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Today's
Stories
April 4, 2008
Greg Moses
Missing
King
April 3, 2008
Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession
Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression
Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained:
The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia
Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America
Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy
David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood
Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice
Website of
the Day
The
True Face of Da Vinci?
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
|
Apri1
4, 2008
"The Hard
Hand of War"
Rape
as an Instrument of Total War
By DAVID ROSEN
Louise Arbour, the UN Commissioner for
Human Rights, recently announced her decision to resign her position
and not seek a second term. Reading behind the formal language
of a well-respected diplomat, its clean the Arbour quit out of
disgust with the UN's failure to seriously address the international
moral crises precipitated by the Bush administration's "war
on terror."
Arbour had a now-famous dust-up
with the U.S.'s former UN representative, John Bolton, in 2006
over Israel's invasion of Lebanon. She suggested that Israeli
leaders could be charged with war crimes. "You know, in
America," Bolton retorted, "prosecutors are not supposed
to threaten people in public based on press reports." Contemptuously,
he added, "I would just say as one lawyer to another, that
to Mrs. Arbour, that she should consider her professional ethics
and responsibilities very carefully here before threatening criminal
charges based on press accounts."
Arbour, the former Chief Prosecutor
of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
(responsible for the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic) and former
Justice on Canada's Supreme Court, knows war crimes when she
sees them. Clearly, she had enough of the double-speak masquerading
as justice. Traditional prohibitions against war crimes, torture
and, most scandalously, sexual terror against girls and women
have seriously eroded over the last seven years. She had enough.
* *
*
The rape of female (and occasionally
male) non-combatants by male soldiers during a war is a feature
of human social relations since the earliest times. The Old
Testament is replete with stories of the rape of women by conquering
tribes. They have long been raped and kidnapped as "spoils
of war" and often forced to marry their captors to survive.
The abduction of Helen of Troy remains, after two-and-a-half
centuries, a testament to the consequences of male conquest.
Reported rapes of female non-combatants
by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq appear to be limited.
However, given the U.S. military's inherent secrecy and repeated
cover-ups, the true story of war rape will likely not be revealed
until well-after the occupation ends.
Charges of rapes of Vietnamese
women by U.S. soldiers were made by Susan Brownmiller and others
during the war (e.g., "Against Our Will," 1975). It
wasn't until only quite recently that the full scale of confirmed
atrocities by American forces in Vietnam was revealed to be more
extensive than previously known. Reports in the "Toledo
Blade" [October 19, 2003] and the "Los Angeles Times"
[August 6, 2006] discuss more than three hundred atrocities (including
rapes) that were finally substantiated by Army investigators,
and this does not include the most notorious U.S. war crime,
the 1968 My Lai massacre.
While incidents of rape by
today's U.S. male soldiers appear relatively few in number, one
cannot say the same for other military forces operating throughout
the world. Conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
(DRC) and Darfur, like earlier ones in Rwanda as well as Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Myanmar and Somalia, were scarred by innumerable
documented incidents of rape. Rape as an instrument of war was
also reported in recent conflicts in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Côte
d'Ivoire, Cyprus, East Timor, Haiti, Liberia, Peru and Uganda.
Rape is the most traumatic
invasion one person can inflict on another. It has long been
misconceived as a sex act. Although one of the most forceful
physical engagements, often involving the genitals and other
body parts, rape is not erotic, not sensual, not pleasurable.
It is violence and terror masquerading as passion.
The inherent violence and terror
of rape finds its most barbaric realization during war, especially
under conditions of modern total war. The Civil War general,
William Tecumseh Sherman, pioneered total war during his infamous
"march to the sea" in 1864. His campaign effectively
destroyed his enemy in both physical and spiritual senses; it
ended America's most consequential military engagement.
Sherman believed that war should
be total, that it should be extended from a conflict between
recognized combatants to a conflict involving an enemy's entire
society, including its natural resources, farming and food supply,
utilities and other aspects of civilian life.
This shift in military strategy
only got worse during the 20th century. The first and second
World Wars added airplanes and toxic gases and then gas chambers,
fire bombings and nuclear weapons to the arsenal of total war.
This enhanced weaponry extended Sherman's model of military
engagement from the destruction of the civilian infrastructure
to the terrorization of the civilian population. And, in the
euphemistic language the so distinguished last century's bureaucratic
denial, the targeted civilian casualties of total war came to
be known as "collateral damage".
A new era of warfare is underway.
It differes significantly in terms of a number of the defining
features of 20th century military strategy. First, warfare today
seems constrained in the deployment of vast military forces,
mass armies; the first
Gulf War was a glorified police action in which a mass-mobilized
"coalition" slapped down a wayward, second-rate state.
Second, warfare appears restricted in the employment of the
most powerful weapons available through the military-industrial
complex; victory in World War I and II was predictated on the
maximium deployment of the most advanced technologies of mass
slaughter.
Our new era of warfare seems
to be defined by contained conflicts, battles restricted to collapsed
nation-states, limited in the use of advanced weaponry and rarely
involving multple-state alliances mercilessly contesting one
another. In this new ear of total war, collateral damage has
become a legitimate target of free-fire conflict.
One consequence of this new
era of military conflct is the changing role of rape. First,
there has been an increase in the number of reported rapes; this
increase in reflected in (a) the number of reported rapes taking
place during a specfic conflict and in (b) an overall number
of conflcts taking place throughout the world. Second, more
militaries have adopted rape as an (unofficial) operational techique
in their total war campaign. While the enemy male combatant
is beaten or shot, sometimes tortured, raped or even murdered
in detention, the systematic rape of girls and women appears
to be an innovative and accepted technique of today's total war
culture.
Fulfilling Sherman's gruesome
vision, the line between the warrior and the noncombatant, the
soldier and the civilian, has been formally obliterated. As this
happened, warfare had but one unexploited territory to systematically
plunder, the enemy's physical being, it's living body.
Adult males are plunders through
torture; some boys and females of all ages are plundered through
rape. For females, plunder, invasion, rape both harms and stigmatizes.
Some believe that rape signifies pollution, of both the woman
and the "fruits" of her conquest. Rape has become
a defining feature of total war in these early years of the 21st
century.
* *
*
Last summer, the third U.S.
soldier from Company B, First Battalion, 502nd Infantry, 101st
Airborne Division, was sentenced for his part in the rape and
murder of an Iraqi family in Mahmudiya, a Sunni town 20 miles
south of Baghdad. As some might recall, these soldiers broke
into a family home, raped the teenage Abeer Qassim al-Janabi
while her parents and a 7-year-old sister were locked in a backroom,
and then killed her and her family. For their crimes, the soldiers
received a combined total prison sentence of over three hundred
years.
This third soldier is Jesse
Spielman, a 23-year-old U.S. Army private; he was sentenced to
110 years. Earlier this year, Sergeant Paul Cortez was sentenced
to 90 years and, in November 2006, Specialist James Barker got
a 100 year sentence. Each was found guilty of four counts of
murder, rape, conspiracy to commit rape, housebreaking with the
intent to commit rape and conspiracy to commit rape. In March
2007, Pfc. Bryan L. Howard, 19-years-old, pleaded guilty to monitoring
radio communications and received 27 months confinement.
Steven Green, described as
the ringleader, was discharged in May 2006 on psychiatric grounds
apparently before the army learned of the Mahmudiya episode and
is awaiting trial. Court testimony indicates the following sequence
of horror: Cortez and Barker raped the girl; Green shot the
parents and younger sister; he then raped the older girl, killed
her and they poured kerosene on her body and set it on fire.
Earlier this year, Federal prosecutors in Louisville announced
their intention to seek the death penalty in Green's case.
The teenage rape victim was
Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi; Abeer means "fragrance of
flowers". Pictures
of the perpetrators show very young men who seem not only
inexperienced with the ways of the world, but profoundly unprepared
for the horrors of war that awaited them in Iraq. Green told
a journalist: "This war is different from all the ones that
our fathers and grandfathers fought. Those wars were for something.
This war is for nothing."
The soldiers seem as much victims
of Bush's total war as Abeer and her poor family.
* *
*
On July 29, 2007, a particularly
gruesome case of human slaughter took place in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC). According to a UN report, a soldier
in North Kivu province allegedly raped and then chopped to death
a Hutu woman and her three-month-old baby.
A UN press release says the
rape was emblematic of "violations by the Congolese national
police and by armed rebel groups, including the murder and rape
of villagers and the extortion and robbing of civilians."
Yakin Ertürk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against
Women, denounced the sexual violence in the DRC as the worst
she has ever seen.
According to the UN, 27,000
sexual assaults were reported in 2006 in South Kivu province
and this is understood as just a fraction of the total number
of rape casualties across the country. "The sexual violence
in Congo is the worst in the world," said John Holmes, the
UN's under secretary general for humanitarian affairs. "The
sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity--it's
appalling."
Other Western observers are
equally shocked by what appears to be an unprecedented level
of sexual violence. Malteser International, a relief agency
of the Sovereign Order of Malta and working in the eastern Congo,
reports that in one town, Shabunda, 70 percent of the women admitted
being sexually brutalized. André Bourque, a Canadian
consultant who works with aid groups in eastern Congo, warned
that "sexual violence in Congo reaches a level never reached
anywhere else. It is even worse than in Rwanda during the genocide."
Perpetrators of sexual violence
include Congolese government troops, who are judged among the
worst offenders. They also include the so-called Rastas, paramilitary
groups who terrorize the rural countryside by kidnapping and
raping women, burning babies and slaughtering anyone who challenges
them. They are mostly former Hutu militias that fled Rwanda
after the genocide wars of 1994 and survive deep in the forest,
recognized by their dreadlocked, shiny tracksuits and Los Angeles
Lakers jerseys. In addition, there are the local militias called
the Mai-Mai who invoke a far older military mythology: they slick
themselves with oil before marching into battle. [New York Times,
October 7, 2007]
Since 2003, the Darfur region of western Sudan has been the site
systematic terror. According to Amnesty International, "In
these attacks, men are killed, women are raped and villagers
are forcibly displaced from their homes which are burnt; their
crops and cattle, their main means of subsistence, are burnt
or looted." [AI, "Darfur: Rape as a weapon of war:
sexual violence and its consequences," 19 July 2004]
To date, in Darfur an estimated
2.5 million people have been displaced, more than 400,000 have
died and an untold number of women and girls have been raped
and sexually terrorized. A 2007 report by Refugees International
found that "the raping of Darfuri women is not sporadic
or random, but is inexorably linked to the systematic destruction
of their communities." It claims that the government-backed
janjawid militiamen, the "armed men on horses or "Arab
militia," practice rape as a weapon of ethnic cleansing.
[RI, "Laws Without Justice: An Assessment of Sudanese Laws
Affecting Survivors of Rape"]
Most recently, a March 2008
report by Louise Arbour found that there were "strong indications"
that members of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) committed rapes
of women and girls in Sirba, north of West Darfur's capital,
El Geneina. The report stated that one eyewitness saw "four
girls being escorted to an abandoned hut and raped at gunpoint
by a group of soldiers belonging to the SAF."
Two additional examples document
the growing use of sexual terror on women and girls since the
end of the Cold War. In Rwanda, the UN estimated that as many
as 500,000 women and girls suffered brutal forms of sexual violence,
including gang-rape and sexual mutilation, of which many were
infected with HIV/Aids. In Bosnia, more than 40,000 Muslim women
were estimated to have been raped and some impregnated girls
were forced to bear "the enemy's" child. These examples
suggest the increased use of rape as a technique of total warfare.
* *
*
In his elegant meditation,
"War
Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning," Chris Hedges grasps
the dehumanizing role of war:
War breaks down long-established
prohibitions against
violence, destruction, and murder. And with this often comes
the crumbling of sexual, social, and political norms as the
domination and brutality of the battlefield is carried into
personal life. Rape, mutilation, abuse, and theft are the
natural outcome of a world in which force rules, in which
human beings are objects. ["War," p. 103]
A war can be a social revolution
or an ethnic genocide, a clash of vast armies or a civil conflict.
War can set people free or subject them to the worst mass vengeance.
In either case long-established prohibitions, what Freud called
the superego, brake down. People become other than themselves.
Yet, the vengeance of war can be rationalized, focused into
an accepted tactic of military doctrine.
General Sherman, who introduced
total war, once observed: "We are not only fighting hostile
armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich
and poor, feel the hard hand of war." He urged his fellow
Unionists that they must "make the war so terrible ... [and]
make them [non-combatants] so sick of war that generations would
pass away before they would again appeal to it."
Sherman developed the strategy
of total war from his experience during the Second Seminole War
of 1835-1842, serving under General (and future President) Zachary
Taylor. He was most galled by the Native people's innovative
use of mobile attacks which permitted them to quickly strike
and disappear.
In the face of such unorthodox
warfare, he called for the total eradication of the Seminole
people. "I want you to be bold, enterprising, and at all
times full of energy," he told his soldiers, "when
you begin, let it be a campaign of annihilation, obliteration
and complete destruction. ..." In particular, he singled
out the destruction of Seminole enclaves and the indiscriminate
killing of warriors; he targeted farms at harvest time and buffalo
herds to eliminate the Seminole's food source.
Over the last century-and-a-half,
total war has been systematically extended from food stuffs to
innocent collateral victims to anyone who, in Sherman's words,
is part of the "hostile people." Louise Arbour's
decision to resign her UN position is testament to how Bush administration
policies of total war are fostering international moral crises.
The military targeting of girls and women for sexual assault
and rape has become the most extreme expression of this crisis.
Whether involving U.S. grunts in Iraq or janjawid in Darfur,
rape is an instrument of total war. Rape is a form of torture,
especially targeted at females. It is intended to not only inflict
pain, but to shame the victim by undermining her sense of personal
dignity and self-identity.
In addition to rape during
total war, girls and women have been subject to increased reported
incidents of forced prostitution and sex trafficking in non-war
enclaves of intensifying globalization. These crimes illustrate
how the scope of total war is expanding to everyday life. War
is migrating from the remote battlefield to the urban downtown;
from recognized conflicts between hostile armies to but another
aspect of illicit commerce wrecking havoc on developing nations
throughout the world. Total war is modernity's self-negation.
David Rosen can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.
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