Search Results for: rape military

Steve Coll deconstructs the view from the other side of the border:

About forty-five thousand Mexicans have died since Calderón called out the dogs. Many thousands of the victims are public servants—police, judges, mayors, and legislators—or civilians caught in crossfire. In the name of defending them, the country’s military has carried out horrifying atrocities, degrading the legitimacy of a state that was weak enough to begin with, as a Human Rights Watch report released this week documents. For all this, the flow of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth into the United States—although hard to measure with any precision—has not been substantially reduced.

Meanwhile, the cartels are going after Mexican bloggers and social media users:

Alan Jacobs asks:

For me, the question that looms largest about the Penn State sexual-abuse scandal is this: How could someone see a man raping a child and fail to intervene? Fail even to call 911? I can contemplate many difficult, challenging, frightening situations that cause me to ask myself what I really would do if faced with them — and cause me to have no clear answer. This isn't one of them. How could Mike McQueary not have done more?

Jacobs thinks part of the problem is believing that football is like the military. The hideous truth is: the more hierarchical the system, especially if headed by someone regarded as beyond reproach, like Paterno (or the Pope), the more likely that these crimes can be overlooked to protect the system. As recently as last week, the accused rapist was working out in the Penn State gym. But what is staggering in this case is that someone independently witnessed an act of rape by a grown man on a ten-year-old boy, something very rare in most abuse cases. But the cult of authority triumphed over basic justice and humanity. Just as in the Catholic Church. And children, the most vulnerable, are the least in this system of power.

Paul Campos explains why confronting abuse is so critical:

The president is sending 100 "military advisors" to Uganda to target Joseph Kony, leader of the infamous Lord’s Resistance Army, and his minions. David Axe gives important background on Obama's new intervention. Thoreau measures the true military footprint:

What fascinates me about military advisors is the idea that they merely offer advice and this is somehow enough.  I don’t doubt that the Ugandans need advice.  Hell, I could use advice on a lot of things.  And I am willing to believe that the 100 openly-acknowledged, uniformed Americans will only do exactly what they are billed as doing.  But this “advice” is probably based on intelligence.  How is that intelligence collected?  What sorts of unacknowledged people are collecting it?  Are any aircraft without insignia (maybe drone aircraft these days) spotted doing anything?  And since contractors “don’t count” as The Troops, how many contractors are there to “support” the military advisors?

Max Fisher recalls some of the Lord Resistance Army's most heinous acts. Joyner remains wary:

Kony is a Class A Bad Guy. But there are a lot of really bad dudes running around Africa and other parts of the developing world and I’m not at all eager to take them all on.

Limbaugh, amazingly, portrays the LRA as a sympathetic "Christian" group:

The Daily Show with Jon StewartGet More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook Today on the Dish, Jon Stewart pronounced Sarah Palin "a crazy person," McGinniss issued a closing indictment of the MSM, and Andrew defended the metaphorical truths of Genesis against the Biblical literalism of atheists and fundamentalists. The Republican horse race came … Continue reading The Weekly Wrap

A reader writes:

Finally this thread has been moved in the direction of the true apprehensions regarding women in combat: rape. I find this apprehension invalid for two reasons. One, women in combat can be trained and prepared to deal with that experience, just as they might be trained to deal with torture. That doesn't mean that rape can be prevented, but the soldier can be trained in the best ways to deal with the experience. Rape will be an obvious risk to women.

But that is where I come to the second reason it is not a valid reason to keep  women out of combat – this can and will happen to male soldiers as well. Saddam Hussein's son was notorious for using male rape as an intimidation and punishment tool. Men ARE NOT immune to this threat. But men, particularly military men, will not talk about this danger or this reality, and therefore we allow it to apply to our conversations of women in combat only.

Another writes:

I remember after the first Gulf War seeing an interview with a female fighter pilot. She was asked about what would happen if she was shot down and captured. The interviewer wanted to know how she would handle the almost certain fact that she would be raped. She said two things that stuck with me (I'll paraphrase). She said first of all, men get raped too. Secondly, she felt like she had a chance of getting over being raped but knew she couldn't get over being dead. Rape against women has been a common tool in armies the world over. Why not arm the women and give them a fighting chance against such attacks?

Another:

The former Marine officer who wrote about the danger of female prisoners being raped really pissed me off.

The discussion thread has quickly become our most popular, now with inimitable insight from two female vets. One writes:

As a woman who spent 15 months in Afghanistan in 2007-2008, I have to wonder if the nature of the wars cause all these strong opinions about women not belonging in combat. It's no secret that the rights of women in the Middle East are virtually nonexistent.  I just have to wonder if that is the lens through which people see women who go to combat in those regions.  That we cannot be effective or taken seriously on missions because the locals cannot connect with us.

Certainly in rural Afghanistan, my point was proven. 

by Chris Bodenner

Some remaining thoughts on Jack Layton:

In the early '80s, when the AIDS crisis was in full bloom, when Toronto was shocked and saddened by the rape and murder of a 12-year-old boy committed by three men, and when the vice squad was raiding gay bathhouses, Jack Layton – then a young city counsel member – spoke up in defense of the baths and the Toronto gay community, just because that was the right thing to do. For years he was one of the few straight political figures at any level who'd march in the pride parade and campaign in the baths and bars. He was a remarkable man.

Another writes:

In his July column in NR, John Derbyshire notes something recently written by Peggy Noonan: The Republican establishment . . . spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of — careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because … Continue reading The Derbyshire-Bartlett Alliance

Today on the Dish, Andrew fisked Krauthammer on the source of our country's debt and the House muscled through Boehner's bill only to have it quickly dispatched by the Senate Democrats. The web weighed in on the GOP's in-fighting, and we all tried to predict what happens come August 2nd. We watched the meep-meep meter … Continue reading The Weekly Wrap

Bruce Crumley evaluates NATO’s options.

Western powers [especially the UK and France] are now openly considering an outcome with Gaddafi still in Libya—though at least nominally out of power—clashes frontally with rebels' rejection of the scenario as a  non-starter tends to support claims Gaddafi's backers have long made: to wit, that the insurgents exist as a military and political force due exclusively to Western backing, and as such will ultimately accept the conditions and do the bidding of foreign capitals providing them funds, arms, and air support. Gaddafi managing to remain in Libya, therefore, would not only allow him a safe and secure place from which to meddle with the country's new government, but also give his anti-imperialist, anti-Western propaganda ranting a degree of credibility it never enjoyed before.

Assuming that escalation would have virtually no public or Congressional support, Larison wonders how the U.S. will finish the job. In other Libya news, the leading rebel commander and former Qaddafi minister, Abdel Fattah Younes, was killed yesterday. Babak Dehghanpisheh thinks this is bad news for the rebels: