| By Dana Goldstein - Mar 12th, 2007 at 11:22 am EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
American women die of dehydration, so terrified that they'll be raped if they leave their beds at night to use the bathroom that they don't drink enough fluids.
American women carry knives to work to defend themselves against their colleagues.
American women are jailed because after being raped by their bosses, they refuse to return to work.
These are some of the bone-chilling stories told in Helen Benedict's Salon expose, "The private war of women soliders." It is necessary reading for every American. Is it any surprise that our male soldiers are raping and murdering young Iraqi women when they can't even be entrusted to treat their sisters-in-arms as human beings? War corrupts. But it's not all hopeless. As Benedict's interviews with female veterans attest, military commanders who simply refuse to abide by sexual harassment in their units are successful at protecting their female soldiers. The DOD needs to institutionalize those values.
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As for this part: "Is it any surprise that our male soldiers are raping and murdering young Iraqi women when they can't even be entrusted to treat their sisters-in-arms as human beings?"
Never forget that it's a minority of our soldiers who do those things. In terms of whether we win or lose wars, whether our female soldiers feel safe or not, that small minority matters and we have to rally against it whenever we can -- but the vast majority of our soldiers aren't sociopaths.
From the article, it sounds like this isn't just a "few bad apples" problem, but also institutionally rooted. Here's hoping some Senators take up the charge like they are on Walter Reed.