Just as Washington is trying to whip up more public support for its military occupation of Iraq, revelations on the home front continue to expose a culture of misogynist sexual violence running rampant through the US military. A survey published on August 28 has indicated that 12% of women who graduated from the US Air Force Academy in Colorado had been raped (7%), or almost raped (5%). Seventeen per cent had reported some form of sexual assault and a whopping 70% had been sexually harassed.
The survey revealed that four out of five women never came forward to report the attack. This is hardly surprising, given the academy's record of trivialising such abuse. Earlier this year, several women studying at the academy went to the media after having their claims of widespread sexual assault dismissed by the academy.
The resulting scandal revealed that there had been 56 reports of rape or sexual assault in the last decade at the academy. Only now are those incidents being investigated. There have been just three men brought to trial, and none convicted. Eight others had been punished "administratively" for sexual violence.
Women in the survey reported that punishment did result from reporting rape — but it was the victim, not the assailant, who was punished. Reporting a crime resulted in punishment for minor infractions of the academy code, they said.
Cadet Lisa Bellas, for example, told the local Colorado paper Westword in August that after she was raped by a cadet she had kissed in a bathroom, she was told by then-academy commander Sylvanus Taco Gilbert, that she "didn't have to go to that party, didn't have to drink that night ... and didn't have to follow him back into that bathroom."
After congressional hearings into the scandal, Gilbert was transferred to the Pentagon in March, and replaced by a fundamentalist Christian, Brigadier-General John Weida.
The day the survey results were released, Weida called the 3000 cadets together for a "tongue lashing". Waving a sword around on the podium, he told them that they had betrayed the "code of the warrior" which was about "being honourable". He condemned sexual assault and also underage drinking at the academy, which had actually prompted the calling of the assembly.
Weida, willfully or not, missed the point. Misogynist violence is endemic in the US military — it is part of the "code of the warrior". Less than a week before the survey results were released, two midshipman cadets from the US Navy Academy resigned after being charged with rape.
The Miles Foundation, a non-profit organisation researching and campaigning against violence within the military, has started publishing the defence department's survey statistics, which indicate that 9% of women in the US military have suffered sexual assault, and 5% have been raped (along with 1% of men serving in the military). The Miles Foundation claims the real figures may be higher than the Pentagon's — another survey has indicated that as many as 30% of US female war veterans have been raped while serving in the military.
Domestic violence is also endemic in the US military. According to Pentagon figures, 23 out of every 1000 military marriages are violent, and most of the victims live on military installations. In the last five years alone, there have been nearly 60 men convicted of killing their wives on military bases. Yet domestic violence is still trivialised — around 80% of those men identified as perpetrators are honourably discharged and less than 7% are court martialled.
The high level of sexual violence in the US military is no accident — the US military is an organisation designed to kill to defend the worldwide investments of US corporations. In order to train people capable of this, natural human solidarity must be broken down.
The violence experienced by cadets, and perpetrated by them, is a brutalising, dehumanising experience. Like much of their formal training, it is designed to humiliate and destroy self-esteem. Cadets are then taught violence is a way to get authority and respect. This process, of receiving and imposing violence, is designed to create obedient killers.
The sexism of capitalist society, similarly, is dramatically heightened in the capitalist military machine as it breaks down relationships between people, and puts up barriers to collective action and solidarity.
This potent mix of violence and misogyny provides the basis for life in the US military, and frequently wreaks havoc on communities unfortunate enough to have a US military base situated nearby.
Cracking down on sexual assault at US military academies, a concession forced by public outrage, is a step forward and should be supported. But the best thing women in the US military can do to avoid violence is to leave it.
BY ALISON DELLIT
From Green Left Weekly, September 3, 2003.
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