Saturday, October 6, 2012

Monsters

Our military does not deserve the money we pour into it. Not only do we spend more on our military than all other nations combined, we need only look at the sheer number of rapes and unbelievably atrocious murders at a military base such as Fort Bragg to see the true face of our military. For those readers who want an article to directly reference, I aim to please even in such a dark matter: http://tinyurl.com/huffpostmsa

There are two issues, in my eyes, that have contributed to the utterly unconscionable and seemingly endless rise in sexual assault, rape and murder against women in the military. The first is that the military is entirely voluntary, and I addressed most of that problem in a prior blog post. What I did not address was that after 9/11 military leaders saw fit to slacken the recruitment requirements, permitting convicted felons - even rapists and murderers - to serve in the military. That slackening has never been undone. However, even non-criminals who volunteer in the military tend to be emotionally immature, prone to violence and of the alpha-male mentality. In the outright feral conditions of military service and drill indoctrination intended to strip individuality and morality from the soldiers, this makes it only too easy for such abominations to simply stop giving a fuck about human decency and see their female squadmates as nothing but a vagina with legs. They then decide to just take what they want, calculating and waiting until their target is isolated and unarmed. These acts of rape are often some of the most premeditated and would make criminal psychologists blush at the monstrous coldheartedness of the perpetrators.

Worse still, the military covers up these acts and tries to silence women who have been victimized. In my opinion, this makes the United States military even worse than the Catholic church in coverups: they expect these women to fight and die for their country but won't even provide the barest hint of justice against those monsters who attack them.

The second issues is cultural: by and large volunteers for military service tend to skew Conservative in their political beliefs. This makes sense as generally the first response of Conservative constituents to anything negative is to call for its destruction, so the chance to go into another country, destroy things and kill people who look different is a hard opportunity to deny.

The issue with Conservative philosophy, however, is that by and large right-wing ideology views every race and gender other than white males as slaves or possessions who've managed to wrangle freedom from the government. Of course, full right-wing ideology also sees anyone without billions of dollars as an uppity serf, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, while it's utterly disgusting it's not at all surprising that people in the military with that mindset would be all too eager to sexually assault the women in their platoons, especially since they know that they'll usually be completely protected or let off with just a slap on the wrist.

Military service is a rapist's paradise, a Sandusky-level pick of the litter that lets a monster watch his intended victim, learn her patterns, then attack and get off scott-free even if he's identified. In stark contrast, women who call attention to this disease are usually stripped of rank and may even be dishonorably discharged for their righteous dissent.

When the victims are punished for their suffering and the attackers are praised for their actions behind closed doors, the experiment has failed so spectacularly that words do not exist to express the sheer amount of disgust this elicits. Now, more than ever, I say that we must bring our troops home not for their own good but so that we can dismantle this necrotized chain of command and obliterate the evil that festers therein.

We may sleep soundly because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf, but who stands on the behalf of the rough women who are victimized by the very system that protects others?