Why The Torture is Sexual

Why is it that the U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghuraib prison used rape and sexual humiliation against the prisoners? For the same reason that Saddam used it, and other military forces use it. It destroys the prisoner's sense of self, and gives the jailor the feeling they are omnipotent. But there is a larger political element to it, too.

For the torturer, sexual assault breaks a prisoner's will faster than any other kind of physical abuse. This is particularly true in cultures in which rape is considered shameful for the victim. Prof. Juan Cole quotes the editor of the London newspaper al-Quds al-Arabia saying: "That really, really is the worst atrocity. It affects the honour and pride of Muslim people. It is better to kill them than sexually abuse them." (Emphasis added.)

Torturing someone is fun. There is a law of conservation of personhood: breaking the prisoner's will has the equal and opposite effect in the torturer. The soldiers in the photos are having a ball. Probably, none of them have had the opportunity to indulge their sadistic impulses before and now they find they love it. Look at the grin on the face of Private Lynndie England in the picture above. She's drunk with power as she pantomimes pointing guns at the prisoners' balls. I wonder if she pressed that cigarette against the skin of the helpless men in front of her. It certainly looks like it would be part of the show. These pictures were souvenirs, meant to be kept and taken out to recall good times.

I define civilization as the responsible and rational use of power. By behaving in a barbaric manner, these soldiers have provided a hook on which an entire culture of a billion people can attach their simmering anti-Americanism. But that reaction is not totally irrational. I think the soldiers, in part, did want to send a political message, too. As Juan Cole says:

The genteel mainstream news reports of this scandal (which have given it less attention than it deserves or than it will get in the Arab press) have not commented on the explicitly sexual message sent by the abusers, which is that Iraq is f**ked.

That message is the boiled-down version of Bush's foreign policy: We will do what we like because we have the power to do so. That policy and the political support behind it is a reaction to the weakness Americans felt after 9/11. Bush knew those feelings could boil over into domestic political resentment against him unless he took bold action, however unjust. Dissecting the thick tissue of lies and distortions used to justify the Iraq invasion, one of the more honest statements made was "We need to invade Iraq to show them we can." This was intended as a rational statement of deterrence policy, demonstrating that the U.S. would be irrational and violent in response to any attack on U.S. soil, so as to undercut societal support in the Middle East for further terrorism against us. But it was so well received not because it was a sound policy (which it isn't, of course), but because it fed the average American desire to "kick ass and kill a buncha sand niggers." When American troops covered the face of Saddam's statue in Baghdad, they used a flag that flew at the World Trade Center. The historically approved method to subjugate people is to send your troops to occupy their land, and kill them or rape them. Soldiers know that script instinctively. Whatever pretty words were used to justify it, that's a principal reason America invaded Iraq in 2003.

The sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners isn't an isolated abberation, it's the physical expression of a mindset that produced the foreign policy of the Bush administration. We have to punish the people who committed these war crimes, but we also have to change that mindset, or we truly will have lost the war.

Comments

[Oldman]

Certainly Taguba's report indicates that these aren't isolated incidents. Makes you wonder what the hell is going on over there. How does this advance the WoT? That's the sickening thing. It's not even as if these poor buggers had operational information. This was just for fun. How can the ends justify the means when the end is itself pointless?

Sooo what????

Keep in mind, many of those prisoners had likely tried to kill, maim, decapitate, and injure American soldiers. I couldn't care less WHAT happened to them in those prisons.

Humiliating???? Tough SHIT. How humbling is it for a severely impared soldier returning to the US to resume his/her life because of a roadside bomb planted by any one of these camel jockeys???

Remember - THEY WERE PRISONERS. They were there for a reason and are not innocent bystanders.
"Waaaa, waaaaah. We tried to kill the Americans and we failed and got caught. Now we're going to cry about mistreatment".

Whining crybaby moron wimp. Suck it up. The world is brutal. I'm glad the US gives what it gets. I don't care what the rest of the world thinks of the US. Leave us the f* alone - as being a "fine moral upstanding example of a country" costs more lives, and it's just not worth trying to impress the rest of the world's whining crybabies.

[rick pietz]

Lynndie England's hot.

KIDDING!!! (It's kind of hard to use subtle satire in this format)

It's hard for me to imagine anything more 'in your face' than these photos for the young men of the region.

With all of the studies showing that guard/prisoner relationships tend toward abuse, even among 'normal college students'. The leadership knows this stuff. The military commissioned a huge amount of the studies.

Something is wrong here. There is a disconnect between what the leadership wants to do, what the world will quitely accept, and how the average American wants to see himself.

What is the self image that the 'average' American want's to have?

[nick paul]

.. and much like 9/11, a critical mass of pictorial evidence is increasing the impact of the event.

[Leo F. Stahl]

This is all very sad.
But what is our National Guard doing over there?
Don't we have a regular Army?
They say there is now seven soldiers involved, how about all the people you see standing around.
I think this came down from the higest command and who would that be?
If these seven soldiers are the only ones convicted, It is a disgrace to our country to our people and to our Military.
President Bush has lied to the people of this great country, he should be the first one to step down

[Jerry]

I can't find it now, but believe Seymor Hersh quoted an author that the "neo-cons' had lined up to read or meet ... seems in one of his books, he spent nearly 20 pages talking about the sexual angle so far as Arab men were concerned. A direct and very heavy shame connection ... implying the use of sexual torture to get them to "turn." I have long wondered how the Israelis were able to turn devoted and dedicated Palestinian terrorists into double agents. Then, I recalled Hersh had said the Office of Special Plans that was set up by Doug Feith, et al, was receiving serious inside information into interrogation techniques the Israelis have used. As a result, I'd bet there is a direct correlation between the feed given by the Israeli Army, or Mossad, or both, to the OSP's staff and what interrogation techniques were used at Guantanamo, then Baghram Airport in Afghanistan, and then the airport holding facilities at Baghdad Airport and Abou Ghrayab. The neo-cons are alll shills for the Israeli government. This is why any true probing into this connection will open up a Pandora's Box ... the Iraqis may already know that the connection between Israel, the U.S. forces, and the interrogation techniques are all one and the same. It will only serve to reinforce the hatred Iraqis have for U.S. forces.