Tag: military

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Lies

Lies

In the astonishing case of Brig. General Jeffrey Sinclair, a woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted by the general.

During the process of prosecuting Sinclair, it emerged that Sinclair and the woman had been conducting an affair for three years. The general was married. Adultery, in the army, is a serious offense, but it is not a criminal offense outside of the army: it is grounds for divorce. In any case, prosecutors dropped the assault charges after the credibility of the woman making the charges was shattered: personal e-mails showed that the affair was more than consensual. She badly wanted him to divorce his wife and marry her.

There was an outcry. Injustice! Yes, I agree, a person who knowingly lies about a serious matter like that should be punished. She almost caused General Sinclair to be court-martialed and imprisoned for life. You read that right: in the military, sexual assault can lead to a life sentence. So people are naturally outraged.

Except that she is not the target of her outrage.

They are outraged that General Sinclair “got away with it”!

Now, you may or may not agree that the woman should be punished for lying to prosecutors, but to continue to insist that General Sinclair should be punished for carrying on a consensual affair is absurd. The chief army prosecutor in the case, Colonel Helixon, upon discovering the complainant’s dishonesty, moved to have the case dismissed, as he should have. But his superior officers, aware of the growing public controversy– Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was demanding a change to the way the army handles cases of sexual assault– ordered him to press ahead with a case he did not believe in. He was so troubled by this, he threatened to withdraw from the case, and seemed to have some kind of mental breakdown. He did eventually withdraw but his successor, Colonel Stelle, came to the same conclusion and conceded that he would be unlikely to win a conviction if the case went to trial. This time, the brass acceded to his recommendation to withdraw charges against Sinclair.

That is not an insignificant fact: the prosecution believed that a judge would not believe the charges against Sinclair. In other words, there was strong evidence that it was nothing more than a consensual affair that had gone sour, and when it was discovered, the supposed victim realized that she herself could be charged and punished unless she insisted that she had not consented, that she had, in fact, been raped. And, what the hell, the General only seemed interested in sex. She wasn’t having his way with him anymore.

It is possible, if not likely, that she was motivated by revenge.

Incidentally, Senator Gillibrand, a Democrat, has received a 100% approval rating from the National Rifle Association. She describes herself as having one of the most conservative voting records in the state of New York, when she was a Congressional Representative.

A rather fawning profile of Senator Gillibrand in Vogue. Apparently “her eyes flicker with joy” when discussing gay rights, according to author Jonathan Van Meter.

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Rape Culture

The Pentagon poll defined sexual assault broadly enough to include a slap on the behind-and half of its self-reported victims were men. Cathy Young, Reason.com

It is such a touchy topic. Why? Because there is a very well documented history of men dismissing rape as something trivial and victims as complicit. If a professor or an employer or a soldier was accused, his colleagues and compadres rallied to his defense. Defense lawyers were allowed to make suggestive forays into a woman’s sexual history. There was a cultural adherence to the idea that it was impossible to rape a truly unwilling woman, and the shame of it all. In conservative nations today, that attitude yet prevails.

There has been progress, though not enough, on these issues, But there also been excess, to the point where some feminists openly assert that any woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted should automatically be believed, which, in defiance of the facts, many seem to insist on in the Sinclair case (left). And yet we continue to have cases where women clearly lied and men have been falsely accused, reputations destroyed, lives upended. And too often, these lies have been excused and the women or girls who made the false accusations have suffered no consequences.

I am more than a little perplexed by the number of women, including prominent politicians like Kirsten Gillibrand, who continue to insist that the woman in this affair must have been assaulted, no matter what her credibility issues. Some even insist that, whether she was “assaulted” or not, any relationship between two people who have unequal power or authority is inherently abusive. Does this mean that it is impossible that two people in such positions can be mutually attracted to each other or have a mutually consensual relationship?

Or is this all about the adultery? Our moral repugnance at the thought of two adults having consensual sex.

These peoples’ jobs, by the way, is to kill people. When pilots recklessly bombed their own (and Canadian) troops in Afghanistan, all was forgiven, even when other soldiers warned them that the target was questionable. When they bombed a wedding by mistake killing more than a dozen old men, women, and children… It was understandable. Boys will be boys. War is hell. And when helicopter pilots murdered a group of civilians in Iraq, including a Reuters reporter: well, you just don’t understand the pressures these boys are under. They were just doing their job. We’ll give each victim’s family 2000 big U.S. dollars.

But when two of them touch each other and kiss and bring each other to physical ecstasy? THIS must be stopped.

And when it is revealed that the affair was more than consensual– well, it can’t be consensual, really, because he was her commanding officer. She couldn’t possibly have said no, or reported him immediately. She could wait three years (until it became apparent that he was not going to leave his wife for her, and that he had other girlfriends).

One letter writer in the New York Times says: “Excuse me? Wives are raped by their husbands all the time.” I’d be curious to know what she means by “all the time”.

This is a model of “justice” which essentially works out to this: a woman can start an affair with a superior officer any time she pleases and, no matter how she behaves in this relationship, always retain the option of suddenly deciding that she has been assaulted and forced into sex. She thereby is able to excuse her own behavior, which, under the Military Code of Justice is also illegal (if the sexual partner was married) and destroy her lover, economically, socially, and psychologically.

This is obscene, but it appears to be the standard that Gillibrand and others are demanding.

The Redefinition of Rape

Other Notes

Real Wisdom, from the NY Times article above:

At the same time, students need to be told clearly that if they are voluntarily under the influence (but not incapacitated), they remain responsible for their sexual choices.

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The Naked Assassin: Nidal Malik Hasan

Nidal Malik Hasan killed 14 soldiers the other day, at Fort Hood, Kileen, Texas.

Hasan was an army psychiatrist who was supposed to help frustrated and anxious soldiers deal with their issues before being sent back to war, or civilian life. He was also a devout Muslim. Republicans are sounding the alarm about this– kind of screeching, really, that you can’t trust a Muslim, and that this whole idea of “tolerance” and respect for diversity, should be shelved in a favor of a good, old-fashioned, bitchin’ jihad.

Pat Robertson solemnly intoned that Islam is a religion of death. This, from the guy who supports the death penalty and once advocated assassinating Hugo Chavez.

Hasan is a Muslim. He apparently became more and more disturbed about the idea of serving an army that was involved in war against Muslims as it became clear that he himself was going to be deployed to Afghanistan. I suppose he wouldn’t have been bothered if we had been making war on fellow Christians, as in World War I and II, or Buddhists, or Hindus or Communists.

Come to think of it– why was it a problem? In all of the history of the world, has the religion of our enemies ever been a factor in whether or not we were gladly willing to slaughter thousands of them without mercy? My goodness, Mr. Hasan– what’s your problem? Why are you in the military in the first place? If you don’t want to kill people….

The real reason we kill people is, usually, money. Oil. What’s love got to do with it?

Or is it race, after all? If Germany had continued to fight like the Japanese, would we have used the nuclear bomb on Berlin? Do you even wonder for a moment? Never.

When I first heard about the shootings at Fort Hood, I thought, well, there you go: another trained killer does his job. Why are we surprised? Why is anyone surprised when, occasionally, trained killers “go off” without orders, without a plan, without logic, except that blinding, incoherent fury at the world?

But Hasan is a Muslim. He is a devout Muslim. He went to a strip club. That’s right– several times, shortly before the shooting, where he paid girls to give him lap – dances. So how did we know he was a “devout” Muslim? Because he said so? The way we say so, when we proclaim that we are devout Christians, going off to destroy Iraq even though it had nothing to do with 9/11?

There was usually more than one customer at the strip club, and most of them were not “devout” Muslims.

Senator Joe Lieberman insists that he is going to investigate if the army did a lousy job of assessing the risk posed by Dr. Hasan, since he clearly proclaimed his ethical problems with serving in the American army long before he exploded into the news.

Now let me be clear– I don’t think anybody can know for sure, in advance, just who is going to be the next mass killer in America. If the signs were that clear, you would hear about people being detained because some credible experts believed these persons were about to go on a shooting spree. Never happens. Why? Because we can’t know who is about to do it. Well, yes, there is that constitutional issue– but Bush solved that and Obama doesn’t seem poised to change it. Yes, we can arrest and detain and even torture people who have not committed any crimes. Damn right. Bless you, Rudolph Giuliani.

It seems to me that the army was actually quite sensible about dealing with Hasan. I would bet that he wasn’t the only Muslim in the army who expressed strong misgivings about the mission to Afghanistan. I would bet that there was not a single “unmistakable” sign that he was about to do what he did. Unless you count the fact that he bought some guns.

But then again, he was in the army. Then again, he was in America.

It is my understanding that the Obama Administration is continuing George Bush’s policy of “extraordinary rendition”– detaining and hold terror suspects and shipping them to other countries like Egypt or Jordan or Syria to be tortured.

Was there ever a bigger public illusion than the illusion of democracy in the U.S.?