I know that Bush and Cheney give lip service to the issue of women’s rights in Iraq for Iraqi women. However, you’d think they’d have a bit more concern for the rights of American women serving in the military in Iraq. They are the ones constantly enjoining us to support the troops, after all. Obviously, though, as the Walter Reed situation demonstrated, supporting the troops doesn’t include helping them get proper medical care when they return, nor does it include taking measures to prevent female soldiers from being raped or sexually harassed by their male compatriots, over there (via Helen Benedict at Salon.com):
I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.
(cont.)
Helen Benedict’s article goes on to describe numerous situations where women have been pressured for sex by their superior officers, raped or threatened with rape. She interviews one women who describes how her commander had a standing offer to one of his subordinates to pay her $250 for a “hand job.” Every time they were alone, he would badger her for sexual favors. Yet the women Ms. Benedict spoke with explained that they felt stymied from protesting any instance of harassment and/or sexual abuse because of the military’s unspoken “code of silence.” Some examples:
Last year, Col. Janis Karpinski caused a stir by publicly reporting that in 2003, three female soldiers had died of dehydration in Iraq, which can get up to 126 degrees in the summer, because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being raped by male soldiers if they walked to the latrines after dark. The Army has called her charges unsubstantiated, but Karpinski told me she sticks by them. (Karpinski has been a figure of controversy in the military ever since she was demoted from brigadier general for her role as commander of Abu Ghraib. As the highest-ranking official to lose her job over the torture scandal, she claims she was scapegoated, and has become an outspoken critic of the military’s treatment of women. In turn, the Army has accused her of sour grapes.)
“I sat right there when the doctor briefing that information said these women had died in their cots,” Karpinski told me. “I also heard the deputy commander tell him not to say anything about it because that would bring attention to the problem.” The latrines were far away and unlit, she explained, and male soldiers were jumping women who went to them at night, dragging them into the Port-a-Johns, and raping or abusing them. “In that heat, if you don’t hydrate for as many hours as you’ve been out on duty, day after day, you can die.” She said the deaths were reported as non-hostile fatalities, with no further explanation. […]
[D]espite the equal risks women are taking, they are still being treated as inferior soldiers and sex toys by many of their male colleagues. As Pickett told me, “It’s like sending three women to live in a frat house.” […]
Spranger and several other women told me the military climate is so severe on whistle-blowers that even they regarded the women who reported rape as incapable traitors. You have to handle it on your own and shut up, is how they saw it. Only on their return home, with time and distance, did they become outraged at how much sexual persecution of women goes on.
A traitor if you report being raped? I don’t know about you, but as the father of a soon to be teenage daughter there is no way in hell I would ever let her join the military after hearing about this. I can’t imagine what these women are going through, nor can I imagine what it does to them emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. But I know it can’t be anything good. What kind of memories can a women bring back from a war where a she feels obligated to carry a knife to protect herself each time she goes to a latrine.
And I can imagine how I as a parent would feel if I heard my daughter was being treated this way by the country she pledged to defend with her life. Murderous outrage, anger, hurt, despair — these are too limiting to express the emotional turmoil that would engulf me. How can any parent with a daughter in the military feel anything but betrayed by our military and civilian leadership. These women are risking their lives, not merely from enemy attacks, but from the threat posed by their fellow soldiers. That the higher-ups in the military are turning a blind eye to their dire situation disgusts me.
This isn’t something that we should still have to be dealing with in our society, and particularly not in the military, that so-called bastion of American egalitarianism. As an institution that demands utter loyalty from its members, it owes loyalty to those soldiers in return. At a bare minimum, it should adopt a “no tolerance” policy with respect to reported incidents of sexual harrassment, sexual abuse and rape. It should also provide female soldiers with anonymity and protection from retaliation to encourage them to report these crimes.
This is merely a call for providing simple human decency and respect. It’s a demand for the most basic human right there is: to be safe and secure in our own persons. No soldier should have to perform their duties while under a cloud of fear that at any moment she could be raped or otherwise abused. And no soldier should have to accept that there is nothing she can do to obtain justice for the crimes perpetrated upon her body by her comrades in arms.
Please go read Helen Benedict’s article in Salon in its entirety, then email a link to everyone you know, including your Congressional representatives. Thank you.
