in 3 in military prisons), compared to 1 in 10 incarcerated non-veterans.

Chris Mumola, author of the two most recent BJS reports, points out that "when sex crimes are excluded, the violent-offense incarceration rate of non-veterans is actually greater than the incarceration rate of veterans for all other offenses combined (651 per 100,000 versus 630 per 100,000)."
In fact, when sex crimes are excluded, adult male veterans are over 40 percent less likely to be in prison for a violent crime than their non-veteran counterparts. The same holds true for property crimes, drugs and public disorder—the rates are much higher rates for adult men without military experience.

"The one notable exception to this pattern," Mumola says, "is sex assaults, including rape."

The Veterans Health Administration has adopted the term “military sexual trauma” (MST) to refer to severe or threatening forms of sexual harassment and sexual assault sustained in military service.

Their records for 2007 show that 22.2 percent of female veterans and 1.3 percent of male vets (from all eras) who used the agency’s health services screened positive for MST. That represents a daunting increase of about 65 percent for both men and women over the agency’s 2003 data.
And the small percentage of men is somewhat misleading; the 2007 percentages translate into 45,564 women and 47,719 men whose injuries forced them to acknowledge their victimization and to seek help from the VA.
Some of that increase can perhaps be attributed to a 2005 congressional directive requiring the VA to improve its rate of screening returning soldiers for MST, but given that almost 90 percent of veterans don’t (or can’t) use VA health care services, it seems safe to assume that the actual numbers are considerably higher.

Those are just the numbers for veterans.

In 2008, the Pentagon received more than 2,900 sexual assault reports involving active-duty service members. That represents a 9 percent increase from 2007, a 26 percent increase in combat zones. Almost a third of those reports involved rape, and more than half involved aggravated sexual assault.

In a dazzling display of unapologetic spin, the increase was called "encouraging," an indication of more reports rather than more assaults. It offered no evidence to back up that interpretation, save that the department "encourages greater reporting to hold offenders accountable for this crime."

That seems an unlikely incentive given that only 10 percent of the 2008 complaints led to a court-martial (compared to a civilian rate of 40 percent). The rest received minor punishments, almost half were dismissed, and the report acknowledged that 90 percent of sexual assaults in the military aren’t reported at all.

Rape occurs almost twice as frequently in the military as it does among civilians, especially in wartime.

When a 2008 House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee subpoenaed Kaye Whitley, director of the DoD’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), to explain what the department was doing to stop the escalating sexual violence in the military, her boss, Michael Dominguez, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, ordered her not to appear.

Only after the department was threatened with a contempt citation was Whitley made available to the committee. She then sought to reassure the members that DoD is conducting a "crusade against sexual assault," and itemized all of the heroic measures the agency was planning to implement in the very near future—efforts that somehow, despite explicit directives and deadlines from Congress, the agency had not managed to launch at the time.

Tia Christopher, women veterans coordinator at Swords to Plowshares in San Francisco, holds Dominguez, not Whitley, responsible for flouting congressional directives.

"I heard him claim that the reason sexual assaults are so high in the military right now is the hip-hop influence. I don’t need to spell out why I found that so offensive. I fault Dominguez for not recognizing that it is a leadership issue."

Christopher loves the military and calls it "a really beautiful machine" when it is working correctly. But she is a rape survivor, and she feels doubly betrayed by her superiors in the Navy. "They can respond to other situations, why not to sexual assault?"

Christopher was 18 when she joined the Navy, training to be a cryptologist. The night she was raped, she had been drinking."Underage drinking," she notes, "is a big issue in the military. It gets you an Article 15, and it’s 100 percent guaranteed that you will be prosecuted for collateral misconduct. It is far more likely that you will get in trouble for collateral misconduct [from drinking alcohol] than for raping someone. So I destroyed all the evidence. I bleached my sheets and scrubbed myself up and didn’t come forward until two weeks later. I wanted to keep my military career, and I thought I could just get through it.

"But I saw him every day. I mustered with him. He would follow me into the chow hall and sit across from me while I ate. I stopped eating, couldn’t concentrate, started failing my courses. And I started having flashbacks, hallucinating. I thought I saw him everywhere."

Christopher finally realized she needed help, but the female petty officer she first spoke to got her chief involved and, as the report went up the chain of command, her nightmare just got bigger.
"In my case, there were witnesses. They heard my head hit the wall in the barracks room, but they were drinking [underage], too."

Her commanding officer promised them all immunity if they agreed to testify on her behalf, and then reneged on the deal.

"It ended up that they all got in trouble, and [her rapist] got off." (In 2006, Christopher’s attacker was expelled from the military for another rape.)
"The last few months that I was in the service, I was assigned to X Division, mopping the stairs, cleaning the heads, picking hair out of the drains. It was my job to vacuum the different chief’s offices, and these sleazeballs would say things like, ‘Hey, Christopher, bend over when you’re sweeping.’ Or, ‘Hey Christopher, let me see them titties.’ When you come forward about a rape, basically you are just a slut."
Christopher left the military in 2001, and it took her a long time to get her life back together. She still has panic attacks, flashbacks, trouble sleeping. But, with help from a women’s psychotherapy group at the Seattle VA, and the rich support from sympathetic colleagues at Swords to Plowshares, she has developed a lot of coping skills.

After seven years, and some good therapy, she feels strong enough to manage her advocacy and policy work.

"I’ve testified before the California state legislature, and I was invited to testify before Congress. I speak out about MST as much as I do so other women don’t have to. This is not just my job. There is no way I would ever give my clients to the media. I remember what it was like, being fresh out of the service and going through that trauma."

Lisa Pellerin, who has facilitated sex-offender programs for the New York State Department of Corrections for six years, believes that "everyone has the potential to be a sex offender. It depends on how they have been conditioned. When they are in the military, supporting the brotherhood is the most important thing. Soldiers do what they feel they have to do because they don’t want to be seen as weak or unable to perform.
"Sexual abuse has always been about power and control. If you are exposed and desensitized to certain sexual behaviors, they become normalized."

One of the most basic conditioning strategies military training uses to destabilize a recruit’s inherent disinclination to kill is the inculcation of a dehumanized enemy. Soldiers are taught that "we" are the good guys; "they" are the "others." "They" are easier to kill because they are not us. They are also easier to despise. "Others"—the nips, the gooks, the hajis—come and go, but ever reliable and constant is "the girl."

Even in this new 20 percent female military, misogynist marching rhymes (aka jodies) are still used, and drill instructors still shame recruits with taunts of pussy or sissy, faggot or girl. Patty McCann, who signed up with the Illinois National Guard when she was 17 and deployed to Iraq when she was 20, still feels betrayed when she remembers her drill sergeant yelling, "Does your pussy hurt?" and "Do you need a tampon?"

A culture that encourages violence and misogyny, says Helen Benedict, attracts a disproportionate number of sexually violent men: half of male recruits enlist to escape abusive families, a history that is often predictive of an abuser.

But whatever attracts them, and wherever they come from, this is about a system plagued by rot, and not about a few bad apples. American veterans embody the inevitable, predictable blowback from that rotten system.

It is both unjust and disingenuous to focus on what our soldiers have become without talking about what we have become: A society that romanticizes its warriors, demonizes its veterans and devalues its women.

"Did I serve my full enlistment?" Christopher says. "No. But that’s because some shitbag sailor who shouldn’t have been wearing the uniform came into my life. Why is that my issue?

"This is a leadership issue."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/page3/20091...xual_predators/

From another:

"... It is not just that the military turns young men into sexual predators, which it most assuredly does being at the apex of all patriarchal institutions, but that it turns ordinary humans into monsters. And is designed to in some cases not withstanding that there are also decent humans in this dysfunctional institution. The military is the institution of the force of the state. The state is a male. The military worships death and destruction, maiming and scarring through violence. The phallus of the bomb and bullet the signs of rank, the guns on the tanks. Women are seen as weak and as something to conquer. Their soft bodies changed by carrying life, scarred by the stretching of their skin accommodating new life is ridiculed. Their otherness and mystery and connection to the ability to create an nurture life is feared by many men. The best that these 'men' can do is destroy life. But even then their fear is still ever present."

And all of this damage inflicted by our Military Organizations dominating our Culture goes right into the human gene pool to influence the evolution of human organisms and this has been going on throughout human history...

What are you willing to do to influence the culture to become less patriarchial and less aggressive? What are you doing within your own families to help all family members become more assertive and less aggressive, less passive
and less passive aggressive?

The person who spoke the words I quoted which you then re-quoted is not here to answer that question (I can assure you of very high activity on her part) but the question hangs rhetorically in the air for all of us... indeed, it hangs poignantly in the air in front of many of us. I know what my experience has been, and what I have done, but few here don't wish to hear or learn aside from those who already know the answer within themselves. IThere are hundreds of books that have been written, many of them on my shelf, and a few more that will be written in the future.]

I was in the military ....

I was not taught to be a rapist ....

And I wasn't a rapist ....

And am not now ....

But then, perhaps it is because I was not a Southern white teenager ....

Nor was I an Eagle Scout .....

Nor the class president ....

Nor a scholar ...

And so ...

And you became a gentleman and a scholar...

You are also a sample of one...

military doesn't 'breed' rapists. you can't 'breed' them beyond the general cultural norm. you can't plant the seed, if the soil isn't fertile to begin with - or, at least, it won't flourish.
military service, per se, doesn't do that.

does it provide impunity, a safe environment, a haven? maybe. but hardly any more than it does for policemen, doctors, teachers - or parents. and - for the same reason - we can't have wrongdoers standing in line for getting named as heroes, can we? 'they're' supposed to guard and protect you, how can you trust in them if they are the villains?

in a way, they're right - if an institution loses it's credibility, it's always dangerous. no matter if it's the marriage, family, or military. when all the public and media can come up with are accusations and fingerpointing, pillars of society shake.

but a stable and flourishing state needs stable pillars to uphold it's roof, or it'll crumble. and while it can withstand few of them shaking it can't survive, if instability exceeds a certain limit for that society, for then the whole building will collapse, that society will crumble

that denial is a part of social survival instinct (don't start with somalia-like examples here, they HAVE NO working society)

hoomins, all the same all over.

is there anything particular in military environment that might contribute to raping?

is rape limited to military? - not at all, just read the news

is gang-rape limited to military? no - just read the news (this week'll do), it's all over. just read that one, where they stressed the passersby, who DIDN'T BOTHER to call police to notify an ongoing non-military gang-rape of a schoolgirl.

is there much difference in the ratio how military and non-military rapes get reported? - no idea, since they don't get reported much in the first place, military or not. besides, it's quite difficult to compare something nonexistent, like reports or their statistics that don't exist, correct?

types of persons? more testosterone, maybe? a prestige thing? certainly there are more muscles in the military - and you need some, or you get fought off, right? but that makes body build in fault, not the military itself. i'd say we can agree on military as a proffession requiring some, right? which makes the general average of sufficient strength higher in miltary, but does that make the institution to be blamed? in average civilian life you find the nerds, the weaklings in that sense contributing to a lesser average. does that imply that if you'd take the statistics and discount those physically less able to rape - or the higher concentration of those less inclined to do so due to their own personal preferences - that the difference wouldn't be so great, if it exists at all? again - we cannot say; how can it'd be compared? but we would be in fault to discharge that possibility completely.

there might be one thing - relative confinement of men in active duty, unable to do as they please and go about as they please, leading to buildup and most idiotic form of release.

yet again, always has rape been related to power, dominance not just sex itself. that makes it the disease of the mind. i dare you, though, to bring an example of training meant to teach a recruit to rape, and i doubt you find one even if you try.
if the mind is already malformed, it is a stupid excuse to blame the miltary here. look closer to... yes, home.

how did these guys grow up to be able to do that? weren't they taught home this isn't something you do, that it's WRONG?
that no matter what your buddy says, you just DON'T jump in that particular instance?

if you want to go around looking for a place to place the blame, put it where it lies

in this particular instance mentioned above that woman herself agrees that the bad marriage that followed stemmed from her own previous experiences. in that, she truly is lake any other woman - bad marriages due to a pattern of self-destructive behaviour is quite common

ww2... ever read about those women in berlin, left at the 'mercy' of the victorious and most glorious red army? if you haven't, do - but it might spoil your sleep

the military was over there to do this, those left behind weren't.

unfortunately, that has been the standards behaviour through thousands of years of warfare - looting and raping. usa has no special part in this, unless you mean to stress addressing these issues in the first place. ANY war zone is not where you want to put a woman - but in particular, a civilian.
a paradox - a woman in military, under these circumstances, is far more safe.

now, if we could turn back time and make warring again a ritual, a duel, preferably - wouldn't that be a wonderful thing?

Counting coup with a feather ...

As you say, rla, I am just me ....

My values are my values ...

But as me in Viet Nam, yes, I did get to see who the rapers were ....

And they were in the chain of command .....

Some sick pups, but that is what you find an awful lot of in combat zones ....

People who should have gone to prison for something but were instead put in the military to get them out of somebody's town back here ...

I think that rape is endemic in a culture that does not value human life ...

And that is America ...

And so ...

Yes, both rape and war mongering is endemic in cultures that do not value human life...

RLA nails it.

What we are talking about here is the dehumanization of one or more humans. As is said elsewhere by Chris Hedges, war is the ultimate hate crime. If being taught to be a soldier to fight war tends to be dehumanizing in some cases (I will allow for the fact that the recruit brings in some of what transform that person into a rapist, war criminal or avid killer), then military training tends toward the creation of enabling other types of dehumanization.

"The importance of positivism [in the development of an athlete] has been noted [in earlier chapters of "Summon The Magic" and its source books], yet some feel that the team plays a little better when they get barked at. This continues as the young athlete moves into the world of work; some supervisors and managers are adept at barking too. Hinkson, in "The Art of Team Coaching", calls this the militaristic model which he says has "fallen by the wayside because it doesn't reflect the social realities of the modern athlete."

James Loehr** compares military and sport toughening models:

Even if we are uncomfortable with a discussion of military approaches, we have to admit the effectiveness of the system used to develop and toughen military recruits. Undisciplined, immature, unfocused and fearful teenagers are transformed, in an 8-week period, into soldiers that can undertake 20 mile hikes carrying 60-100 pounds of gear, overcome a wide variety of obstacles, and conquer their ultimate fear. The techniques involved in this remarkable conversion have been refined over thousands of years. Studying this approach might yield important insights.

The first place we might look is at the process of marching. Even today, when soldiers don't march into battle, they march because marching is for between battles. Marching develops and demonstrates an attitude that shows no weakness, no deviation, no fatigue, no negativism, no fear. What you see when you see a military unit in drill or on the march is precision, unit synchronization, decisive clean movement, total focus, confidence, and positive energy. Even the breathing is synchronized to movement. Marching is practice for being decisive, looking strong and acting confidently (regardless of feelings); it requires discipline, sustained concentration, and poise (all of which are essential elements in conquering emotions, especially the fear of death). The next time you observe an athletic competition, observe how the athletes walk into competition; watch their body language at the moments in the gaps between competitive movement.

Further inquiry into soldier-making reveals the following effective elements:

1. A strict code concerning how one acts and behaves, especially under stress (head, chin and shoulders up, with quick and decisive response to commands).

2. No visible sign of weakness or negative emotion is permitted. (No matter how you feel, this is the way you act.) [This is akin to the directives of a stern, authoritarian, abusive parent.]

3. Regular exposure to high levels of physical training as well as mental and emotional stress (courtesy of the obnoxious drill instructor) to accelerate the
toughening process. (The more elite the unit, the higher the stress.)

4. Precise control, regulation and requirement of cycles of sleeping, eating, drinking and rest, with mandatory meals.

5. A rigorous physical fitness program, including aerobic, anaerobic and strength training.

6. An enforced schedule of trained recovery, including the items in #4, as well as regularly-scheduled R&R.


Some of the undesirable features of this military training system are:

1. The stripping of personal identity and its replacement with group identity. (Where this happens in civilian life (gangs and cults), it usually indicates low self-esteem.)

2. Military values, beliefs and skills have little application in civilian life.

3. Blind adherence to authority is rarely appropriate outside the military.

4. Mental and emotional inflexibility and rigidity are severely limiting. Even on the battlefield, and in any emergency situation, inflexible thinking leads straight to disaster.

5. An acquired dislike for physical training, and/or intense mental and emotional stress, is a common result of the pain and boredom of the process, although others adopt a pattern of fitness that they follow for life.


Many coaches draw on military training methods. The sports training model has many parallels. One clear commonality: A higher level of fitness automatically makes an individual tougher mentally. There are sporting codes which are similar: Never show weakness; never talk negatively; no whining; think positively; look energetic and confident at all times; follow a precise way of thinking and acting after making mistakes. Similarly, coaches suggest or require adherence to rules regarding sleep, alcohol, drugs, and meals. And a visit to any early pre-season sports camp will show repeated exposure to progressively-increasing levels of competitive stress.

But when coaches become obnoxious drill instructors, it can exact a heavy price: it undermines an athlete's natural love for sport and kills his or her motivation and intrinsic drive to excel in it. This happens over a short time frame, and potentially lasts a lifetime.

# # # # # # # # #

One approach used in military training was presented at the 19th Annual Springfield College Department of Psychology Conference in June 2002 ("Winning in Sport and Life") by Dave Czesniuk, a performance enhancement instructor at West Point. Dave's job was to prepare a team of volunteers (admittedly a group with high abilities, motivation and previous success) to compete in the annual Sandhurst event.

Named after Great Britain's equivalent to West Point (and always won by a team of soldiers from Sandhurst, who prepare year round), the event is scored by team only and requires nine teammates to traverse five miles over rugged terrain as fast as possible while undertaking a series of challenges or skill stations that include (among others): marksmanship; the setup, use and takedown of technical gear; rappelling down a cliff and over a river; and working together to get all nine team members over an 8-foot wall without using any aids.

The team gets very limited opportunities to "scrimmage" the event; team members are, of course, also involved in athletics, other military training, and an intense curriculum of study. Dave described participation in the event as similar to belonging to a club at another college; success was based entirely on what the individuals brought to the attempt.

Training consisted of physical fitness and limited work in each of the skill stations, but Dave's primary role was to meet with each individual to establish and create an audio CD training tool. The audio tool consisted of each volunteer reading a script, out loud and in his own voice. (The brain, of course, responds much more effectively to one's own voice.)

The "script" described, in detail, each key moment of the entire event as well as the role that individual would play in the complex interaction with his teammates at each skill station. The script also utilized goal statements, affirmations and cues specific to the individual and his role. Here's a fictional example:

"As I cross over the checkpoint line, I focus on returning my breathing to a normal rate while I take the whoozamajingle out of Betsy's rucksack. Okay, now, Ralph hands me the whatzit and, remembering to deploy the ground spikes, I open the tripod and put it in place within five seconds. While I hold the tripod steady, Betsy then places the unit atop the tripod. Once this is secured, I turn to George and begin gathering all of the thingamajigs.... [After the skill station] As I place the whoozamajingle back in Betsy's rucksack, I shout "Great precision, Hellcats!" and then shout "ten seconds to mount up" and begin slow, deep inhalations as I remind myself that I have to finish this upcoming stretch first, in four minutes and ten seconds, because I'm carrying the thingamabob."

Once a complete-event recorded script is polished and mixed with appropriate music, the recruit is asked to listen to the CD at least once a day, and preferably twice, or at least as much as possible within the highly-demanding daily schedule of a West Point cadet.

As the late springtime event neared, the training intensified; each team member took part in an indoor drill during which he was asked to touch and deactivate, as fast as possible, a series of randomly-appearing lights on a 3' x 4' Activision board while simultaneously balancing on a bongo board and reciting his script out loud!

Sound stressful enough? Sound effective?"



** See Toughness Training for Life, James E. Loehr, Ed.D., Plume/Penguin, New York 1993, as well as The New Toughness Training for Sports: Mental. Emotional and Physical Conditioning from One of the World's Premier Sports Psychologists, James E. Loehr, Ed.D., Dutton Books, New York 1994.


###


Additional discussion, articles, stories etc. are here.

I'd previously posted "A Manifesto for Human Sovereignty" by Francesa Caigatti, which drew some questions and allegations about the source and veracity of some of the claims in that 'manifesto', so I went back to the source and continued with the conversation with an effort to nail down the claims made. You can read it all here.

In addition:

"The Pentagon’s way-out research arm has been funding soldier enhancement programs for decades. Now, they’re harnessing new technology to bring members of the armed forces into the 21st century, cell by cell, from pre-deployment training to post-war reintegration.

Check out my story [ http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=4497 ] , where I run down current Darpa projects, and the agency’s way-off possibilities, all designed to optimize tomorrow’s troops."

-- Katie Drummond, at http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/na...robe-at-a-time/

Oh, so that's what turned me into a sexual predator

Many armies in the world are composed of men and women. There are not these kinds of charges in other countries.

It's probably the video games.

if you've made up your mind to blame the military for all misfortune, no argument will sway you - you're not looking for arguments and discussion, you're here only to state your predoöection that is not open for discussion

so, was the title of this thread a question or a rhetorical question?

all teamplayers must learn to co-operate, but not all have to operate under fire, sleepdeprived exhausted.

i'm all for kindergarten tours if that will have same effect

want your army to start whining in the middle of a gunfight? great idea, really...

why is there training in the dfirst place? precicely to shake recruits- or draftees - out of their comfort zone

imagine guys who suddenly have to cope with no mommy catering or servicing them. outrage, yes?

suddenly you end up in a world where you actually have to INSTANTLY obey an order - no more 'i'll watch this movie first... actually, i'll do that tomorrow, ok? maybe..." oh, cruelty imposed


there'll me much less schock, if the freshmsn-in-military is already used to obeying orders or doesn't whine about anything


tho, i'd tell all those who oppose proper training to get themselves under fire and THEN START A VOTE concerning next action, if they don't like orders or are unable to understand the necessity of instant obedience. we'll see if the survivours have changed their mind, eh?


of course you end up with guys able to carry their equipment, cause they're the ones who are left, doh - others are FAILURES
how come that's an undesirable outcome?? so you expect army to deploy porters???

an unexpected outcome? sheesh, only reason why you don't see so many muscled guys in civilian life, is cause unless they MUST, most are TOO LAZY TO BOTHER! start training and you'll end up able to carry your suitcase, too. but it's, well, too bothersome - if you can go to a bar, have a barbecue, and NOT work out...

not everything in military evolves around dehumanizing, sometimes it's just making it clear not all universe revolves around your own precious belly-button

i suppose a lot disagree here, but i'd say decisiveness, lack ow cowardice, ability to perform under stress and being fit are not detrimental to coping with life but rather essential.

the only difference is that while civilians can afford laxity and indecisiveness, in combat such attitude costs lives - and the cost is also far more obvious.

so, a stern parent HAS to be an abusive one? how nicely implied..

since correct diet is essential for recuperation, why attack regulated meals? all should go for macburgers and a night snack and doda and fries and if you don't get the vitamins and minerals and elements, it's simply a bad day? all hail muscle failure?
wonder, why are parents advised to provide proper meals for their offspring? another warning sign for abuse?

it seems any organized activity came under attack... wonder, why?


cannot relate MY experiences with military to this negative decry here. and not just the military of my own country.

this subject seems to lack any coherent structure for debate - nor does it seem to have been a goal

I think this is a very reasoned and reasonable statement of the other side of what I also think is a very real problem for the US. Gabby, what per cent of your country's GDP goes to defense and what per cent of the US's
GDP goes to defense? What per cent of your veterans lead satfactory and satisfying lives compared to US veterans?

first, i apologize for all those typos

@ rla

i can't say for certain, do you mean the original post as 'a very reasoned and reasonable statement of the other side of what I also think is a very real problem for the US'?

other side of what?



i fail to see how these questions relate to the topic. however, if you find these to be of interest, maybe you can specify the appropriate thread? i'm sure i'll find something to c/p

The second question has several inherent issues that i'm not so certain you knew it did. Veterans of what? a war? what war and what regime, then?

how am i to rate a very, VERY subjective personal experience such as satisfaction? i am dead sure that our standards differ

and THEN you want to compare these statistics... in some unspecified manner

see, first, i'm not sure estonia has so many statistics on these issues, i'm not also sure they would be public. if you want soviet statistics... well, go ahead. just remember to hire someone competent for analysis. and then use those papers to start a fire.

for statistics to be comparable they't have to have similar sets of questions or statements, administering would have to be similar etcetc - all-in-all, those tests would have to be standardized and applied in a standard manner to end up with data fit for analysis

it's not a proper test if you can't reproduce the conditions, meaning you standardize them. if you compare statistics that have been assembled using different methods, you may end up with many words but not much sense

Gabby, I was refering to your post "16 which I thought represented a reasonale perspective about Military in general. I served 4 years in the US Navy, 1953-57 and had 4 older brothers in the military and all of this was more positive than negative. My complaint now is that the US has become too militarized and too empireal and the political and cultural effects are primarily negative. I suspect, because of our differce in size and geopolitical
context, many of my criticisms of the US's over-investment in the military and defense industries may not be relevant to your country...

Gabriellemy, in response to your post #16:


The title of this thread was the title of the article in the first post as posed by the author of that article.

##

Was I stating a general problem I have with the military? Most certainly, but speaking as a 60-year old citizen of the United States of America who grew up in and around one war, has seen the US military perform in many others since then, and now sees the US and its military chewing up its economy and the lives of its youth while being bogged down in two more extended wars and itching for a fight on a whole ‘nuther continent.

And they are using people in a way that is destructive of their lives, their minds, their families and more – and I’m talking about the people on our side.

You seem to suggest that it doesn’t matter which army is discussed or that I have generalized my hatred of things military to all armies. But that is an assumption or a reaction on your part. I think I have a serious and positive appreciation for the military when done properly and for the right reasons. Little of that is going on here now.

I am certainly not picking on the military in Estonia. What I know about Estonia and its military could fit into the rucksack of a flea. But I think I can make some generalized assumptions here (correct me where I am wrong):

There aren’t millions of Estonian soldiers assigned to hundreds of bases throughout most of the continents on the globe. There aren’t many (if any) Estonian soldiers serving at Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram or any of the unknown number of secret prisons run by the CIA throughout the world, and thus few of them are under any suspicion for dehumanizing actions against prisoners. There are probably very few cases (if any) of Estonian soldiers (or private contractors serving at Estonian embassies, or Estonian forward-operating-bases in the Estonia empire), who are alleged to have raped their fellow female soldiers or trafficked in underage women or engaged in sexual R&R for purposes of unit cohesion or to qualify for promotion. The Estonian military probably hasn’t loosened its recruiting standards to include young men convicted of anti-social crimes prior to their military service. The Estonian military isn’t trolling in high schools looking for recruits. The Estonia military does not staff centers in malls where youngsters can play cool video games shooting Muslims.

The Estonian military is known as The Estonian Defence Forces. (Over here, the US forces are notably offensive, functioning from forward operating bases now currently encircling Russia and quietly setting up shop in South America. Over here, the operative mindset is the Bush doctrine which is “take them out first if they even so much as think”.) I presume it is relatively safe to conclude that the Estonian military or any of its related entities such as the Estonia intelligence agency does not engage in extra-judicial, prejudicial assassination by Hellfire missile.

These are not derogatory statements about Estonia or its military. If I were an Estonian, I’d probably be serving in its military (well, not at my age anymore, but you know what I mean). They are statements to show the obvious contrast, or context, that we are talking about here. Another simple comparison is that in Estonia military service is compulsory. There has been some debate, even re-surfacing recently, as to whether such compulsory service in America might not lead to serious change, better oversight, etc. Another simple fact is that, if WikiPedia’s entry about the Estonia military is correct, we probably have some college ROTC units over here that are larger and perhaps better equipped. But if I were sending my 20-something daughter off to join the military or work for a military contractor and she got raped by others serving with her, I’d have the balls of the responsible leaders mounted on my mantel before I quit. There is no accountability. There is gross and apparently purposeful laxity.

##

You misunderstood the point of the quotations in my post #12. The point is not that alignment, discipline, response to authority, unit cohesion etc. are bad, but that there are proven methods which will meet the same objectives in a more functional and humane method. The reference in that post specifically was to two books on high-end training and performance psychology, and the tools developed for use at one of this nation’s premier military academies. In addition, there are studies about tactical decision making under stress, the use of free play in war games, Boyd’s OODA loop tools, and others. Indeed, some of this material I have collected was used by the individual involved in the training of a Marine CBRNE response unit tasked to respond to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events at any major US installation worldwide.

Proper and efficient teamwork, trained well, and overseen effectively, simply would not tolerate dehumanizing activities in virtually any setting, but they are tolerated by this nation and, one might postulate, rewarded.

I have mentioned frequently Richard Strozzi Heckler's experience as first noted in the book “In Search of the Warrior Spirit: Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets”. I am not talking about developing namby-pamby’s here, and neither was he. Today he is regarded as one of the world’s premier executive coaches. He and his wife run the Strozzi Institute where she works with horses to teach people how to read and repsond to other sentient beings. [RLA’s wife should be all over their work.]

This is the 21st century, and presumably we can get beyond the need to behead the King's favorite concubines in order to instill pride and discipline in a military unit. The Heckler work was part of the “Ultimate Warrior Training Program" and he brought his experience in meditation, the martial arts, and psychology. Others brought in pioneering work in getting trainees to synchronize their brainwaves~mindstates. At the time, this secret program was described by West Point logisticians as, "The most exquisite orchestration of human technology we have ever seen," and by Esquire editor George Leonard and Michael Murphy of Esalen Institute as, "he most extensive leadership development program to be offered in modern times." [Today you can acquire the brainwave synchronization technology commercially, as often described here at CGCS by me.]

###

Criticism and dissent used to be rewarded in this country because it is offered in the hopes that we can see and do better. Today, in the US, when you point out a failing or suggest a better way, the counter-battery fire is withering.

How can any team anywhere improve if it cannot accept criticism, if it does not seek to learn additively, exponentially, but accepts inferior standards and performance at the level of the individual?

It is said that a team (or unit) is only as good as its weakest links.

Any tolerance of dehumanization has to be grossly destructive of unit cohesion, performance and morale.

well, i wasn't certain, so i thought it better to clarify

i'm not so very sure how qualified i am to give a reasonaple perspective, but i've had some contact with military and mil personnel - enough at least to have an opinion

if you come to estonia, you might be astonished how little respect locals have for military or patriots, the latter word is often used synonymous to an idiot dumba$$ or simply mentally insane. depends highly whom you will talk to.

that attitude has been influenced by mandatory serving in USSR army; the stories people can tell range from outrageous to hilariously absurd. this experience contributes to current attitude, for some, subconciously..

that's what makes it really hard to judge anything about estonian military - first you must find a way to differentiate between an opinion and prejudice. if it's possible at all.

i tried to stay on topic as defined by title, therefore gdp/nato/etc isn't exactly what i see as proper, relevant subject here


a small country has the benefit of neighbours, a relatively higher percentage of people who come into contact with foreigners. that's why i mentioned non-estonian military in the first place (people i know myself, or other people whom i consider credible sources)

i'm well aware it's an american board, my nose has been rubbed in that fact times enough. this topic, however, has been postulated in my opinion, in a general manner.
as far as i'm concerned, military or military training per se is not responsible for a rape. i won't even go to details.


i do know of people who have had troubles after a mission BUT JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING PRECEDES AN EVENT, DOESN'T MEAN IT CAUSED IT!
that's called a mistake of a cause - i don't know the correct term in english

i can't identify a reasonable discourse with sane arguments on these subjects in this thread. (from my perspective, many threads instigated in this forum seem to be started for not-so-benign reasons...)

that's nothing more than demagoguery. someone fishing for political weight?

more than gdp, the general attitude of a society has a bigger effect on behaviour of it's residents

since i cannot appeal being a us citizen as a corraborative emphasis to my statements - nor comment on my serving in any us military strain since i have not done that - i address such issues on grounds of human species or their institutions

sometimes that helps to notice inconsistencies and flawed arguments

i never thought your post displaying 'hatred', but i do find it interesting you referred to it like that yourself

i don't expect an american to know about estonian military nor even to be aware on which continent we are - nor do i post with such presumptions. (it'd be extremely hard to pick on estonian military, see?)

who knows where we'd be were we a bigger country. again, i do not see that relating to rape.

you made me do my own search and look up ROTC. as a courtesy, i also used wiki you're probably right about that equipment thing, but i'd not go as far as to determine an outcome of a conflict as a function of equipment (afghanistan's a great example)

if you infer there might be a better tactique, you're probably quite right since there's always room for improvement. always. however, attributing all fault to training? i disagree on that account


some additional remuneraations not directly on the subject altho related to post...


i'm not that deficient in mind as not to believe difference in size has nothing to do with an issue. and i cannot fully compare estonian military to an american one, it's been around for a too short period of time too eliminate all foreign influence. but i can relate to some extent. and do not forget, we share near all the dna... we're all humans, and behave accordingly

dehumanization as causing bad deeds and rotten apples? maybe. but as fully responsible? i doubt.

in military you expect people to kill people. it would be quite hard to evade ALL dehumanizing and if you do, it'll most certainly hit you in a conflict zone. it's a bit connected to that 'kill, or be killed' thing and it not being the best idea to have a nervous breakdown and an epiphany at once under fire

in military you'll find a lot of issues in a concentrated, distilled manner that heps them to surface. again i stress - it doesn't mean military caused these, solely.

i like draft, if i could, i'd make it mandatory to ALL to serve - currently, only a percentage gets drafted due to lack of facilities, personnel (and likely, public outrage...)
while you can debate the full effectiveness of such an experience... i find it useful. after that you TRULY know to appreciate warm tapwater and uninterrupted sleep and non-mre meals...

recently latvian military made into the news here - by mercenary/paid people leaving for better pay, french legionnaires were mentioned... mercenary military is not trustworthy

many in us join due to free education etc... maybe if you had more warriors instead of soldiers?

just wondering

Yes, indeed, it is an American board. Estonians and others are welcome, as far as I am concerned (in fact, we ought to have large numbers of participants from within the natural and native European, Asian and South American communities -- it might help enlighten and illuminate).

But their perspectives, as well as those of some from within America, risk getting hounded and driven away by the hasbara brigades, the American cyber-warriors, and others. Because it is an American board, foreign visitors must simply keep in mind the cultural lens through which we here perceive things; some of us one lens and filter, others wholly different ones. Other visitors (perhaps including those from the Republic of Cialis and its cross-mountain neighbor, the Sildenafil Citadel) perceive this McCarthyist denigration and the mastery of political labeling, and thus remain quiet, refusing the risk, and thus denying the rest of us whatever insights, experience and wisdom they might have to offer. Or they are bots, some of which feed the very hungry monster which consumes all data and information so as to be able to better replicate it, simulate it, and thus eventually control it. The sum total is to insure than those who are in control remain in control, and thus any dialogue or discussion on these threads is meaningless anyway.

Indeed, some threads are indeed constructed as vehicles for demagoguery, an "impassioned appeal to the prejudices and emotions of the populace". There are several reasons for it:

1) We haven't qualified yet of our own pulpits in the churches and madrassas of our land;
2) We lack the financial backing to purchase and operate our own television stations (newspapers are soon remnants of the past, and TV has proven so much more efficient at dumbing-down and the limitation of choice and perspective);
3) We lack the influence of the government's own intelligence apparati to persuade or buy media gatekeepers;
4) We can't outspend AIPAC and buy ourselves a passel of legislators;
5) We're not in the illicit drug business so we can't use suitcases stuffed with cash to garner interest and attention;
6) Due to the foregoing, we're in no position to counter the weight of so much governmental money spent on budgets, ads, propaganda and the like.

Thus we are left to whisper in the wind.

Forgive me if my one small voice doesn't happen to agree with the noise of the pounding hooves of the frenzied herd of wildebeests blindly seeking its next precipice. If you hear that voice, you can heed it, or you can simply regard it as an extra little squeak within the cacophony of institutionalized trans-national insanity.

I fully agree that we need more warriors and less soldiers. That was the point of the Heckler book.

Another point is that perhaps there an option or alternative to the "kill or be killed" choice.

It is a choice imposed from without by those who need or desire war.

Certainly if there's a fellow over there with a gun or an IED who wishes to kill and that threat is imminent, then self-defense is an option. The choice simply to die and move on to the next phase or cycle is there too; maybe the solution for us all would be to require universal military service by all who are 65 years of age or older. We could call them the "geriatric division", infantry being issued walkers and the cavalry having wheelchairs and canes. Bottles of Boost are perhaps at least as good as an MRE, and probably tastier. The military budget could be woven right into the Social Security budget and we could save all those youg folks for more productive things and to the enjoyment of their lives. Us old folks, wanting another opportunity to chuckle and fondle the young nurse bringing the Depends, might come up with the "love or be loved" option. If the threat is immanent, we might sacrifice ourselves so as to hasten our transition into reincarnation.


Boddhisattvas, to the front!

US Workers Starved Into Service

by Sandy Leon Vest

Global Research, October 30, 2009
Common Dreams - 2009-10-23

It was only a matter of time before the nation’s skyrocketing unemployment translated into new recruits for the most powerful military force in the world.

With the official US unemployment rate at 10 percent and climbing (that’s more than 15 million people struggling to put food on the table) and nearly double that number if you include part-time wage-earners who need full-time jobs, never mind all of those ‘discouraged workers,’ it’s little wonder that so many of the nation’s jobless are flocking into its military recruitment offices.

After all, what better way for an unemployed American worker to survive the Great Recession of 2009 than in the ‘service’ of his or her country?

Americans have a long history of consuming and/or killing their way out of crisis. And it isn’t looking as if that model will be up for reassessment anytime soon. The parameters of what we like to call the “national conversation” are as narrow as ever, and they are not widening under the current leadership. So far at least, even Obama’s ‘Clean Energy Economy’ has failed to deliver enough ‘green jobs’ (or any other color jobs for that matter) to begin the process of meaningful transition. With the season of consuming just around the corner, many Americans – especially those in blue collar jobs like construction, manufacturing and retail service – are staring into the economic abyss.

It is hardly surprising in such an environment that a young person with dismal employment prospects and plummeting self esteem would be easily seduced by an ad that promises “more than $49,000 in GI Bill Benefits” as does the US military’s current promo. The same ad promises that young recruits can “connect with military and veteran-friendly schools that offer VA approved education programs,” or “get information” about high-paying degrees like Criminal Justice, IT and Legal Studies.

So, when the Pentagon announced on October 13, 2009 that the military had met all of its recruitment goals for the first time since 1973, and that this just happened to coincide with the highest national unemployment rate since the government started keeping track in 1976, it wasn’t surprising that the news was met with a Big National Yawn.

The Few, the Proud, the Desperate

It’s hard not to wonder what would happen if, instead of dutifully reading from the Pentagon’s script on October 13, the media had done their job and informed the public about the real nature of the ‘service’ that potential enlistees were signing up for. Maybe if they had, those recruitment officers would not have been quite so busy recruiting – and stealing the lives of – unsuspecting young people in desperate need of employment.

Maybe those eager masses of young men and women wouldn’t have been so hot to sign up if, for instance, they understood that anyone enlisting in the military right now – whatever branch – is required to sign a document that states: "Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document.” (DD Form4/1, 1998, Sec.9.5b).

In their book Army of None, published in 2007, Aimee Allison and David Solnit advise those who expect the military to pay for their college to “read the fine print.” The authors point out that only a fraction of recruits who signed up for the Montgomery GI Bill received a dime, and that 65 percent “received no money at all for college.” If you receive a less than honorable discharge (as one in four do), leave the military early (as one in three do), or later decide not to go to college, “the military will keep your deposit and give you nothing.”

And when it comes to those signing bonuses, maybe if potential recruits understood that they will be forced to repay the money if he or she leaves the military before the agreed term of service (that’s eight years for first time enlistees), perhaps they would reconsider signing away life and limb to get it. If those same applicants understood the army data from 2007 revealing that the top bonus of $20,000 was given to only 6 percent of enlistees who signed up for active duty, they might have figured out another way to survive the recession. They might be further divested of their illusions if they knew that military statistics show that 48 percent of enlistees report having “financial difficulty” and that some 33 percent of homeless men in the US are veterans, with nearly 200,000 veterans homeless on any given night.

And another thing: The military does not have to place recruits in their chosen career field or give them the specific training requested. Even if enlistees do receive training, it is often to develop skills that will not transfer to the civilian job market – like firing an M 240 machine gun.

By the way: Military recruiters are notorious liars.

Back in 2004, the New York Times reported that nearly one in five US Army recruiters was investigated for offenses ranging from "threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq." It’s doubtful that has changed just because the focus is now on Afghanistan. One veteran recruiter told a reporter for the Albany Times Union that, after recruiting for years, he couldn’t think of one recruiter who wasn't dishonest about it, admitting that, “I did it myself."

Military Service is Not the Only Option

Just because the Obama administration lacks the political courage to challenge the status quo doesn’t mean there are no other options. But Americans will need to ‘unlearn’ a lot of what we’ve been taught if there is to be a meaningful transition to a peacetime economy.

We will need, for instance, to unlearn that the military is the only legitimate form of national service. We will need also to be willing to challenge those who tell us that being an artist, a pre-school teacher or (god-forbid) an activist, is not a respectable way to earn a living – or to serve one’s country.

And while we’re un-learning things, maybe we should reconsider the US military budget.

By most estimates, maintaining the warfare state now consumes 54% of every federal tax dollar. Without first challenging that, we might as well kiss off any chances of ever seeing a ‘Clean Energy Economy’ or, for that matter, anything resembling a future worth living. But first we’ll have to rid ourselves and our children of the idea that a culture rooted in killing and consuming can also be ‘sustainable.’

Maybe then we’d have a real war tax revolution.

Since the turn of the century, a growing number of high-ranking military officers are questioning the wisdom of – and the motivation behind – the US warfare state. In an open letter dated July 8, 2004, Special Forces Vet Stan Goff wrote to US military troops in Iraq:

“The big bosses are trying to gain control of the world's energy supplies to twist the arms of future economic competitors. That's what's going on, and you need to understand it, then do what you need to do to hold on to your humanity … Your so-called civilian leadership sees you as an expendable commodity. They don't care about your nightmares, about the DU that you are breathing, about the loneliness, the doubts, the pain, or about how your humanity is stripped away a piece at a time. They will cut your benefits, deny your illnesses, and hide your wounded and dead from the public. They already are. They don't care. So you have to. And to preserve your own humanity, you must recognize the humanity of the people whose nation you now occupy and know that both you and they are victims of the filthy rich bastards who are calling the shots."

Humanity has passed the tipping point – economically, culturally and environmentally. The ‘consuming and killing’ model embraced by Americans as cultural norm is, in reality, a cultural aberration. It is destroying everything and everyone in its wake – including those who are fighting and dying to preserve it. In accepting such a model – often without question – Americans have become victims of their own complacency.

The price of such acquiescence may be our humanity.



Sandy LeonVest is a radio and print journalist and the editor-publisher of SolarTimes, an independent quarterly energy newspaper with a progressive slant. SolarTimes is available online at www.solartimes.org, and distributed in hardcopy throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Sandy LeonVest's work has been published locally, as well as internationally, and includes 15 years at KPFA Radio in Berkeley, CA.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15880

In a pause to go down and "flip the laundry", I mentioned to my wife the proposal that the US embrace geriatric brigades, noting my entrenched anti-war sentiments. She said "You've been that way for over 40 years..." By the way, she was a certified rape counselor, and a victim herself.

###

Relevant to the theme and title of the thread:

The definition of rape:

4. an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation: the rape of the countryside.
5. Archaic. the act of seizing and carrying off by force.


###

Published on Monday, October 26, 2009 by TruthDig.com
War Is a Hate Crime

by Chris Hedges
Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is wrong. So is violence against people in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the bizarre culture of identity politics, there are no alliances among the oppressed. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first major federal civil rights law protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, passed last week, was attached to a $680-billion measure outlining the Pentagon’s budget, which includes $130 billion for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democratic majority in Congress, under the cover of protecting some innocents, authorized massive acts of violence against other innocents.

It was a clever piece of marketing. It blunted debate about new funding for war. And behind the closed doors of the caucus rooms, the Democratic leadership told Blue Dog Democrats, who are squeamish about defending gays or lesbians from hate crimes, that they could justify the vote as support for the war. They told liberal Democrats, who are squeamish about unlimited funding for war, that they could defend the vote as a step forward in the battle for civil rights. Gender equality groups, by selfishly narrowing their concern to themselves, participated in the dirty game.

“Every thinking person wants to take a stand against hate crimes, but isn’t war the most offensive of hate crimes?” asked Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who did not vote for the bill, when I spoke to him by phone. “To have people have to make a choice, or contemplate the hierarchy of hate crimes, is cynical. I don’t vote to fund wars. If you are opposed to war, you don’t vote to authorize or appropriate money. Congress, historically and constitutionally, has the power to fund or defund a war. The more Congress participates in authorizing spending for war, the more likely it is that we will be there for a long, long time. This reflects an even larger question. All the attention is paid to what President Obama is going to do right now with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan. The truth is the Democratic Congress could have ended the war when it took control just after 2006. We were given control of the Congress by the American people in November 2006 specifically to end the war. It did not happen. The funding continues. And while the attention is on the president, Congress clearly has the authority at any time to stop the funding. And yet it doesn’t. Worse yet, it finds other ways to garner votes for bills that authorize funding for war. The spending juggernaut moves forward, a companion to the inconscient force of war itself.”

The brutality of Matthew Shepard’s killers, who beat him to death for being gay, is a product of a culture that glorifies violence and sadism. It is the product of a militarized culture. We have more police, prisons, inmates, spies, mercenaries, weapons and troops than any other nation on Earth. Our military, which swallows half of the federal budget, is enormously popular—as if it is not part of government. The military values of hyper-masculinity, blind obedience and violence are an electric current that run through reality television and trash-talk programs where contestants endure pain while they betray and manipulate those around them in a ruthless world of competition. Friendship and compassion are banished.

This hyper-masculinity is at the core of pornography with its fusion of violence and eroticism, as well as its physical and emotional degradation of women. It is an expression of the corporate state where human beings are reduced to commodities and companies have become proto-fascist enclaves devoted to maximziing profit. Militarism crushes the capacity for moral autonomy and difference. It isolates us from each other. It has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with our lack of compassion for our homeless, our poor, our mentally ill, our unemployed, our sick, and yes, our gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual citizens.

Klaus Theweleit in his two volumes entitled “Male Fantasies,” which draw on the bitter alienation of demobilized veterans in Germany following the end of World War I, argues that a militarized culture attacks all that is culturally defined as the feminine, including love, gentleness, compassion and acceptance of difference. It sees any sexual ambiguity as a threat to male “hardness” and the clearly defined roles required by the militarized state. The continued support for our permanent war economy, the continued elevation of military values as the highest good, sustains the perverted ethic, rigid social roles and emotional numbness that Theweleit explored. It is a moral cancer that ensures there will be more Matthew Shepards.

Fascism, Theweleit argued, is not so much a form of government or a particular structuring of the economy or a system, but the creation of potent slogans and symbols that form a kind of psychic economy which places sexuality in the service of destruction. The “core of all fascist propaganda is a battle against everything that constitutes enjoyment and pleasure,” Theweleit wrote. And our culture, while it disdains the name of fascism, embraces its dark ethic.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, interviewed in 2003 by Charlie Rose, spoke in this sexualized language of violence to justify the war in Iraq, a moment preserved on YouTube (see video).

“What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, ‘Which part of this sentence don’t you understand?’ ” Friedman said. “ ‘You don’t think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we’re just gonna let it grow? Well, suck on this.’ That, Charlie, is what this war is about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.”

This is the kind of twisted logic the killers of Matthew Shepard would understand.

The philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote, in words gay activists should have heeded, that exclusive preoccupation with personal concerns and indifference to the suffering of others beyond the self-identified group made fascism and the Holocaust possible.

“The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people,” Adorno wrote. “What is called fellow traveling was primarily business interest: one pursues one’s own advantage before all else, and simply not to endanger oneself, does not talk too much. That is a general law of the status quo. The silence under the terror was only its consequence. The coldness of the societal monad, the isolated competitor, was the precondition, as indifference to the fate of others, for the fact that only very few people reacted. The torturers know this, and they put it to test ever anew.”

Copyright © 2009 Truthdig, L.L.C.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

See three videos (estimated 30 minutes each) of his straight-forward at-podium "reading" of key sections here:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23819.htm

Arthur Silber has an essay entitled “A Depraved, Violent and Indifferent Culture” that has bearing on this thread. Here is an excerpt or three:

“Our children are taught that we equate "manliness" and "strength" with close to complete disregard for other people, with emotional repression and insensitivity to the point of catatonia, and with a willingness to resort to physical violence at the slightest provocation, and even in the complete absence of any provocation at all.”

“In this latest story [the recent Richmond, CA gang rape discussed in the essay and noted earlier in the thread, if obliquely], the young adults who raped the girl -- and the bystanders who watched and did nothing, or even joined in and cheered the rapists on -- are not aberrations. To believe that is only another means of denial: we refuse to recognize that these are the inevitable results, indeed the embodiments, of our primary values. We refuse to see it, in the manner typical of those who refuse to acknowledge horrors for which they themselves are responsible. But the people who committed these crimes and those who failed to stop them aren't unusual or "special cases": they were doing exactly what many adults, and our government, do all the time, every day of every nightmare year. Children well understand the truth of the old maxim: don't listen to what people say, watch what they do. These young people watched what the culture around them does, and they acted accordingly.”

“…what lies underneath this story and the public reaction are still other elements: an impenetrable desensitization to horrors of this kind, even when they occur directly in front of us, a perspective so distorted that television appears to be more real than events in our own lives, and an all-encompassing passivity where no one will stand up and say "No".”

Yes, if you want to have a military that wins battles, there are certain things you have to do, I think behavioral anthropologists would call it "initiation"....but that should not, nor did it ever, when I was in the military turn men into sexual predators. In fact, it turned them into gentlemen more often than not. That was a long time ago, so maybe it isn't that way today.

I think the poverty draft may be a contributing factor. My sons are not predators though....I guess any mother would say that, but they have a deep seated sense of ethics that often annoys the hedonist in me, but I realize it's a good thing to have in life.

However, I sure do wish the poverty draft included a way for me to go overseas and help people to be safe, to get to school, to be healthy....but all of those jobs are for younger people than I, and they want experience too. So, the only job you can get is in the military, where a certain portion of people will be in charge of defending or inflicting harm through bombs and guns (the others sort mail, deliver meals, fly troops back and forth, so they aren't in combat, which requires more troops than fighting troops).