in the minority of the decent

[psiradish]

After McLaughlin Group this morning was a show running a story about U.S. soldiers in the military raping other U.S. soldiers. After some initial statistics that were woefully unsurprising and some first-hand accounts, came a particular story of a soldier assaulted by a man she had probably called a friend. After all, they played sports together

Comments

[psiradish]

I'm not over-fond of generalizations of any group - the military included. However, there are abundant indications that something is wrong with how the U.S. military turns people not into killing machines, but collectively into a killing machine. They are made into hive minds, where nothing is more important than the survival of the unit (whatever type or size it may be - up to and including the entire military as a whole), and every one of its members; where membership in the unit is the foundation of their identity. This practice is in some measure essential to building an effective military unit, and I don't inherently have anything against it. But far too often the unit seems to become the only thing that's important to a soldier, and membership in it becomes the only source of identity they have.

They tear down the individual to make them part of a team, and then leave only the team. They do not (sufficiently?) endeavor to rebuild the individual, or to instill in them their greater responsibility - and membership - as soldiers to the human race as a whole. And then atrocities are commited where some number of soldiers clearly lacked a proper sense of individual responsibility, individual accountability, individual morality; and we wonder why. The only difference between such soldiers and fanatical Nazis of yore is the orders they're given. The willingness to perform, and even rally around, evil acts is demonstrably the same.

We should be able to trust our soldiers. They should be fucking exemplars we can be proud of. And I'm not unwilling to consider that most of the time that could be the case - that most soldiers could fit the bill of hero to some degree or another. But whether the ones that don't fit that bill are a very small proportion of the whole military, or an astounding majority, the fact remains: they are too many.

As for rape in general, it's about entitlement more than just power. Entitlement born of lingering remnants of the once open belief that women are property, existing solely at and for the pleasure of men, and incapable of possessing any worth otherwise. That, and the inexpressibly stupid notion - especially in this day and age - that women cannot bare the "shame" of openly asking for and/or consenting to sex, so they induce men to rape them instead in order to have their sexual needs fulfilled.

[ladymiranoy]

Soldiers are supposed to be our paladins and knights, but like in all institutions, there are bad seeds that should by all means be weeded out by the numerous tests they put them through. But oh no. I was going into the Navy, and they don't boot you unless you're sociopathic, and even then, they might just keep you and medicate the hell out of you.

And I swear to God if I ever hear anyone say that rape is the victim's fault, I will commit homicide.