Pentagon Moves To Protect Military Rapists

I guess the U.S. military and its nominal civilian bosses in the Department of "Defense" are incorrigible. It's not enough that  rape and sexual assault in the U.S. military has been a simmering scandal for at least a year now. It's not enough that a documentary film about it forced the previous Secretary of "Defense," Democratic Party nomenklatura member and lifelong politician Leon Panetta to open his mouth and pretend to be "concerned" and to make some fake public relations moves that changed nothing (by design- he figured it would blow over and anyone he'd be gone soon so why rock the boat?). It's not enough that an Air Force general threw out the sexual criminal conviction of another officer under his command, for no reason at all except upholding the Bonds of Brotherhood among professional macho killers. It's even not enough that several officers or NCOs who were put in charge of sexual harassment policy enforcement were caught committing sexual crimes themselves.

No, none of this is enough to force the military and its civilian supervisors to reform. Now that Congress, under pressure from the public, from media exposure, and from female members of Congress, are talking about actual steps that are necessary to be imposed, like taking away the right of base commanders to throw out convictions at their whim, and creating a separate investigatory unit for sex crimes with real power, that is outside the chain of command (the same chain of command that protects and indeed promotes sexual criminals, while subjecting their victims to harassment and retaliation), the Pentagon (Do"D" and military branches) is OPPOSING THOSE CHANGES as going "too far."

Right. Actually trying to stop rape and other sexual assaults in the military would be going "too far."

Well, what do you expect from institutions that commit war crimes and atrocities routinely (probably on a daily basis)? What can you expect when they protect and promote butchers like the killer pilots in the "Collateral Murder" video (available for viewing in many places online, including youtube.com) made available to the world by WikiLeaks, while that military is now in the process of imprisoning for life the soldier who revealed the evidence of the crime, Bradley Manning? These are not normal human beings with moral ethical standards. And as macho killers, naturally they are sexist, deeply contemptuous of women.

Nor is any of this new. The U.S. military has been committing atrocities since it nearly exterminated the Native American inhabitants of the nation, and in most of its wars since. As for rape and other sexual crimes, do an online search of "Tailhook Scandal," which occurred several decades ago, involving U.S. Navy pilots and at least one admiral, engaging in a drunken debauchery where they forced women to run a gauntlet of group groping.

But that's nothing compared to what U.S. troops do to women who are NOT their own comrades-in-arms. Such as the young Iraqi girl who was gang-raped, and then murdered along with her family and their bodies burned. (That was a bit much for even the U.S. military to overlook, after it was publicized.) And there were so many horrendous atrocities committed in Vietnam, such as the women who were gang-raped, spread eagles, and executed by having flares rammed into their vaginas and set off (according to the testimony of American veterans.)

Just saying "war is hell" to brush it all off won't do.

{Do you ever get that gnawing feeling in your brain when you find yourself asking: I wonder if Jason Zenith posted another commentary yet?

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