It Has Nothing To Do With The War. Really.

According to data obtained by the Associated Press, the number of officers forced out of the Army due to misconduct has more than tripled in the past three years.  In the meantime, the number of enlistees who left the Army under similar circumstances has nearly doubled.

Increases in both categories, though not quite as dramatic, were also reported in the Navy and Air Force.  

I am writing about this issue because some of those officers and enlisted personnel resigned, whether on their own accord or under duress, after being charged with sexual assualt.

General Ray Odierno, the Army's top officer, admitted that his branch of the Armed Forces sometimes "overlooked character issues" as it struggled to recruit as many men and women as it needed to fight twelve years of war on two different fronts.  Because of those difficulties, many soldiers and officers were repeatedly re-deployed, which may have pushed some whose stability and sanity were already questionable over the edge.

While General Odierno couched his criticisms in bureaucratic language, as people in positions like his are wont to do, he was at least more forthright than Army General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  He insisted, "It is not the war that caused this". 

Oh, really?

So you mean to tell us that war doesn't hype up a military culture based on male domination enforced by violence?  Or that the promotions many female enlistees and officers have earned couldn't have stirred up the resentment of male recruits with borderline personalities?

I also can't help but to feel that in our invasion of Iraq, and our attempt to do the same in Afghanistan, our "enemies"--which is to say, anyone who is or seems as if he or she could be from those countries or any that surround them--have been demonized and even dehumanized in ways that our foes in previous wars never were.  Some of that had to do with the events of 11 September 2011, to be sure. But I think there's also some pure-and-simple bigotry at play:  Germans, Russians and even Japanese never seemed to evoke the visceral hatred too many of my compatriots express at the mere thought of someone who's Middle Eastern or Muslim.

And, of course, when you look closely at racism--or, for that matter, any other form of bigotry--the object of one's hatred is always seen as someone to be sexually subjugated. That is the reason why racism and other kinds of hatred are so intertwined with sexism, homophobia and transphobia.  It's also the reason why there are women--particularly in the ranks of officers--who have behaved just as badly as men:  They know that to survive in such an atmosphere of male domination and repression, the have to behave like such men. 

In brief, as long as there is war--especially if the same people are deployed over and over again to fight it--some of those people will turn on each other.  And, in an atmosphere of brutality and domination, sex will be one of the weapons.

Why They Defected

Although most of my votes have gone to candidates from the Democratic Party, I can't say I've ever been terribly enthusiastic about the party--or, for that matter, most of the candidates for whom I've voted.  For one thing, I think many cities--including New York--are over-regulated.  And, too often, their rhetoric about "inclusion" is simply a smokescreen.  As an example, I think Obama "supports" gay rights (and gay marriage, only after Joe Biden beat him to it) only because the finance and insurance industries employ a lot of gay men (here in New York, anyway).  And those companies are his largest campaign contributors.  

But I've voted for, if not always identified with, Democrats because right around the time I started voting, the religious zealots and hatemongers started to worm their way into the Republican Party.  And now, it seems, they are running the show.

I'm not the only one who thinks that way.  No less than Carlo R. Key says as much, with even greater depth of knowledge than I'll ever have.

Who is Mr. Key?  He's a Texas judge who decided to leave his party and join the Democrats.  That's quite a move for someone in his position.  What's even more telling, though, is his explanation for it:

 Rational Republican beliefs have given way to ideological character assassination. Pragmatism and principle have been overtaken by pettiness and bigotry. Make no mistake; I have not left the Republican Party. It left me. I cannot tolerate a Republican Party that demeans Texans based on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin, or their economic status. I will not be a member of a party in which hate speech elevates candidates for higher office rather than disqualifying them. I cannot place my name on the ballot for a political party that is proud to destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of federal workers over the vain attempt to repeal a law that would provide healthcare to millions of people throughout our country. .. I would hope that more people of principle will follow me.

The man didn't pull any punches.   But there is also a note of sadness:  "I have not left the Republican Party.  It left me."  At least his move doesn't seem to be one of political opportunism, and even has fairness as a motive:  "I cannot tolerate a Republican Party that demeans Texans based on their sexual orientation, the color of their skin or their economic status."  Couldn't have said it any better myself.

The hate that has infested the party (and, I believe much of the political process) drove Judge Key out of the Republican Party--or, as he says, pulled it away from him--also motivated another high-profile move from the GOP to the Democrats.  In North Carolina, which has tried to suppress voter turnout, Congressional candidate Jason Thigpen announced his defection the other day:

 I simply cannot stand with a party where its most extreme element promote hate and division amongst people,” Thigpen said in a statement posted to his campaign website Thursday. “Nothing about my platform has, nor will it change. The government shutdown was simply the straw that broke the camels back. I guess being an American just isn’t good enough anymore and I refuse to be part of an extremist movement in the GOP that only appears to thrive on fear and hate mongering of anyone and everyone who doesn’t walk their line.

His switch is, perhaps, even more jarring than that of Judge Key because he spent six years in the Army, two of them deployed to Iraq as a gun-truck commander for a Convoy Security Team.  But that experience is another reason why he changed parties.  He says he "didn't go to war to defend the liberties and freedoms of one party, race or one income class of Americans".  So he simply could not abide the Republicans' attempt to make keep minorites and college students from voting.

While the Democrats are welcoming Thigpen and Judge Key with open arms, the party needs to heed a message both men voice:  that their party needs to represent everyone, not just certain segments of the population.  Simply supporting gay marriage is not enough; if the party is serious about representing the underrepresented, it needs to remember the "T" at the end of "LGBT" and all members of "minority" groups.

The Look

I can tell them from a mile away.  They're the ones who want to take you aside to talk to you.  They think they're doing something wrong, and they're waiting for--and fearing--your reaction.  And that's exactly the reason why they talk to you, and hope that you don't react the way others have screamed at, scolded or even beat them.


I first noticed that look--They're looking to you even when they can't look into your eyes, and they won't look into you--in a woman I dated a long time ago.  I was about 24; it was not long after I returned from France and my grandmother had died, and not long before an uncle would die and a friend would commit suicide.  She was a dozen years older than I was, and had divorced a few years earlier. For me, that was an eon:  I was still in high school when her alcoholic husband was beating her.  


We got into an argument about something I've long since forgotten.  Having almost no coping skills for such situations, I suggested that it might be better if I left.  "No," she insisted.  "At least you didn't beat me."


"Well, that just makes me a human being."


"That's not true.  Besides, you don't use sex on or over me.  You don't use sex, period."


I didn't quite understand what she meant.  I take that back: I knew full well what she meant, but I was sure that I couldn't have learned it in the same way she did.


Or did I?


Over the years, before and since I became sober, before and since my transition, females have come to me with that same look.  One was eight years old; another was seventy-nine and others were ages in between.  Of the in-betweens, I dated a few and had long-term relationships with two.  In the words of one, "My brothers used me for sex."  A student who talked me today said the same thing about her father.  Somehow, I knew, before she opened her mouth.  Another student, who did a tour of duty in Iraq before taking a class with me last semester, had that same look and confided a similarly appalling and terrifying story.  She and the student with whom I talked today spent time in foster care as a result of their sexual abuse and, in their new homes, were subject to more and new kinds of sexual violation.


I was spared the foster-care experience; my family was actually  stable, though it had its tough times.  And I was not abused by any family member.  However, I was molested by a close family friend.  Even when I wasn't consciously thinking of it--which was most of the time, for many years--the echoes of it still muttered like thunder through my sleep.   I can think of no other reason why other females wanted to talk about their experiences with me long before I was conscious of my own, and my own experience.  It seemed that wherever I looked, I saw their look.

Palm Sunday During Wartime

Yesterday I took a walk "around the block" that turned into an eight-mile trek.  I started out late in the afternoon, knowing that there were still a few hours of daylight remaining and the possibility of more rain looming.  But the rain held out until I was literally around the corner from my apartment, and then the soft cascade turned into a torrent literally as I entered the doorway to my building.


Some girls have all the luck, eh?  


My walk took me through past the quiet facades of brick houses.  Inside many of them, families--some consisting of two or three people who may or may not have been related to each other by blood, others that were, in essence, miniature villages--were eating those Sunday meals that are neither lunch nor dinner because they encompass and eclipse both.  Nobody partakes in such a repast if he or she is living alone, and not many young couples or roommates do it.  In other words, it's not for those who "do brunch." The sort of Sunday meal I mean is, almost by definition, a family affair. And, as often as not, it follows said family returning from mass or some other religious gathering--especially one of a Sunday like yesterday, which happened to be Palm Sunday.


Even when the bustle spilled out of doors, the streets were still enveloped in that silence--proscribed and followed as if by some unseen, unheard command--that has sealed the people inside those houses away from the cries that, perhaps, they don't or can't see.  Or, by now those voices may be, as far as most people are concerned, mere background noise, like the shows that blare from their televisions during their meals.   


I first noticed that silence--that of damp Sunday afternoons--some time during my childhood.  It seemed to grow more intense, somehow, a year or so into the USA's invasion of Iraq.  By that time, armed Americans had been plying the valleys of Afghanistan for a few years, though it and the Iraq invasion seemed to have endured for far, far longer.  


Some of the funerals that resulted from those imperialist misadventures have, I'm sure, taken place in some along some of those streets I walked.  I saw more than a few flags and banners--and bumper stickers on the parked cars--that read "Support Our Troops" or "Semper Fi."  


What's interesting is that in those working-class Queens neighborhoods--home to many immigrants, some of whom are Muslims--one doesn't find the more overtly aggressive and violent messages (e.g., the bumper sticker that's a "license" to hunt terrorists and features a photo of Bin Laden with a target drawn over it) one finds in other areas.  Instead, people in the areas I saw today seem to have the idea that by "supporting" the troops (whatever that means) or "remembering" 9/11, they are showing that they are loyal Americans.  Given the political and social climate--and what it could become if the economy worsens--I can understand why they'd feel the need to do that.


So why am I talking about the wars or immigrants now?  I don't know.  I just got there somehow, just as I somehow ended up four miles from home on my walk yesterday.


Well, all right:  I think about those wars a lot.  The invasion of Iraq started not long after I'd begun to take hormones and was preparing myself to live full-time as Justine.  I recall understanding, for the first time in my life, that invading another country--especially if no citizen of said country has ever done anything to harm any member of the invading country--cannot be anything but an expression, on the part of the invaders, of profound disrespect for people who just happen to be different from themselves.  I understood, for the first time, that up to that point in my life, I had been part of the very structure--even if I were at the bottom-most rung of its ladder and owned almost nothing of its spoils--that not only carries out such invasions, but doesn't see them as such.


Of course, I wasn't thinking that during my walk--at least, not consciously.  There were only the silence of those streets, the dampness of the air and the rhythm of my steps, all of which somehow kept me walking.

An Execution of the Eve of Veterans' Day

In a very, very dark sense, it's fitting that John Allen Muhammad was executed on the eve of Veteran's Day. I unequivocally oppose the death penalty--yes, even for someone like Muhammad--and war, for any reason. For one thing, I figure that if a man who won a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in World War II (but who wrote, ahem, Thank God for the Atom Bomb) could tell me, "There is simply no way to justify one human being to kill another," what argument is there for any war or the death penalty? For another, I have come to understand that the only people who benefit from either one are the men (and, yes, almost all of them are men) who are the powers behind the social, economic and political systems in which both are conducted. There is never any justice for the loved ones of the victims of either monstrosity; there is no such thing as "closure" after such a loss. And revenge is not justice.

Also: No one has ever corrected or prevented a crime by committing the same sort of crime. The "war to end all wars" indeed! Finally, I simply cannot stomach the idea of a state, no matter how benevolent, having the power of life and death over any human being. Now, I know someone is going to say, "Well, would you rather that John Allen Muhammad have the power of life and death over someone else?" Of course I wouldn't. But he didn't have such power once he was captured.

As for war: What in the world are American troops doing in Afghanistan? What were they doing in Iraq--under Bush I or Bush II? And what, pray tell, were we doing in the Balkans region under the Clinton regime? How can anyone who has any respect at all for life put another person in a country where he's hated just because he's there by people who did nothing to harm him or the country he hails from?

Even if you accept the premise that American invlovement in, say, World War II was justified, how can you have so little respect for what your sons, fathers or neighbors accomplished and sacrificed in such a war that you would so cavalierly put them in some place where they face danger for no useful purpose?

I am thinking again about the story "Gunnar Berg" posted on his blog. How many people would refuse to fight, or set their "enemies" free if they could see the common humanity they share: That the desires and dreams of their enemies aren't so different from their own, and that perhaps their adversaries' children are, in some ways, like their own. Then perhaps they would understand the truism that war is between brothers. And that is the reason why nobody wins, ever.

Plus, in killing someone, you place him and whatever he represents above all else. Muhammad, as a result of his execution, will have had more attention paid to him than any of his victims ever had. And in a war, so much effort and materiel go into tracking down and killing "ememies" that those enemies take precedence over everything else--whether it's the economy, education or one's own loved ones