I do urge you to read Helen Benedict’s piece ‘The private war of women soldiers’ (Salon day pass required).
I remember reading and writing about reports of soldier on soldier sexual assault right back at the start of the Iraq war and I also remember wondering how, when they were attacking their own comrades the US forces could possibly claim its troops were spreading freedom and democracy.
Nothing’s changed since then; if anything the situation for women troops seems worse than ever:
As thousands of burned-out soldiers prepare to return to Iraq to fill President Bush’s unwelcome call for at least 20,000 more troops, I can’t help wondering what the women among those troops will have to face. And I don’t mean only the hardships of war, the killing of civilians, the bombs and mortars, the heat and sleeplessness and fear.
I mean from their own comrades — the men. Comprehensive statistics on the sexual assault of female soldiers in Iraq have not been collected, but early numbers revealed a problem so bad that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a task force in 2004 to investigate. As a result, the Defense Department put up a Web site in 2005 designed to clarify that sexual assault is illegal and to help women report it. It also initiated required classes on sexual assault and harassment. The military’s definition of sexual assault includes “rape; nonconsensual sodomy; unwanted inappropriate sexual contact or fondling; or attempts to commit these acts.”
Comprehensive statistics on the sexual assault of female soldiers in Iraq have not been collected, but early numbers revealed a problem so bad that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a task force in 2004 to investigate. As a result, the Defense Department put up a Web site in 2005 designed to clarify that sexual assault is illegal and to help women report it. It also initiated required classes on sexual assault and harassment. The military’s definition of sexual assault includes “rape; nonconsensual sodomy; unwanted inappropriate sexual contact or fondling; or attempts to commit these acts.”
Woohoo, a website. The usual Bushco, rubbing butter into a 3rd-degree burn. And it’s not even the best butter.
[…]
Unfortunately, with a greater number of women serving in Iraq than ever before, these measures are not keeping women safe. When you add in the high numbers of war-wrecked soldiers being redeployed, and the fact that the military is waiving criminal and violent records for more than one in 10 new Army recruits, the picture for women looks bleak indeed.
[…]
Having the courage to report a rape is difficult enough for civilians, where unsympathetic police, victim-blaming myths, and simple fear prevent 59 percent of rapes from being reported, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice. But within the military, reporting is even more risky. Military platoons are enclosed, hierarchical societies, riddled with gossip, so any woman who reports a rape has no realistic chance of remaining anonymous. She will have to face her assailant day after day, and put up with rumors, resentment and blame from other soldiers. Furthermore, she runs the risk of being punished by her assailant if he is her superior.
All this in a combat zone too. Anonymous reporting is all very well for statistical purposes but it still means the perpetrators aren’t punished and can carry on raping, groping and assaulting with merry, military-sanctioned abandon.
Many women in front line infantry units are there because they need the money to feed their children or because they have no hope of further education funding or a career otherwise. They can’t afford to complain. They have way too much to lose.They’ll have to find some other way to equalise matters, In a place where everyone is wearing a sidearm there’s always the old Vietnam solution to the problem of a pestilent superior to fall back on. I wonder when news of the first Iraq or Afghanistan female on male fragging will hit big media?
