[News] Sexual Assault in the U. S. Military

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/rosen03192010.html
March 19 - 21, 2010


Sexual Assault in the U. S. Military


The Third Front

By DAVID ROSEN

Earlier this week the Defense Department [DoD] 
issued its report on sexual assault in the 
military during 2009. It detailed that in 2009, 
compared to 2008, reports of military sexual 
assault witnessed an 11 percent increase and, 
most disturbing, a 16 percent increase in 
reported assaults in combat territories like Iraq and Afghanistan.

American female soldiers are paying dearly for 
America’s imperialist misadventures. When these 
young and committed women enlist in the military 
they are unlikely told that they will be fighting 
a two-front war: One fight involves foreign 
combatants, the other their fellow male soldiers. 
Many male soldiers, like their brethren on the 
football field and into extreme fighting, likely 
see the military as the last bastion of 
traditional virility. For them, the battlefield 
remains a sacred terrain of orgiastic violence. 
And for some of them, the eroticism represented 
by the female soldier is more disconcerting then 
the threat posed by the “terrorist” enemy. These 
women, postmodern warriors, are all too often the 
victims of premodern masculine rage. The past dies slowly.

The sexual assault of female soldiers by male 
soldiers is the third front in modern U.S. 
warfare. The first front is the ostensible enemy, 
whether al Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks or Iraq for 
its oil. The second front is the occupied 
domestic population that resists invasion and 
occupation by the U.S. military, even if such 
occupation is ostensibly for their own good.

The third front is the internal struggle within 
the military itself as it battles to maintain 
global imperialism. As American’s political and 
military leaders learned during the Second World 
War, racism contributes to military 
inefficiencies. More telling, in Vietnam, 
fragging of officers by enlisted men spoke to the 
deeper class and race crisis wracking America and 
contributed to military failure. Today, class and 
race tensions have been intensified by battles 
over gender and sexuality. With the likely end to 
the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy and the final 
full integration of America’s all-voluntary 
military, the privileges of the (white) 
heterosexual patriarchal soldier are becoming memories of by-gone days.

White Christian heterosexual patriarchy continues 
its sputtering crisis. It has maintained a 
tyrannical reign over Western civilization for 
two centuries. The slow emergence of a secular, 
hedonistic and globalized culture, an alternative 
value system freed from gender- and race-based 
religious superstition (but nonetheless mired in 
capitalist exploitation) may finally undermine patriarchy.

* * *

In December 2009, the DoD issued a long-awaited 
report on sexual assault in the military. A “blue 
ribbon” committee, Sexual Assault Prevention and 
Response (SAPR) Task Force, spent nearly a 
year-and-a-half interviewing over 3,500 service 
members in 60 U.S. military facilities throughout 
the world. Its 179-page report is a study in a 
bureaucratic whitewash. [Defense Task Force on 
Sexual Assault in the Military Services]

Whether due to clerical error or whistle-blower 
subversion, the report’s underlying 
methodological weakness is stated clearly: "DoD's 
procedures for collecting and documenting data 
about military sexual assault incidents are 
lacking in accuracy, reliability, and validity." 
Can one believe anything the DoD says?

Ann Wright, writing in TruthOut, pointed out that 
the DoD agency setup by former Secretary of 
Defense Donald (“the war criminal”) Rumsfeld to 
track incidents of sexual assault “has not 
established a database or the necessary tools to 
accurately track the incidence, investigation, 
and prosecution of sexual assaults in the Armed 
Forces.” She notes that the Task Force’s website 
lists 20 reports on sexual assault since 1988 and 
there are many more reports prior to that date. 
[Truthout, Feb. 17, 2010] Cover-up, obfuscation 
and deception are the watchwords of today’s 
military leadership. The fiscal crimes committed 
on Wall Street are mirrored in the shameful 
practices of those in the Pentagon.

Women have served in the American military since 
the Revolution. A Massachusetts volunteer by the 
name of “Robert Shurtliff” was actually Deborah 
Sampson in drag; when she was outed, Gen. 
Washington awarded her an honorable discharge. In 
the Civil War, Sarah Rosetta Wakeman cut her 
hair, donned men’s attire and served as Lyons Wakeman, a decorated Yankee.

During World War II, military necessity and 
domestic political pressure brought women and 
African-Americans into the Armed Forces. Some 
350,000 women served and 16 were killed in 
action. However, patriarchy being what it was, 
women did not serve in active duty but were 
nurses or assigned to “auxiliary” corps, including the legendary WACs.

In the wake of Vietnam War and the failed 
experience with an unpopular draft, the demands 
of empire required an ever-larger pool of willing 
(i.e., “volunteer”) cannon fodder. The Panama 
invasion of 1989 marked the formal integration of 
women into combat with Capt. Linda Bray’s 
commanded of U.S. soldiers in battle. The U.S. 
military’s push into the Middle East to protect 
its oil interests and client state, Israel, 
established the operating environment of today’s 
military. The 1991 Gulf War saw over 40,000 women 
serving in active duty positions.

* * *

The SARP Task Force identified an 
often-overlooked fact of today’s military: sexual 
assault of male soldiers. For example, it notes 
that Pfc. Cody Openshaw was raped by a 
noncommissioned officer in charge of the medical 
unit while recovering from a parachute accident. 
Openshaw did not report the incident when it 
happened and, five years later and after 
suffering nightmares, excessive drinking and 
increasing isolation, sought help. Failing to 
find solace, he committing suicide. In 2007, 12 
percent (approximately 260) of the reported 2,200 
rapes in the military were male victims.

Nevertheless, sexual assault within the military 
is predominantly targeted at women, active duty 
soldiers and private contractors assisting the 
military in war zones. Rep. Jane Harman [D-CA], 
speaking before a House panel investigating 
sexual assault within the military handles, 
reported visiting a Los Angeles area VA hospital 
in area and being shocked by what she learned. 
"My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 
percent of the female veterans seen there say 
they were victims of sexual assault while serving 
in the military," she said. "Twenty-nine percent 
say they were raped during their military 
service. They spoke of their continued terror, 
feelings of helplessness and downward spirals 
many of their lives have taken since.

Most telling, Harman observed: "We have an 
epidemic here. 
 Women serving in the U.S. 
military today are more likely to be raped by a 
fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq."

Like civilian sexual assault reports to local 
police, DoD rape reports are significantly 
underreported. According to the Pentagon’s own 
estimate, 80 percent of assaults are not 
reported. However, a series of third-party 
studies provide shocking evidence to the extent of rape within the military.

A 2004 study published in “Military Medicine” of 
Vietnam and subsequent war veterans found that 71 
percent of the women were sexually assaulted or 
raped. A 2003 study published in the “American 
Journal of Industrial Medicine” covering women 
serving from Vietnam to the Gulf War found that 
30 percent of the women soldiers said they were 
raped. Earlier, a 1995 study of female Gulf War 
veterans and published in the “Archives of Family 
Medicine” found that 90 percent of women soldiers had been sexually harassed.

In 2008, there were nearly 3,000 reported cases 
of rape and sexual assault in the military, up 
nearly 9 percent from 2007. Of these, there were 
165 sexual assault reports in Iraq and 
Afghanistan, up from 131 sexual assaults reported 
in 2007. Of the 2008 cases, approximately 10 
percent (317) were referred for courts-martial or 
military trials and another 247 were referred for non-judicial actions.

Today, some 200,000 active-duty women are among 
the 1.4 million people serving in the U.S. 
military. The latest DoD data, which came out 
after the Task Force met, states that there were 
3,230 reports of sexual assault filed during 
2009. “One sexual assault is too many,” puffs 
Kaye Whitley, the director of the Pentagon’s 
sexual assault prevention and response office. 
The report showed that 87 percent were male on 
female while 7 percent were male on male.

One can only ask when is enough enough.

David Rosen is the author of 
“<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0978252683/counterpunchmaga>Sex 
Scandals America: Politics & the Ritual of Public 
Shaming” (Key, 2009); he can be reached at 
<mailto:drosen at ix.netcom.com>drosen at ix.netcom.com.




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