If anything proves the enemies of traditional American culture are ascendant, it’s the photos of American soldiers torturing Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison. We have met the MTV-Feminist generation.
The story is now well known. Headed by a lady general, the prison was the scene of unspeakable cruelty. It would be unbelievable, except that we have the photographs. And more are to come. U.S. Senators have viewed photos of Americans having sex.
Sadly, these acts were predictable given American culture. The military is making war on it. The episode depicts the full flower of American feminism and everything despicable it represents, including sexual liberation, as well as the collapse of the average American’s morals.
The Triumph Of Feminism
Perhaps the most remarkable and disturbing images were those of Pfc. Lynndie England, a cigarette dangling from her lips, pointing to a naked Iraqi POW as he masturbates, smiling in front of a pyramid of naked Iraqis, and most chillingly, dragging a naked Iraqi around on a leash.
Feminism has triumphed. Women can’t join infantry units, but they can torture and humiliate prisoners of war, who are, despite what we are told, human beings. We now know how we have trained our young women. Unsurprisingly, it looks like little Lynndie enjoyed the torture sessions.
The modrun woman, you see, is all about dissing and/or besting men. They grapple with men in television’s faux wrestling. In Hollywood films, soldierettes receive the Medal of Honor while the men cower in fear. They rescue the man of lower intelligence and perception from his intellectual and emotional foibles. In bars, women curse like tattooed bikers. And, of course, they are just as sexually aggressive. Just visit a college campus.
On that note, Lynndie England, a news report says, was photographed during sex with other soldiers. Unsurprisingly, she is pregnant. The father of her child is Spec. Charles Graner, a soldier also accused of abusing prisoners. These unhappy facts belies official promises that “leadership” would correct carnal temptations when men and women were shoved into the same units, and in the field, into the same tents. Our “leaders” not only ignored the carnal urges but also created a new rank for military women: Dominatrix In Fatigues.
The point? The American military isn’t just waging a war of arms against Iraq. It’s waging a two-front culture war. One front is in Iraq and against Islam, which is very unhip on sexual mores and women’s rights. So while we destroyed the country, we humiliated the prisoners. We stripped them and made them perform homosexual acts. We taught those homophobic, chauvinist pigs a lesson. We put women in charge.
The second front is here against the American people. The military is remaking society, imposing the new Zeitgeist. Both sexes must carry a rifle for the Empire! On both fronts, our daughters and sons are the storm troops.
Only Following Orders
At least as disturbing as Pfc. Lynndie’s brutal shenanigans, and the feminist ideology that led to it, however, are the excuses we hear: I didn’t know it was wrong. I followed orders.
Here is Lynndie: “I was told to stand there, point thumbs up, look at the camera, take the picture."
And Sgt. Chip Frederick, another of the accused: “We had no support, no training whatsoever. And I kept asking my chain of command for certain things … like rules and regulations," Frederick complained to news reporters. "And it just wasn’t happening.”
Frederick says he never saw the Geneva Convention until he found it on the Internet, and Army officials admit they did not train the soldiers at Abu Ghraib in the Geneva rules of war. Maybe. Even if Frederick and the Army are telling the truth, civilian Frederick is a corrections officer, as are Graner and another of the accused. They needed the Geneva Convention to know this torture was wrong? This is what they do to prisoners back home? Graner worked at a maximum-security prison noted for prisoner abuse. Interesting. Whatever that tells us, none of these men knew these acts were immoral and illegal? That some “orders” are unlawful? Human decency, apparently, is dead.
Daniel Sivits, the father of 24-year-old Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, another of the accused, summed it up. Jeremy “was just doing what he was told to do.” Unbelievably, these young Americans will use the Nuremburg Defense.
Jackass Americans
These stories and pictures show us more than humiliated, beaten Iraqis and grinning, callous Americans. They depict a disturbed, defiled culture.
In Abu Ghraib prison, we reaped what we sowed. For years, we’ve preached egalitarian nonsense to our daughters. We sexualize them before puberty. We gorge them on rap and hip-hop. They get pierced like tribal Africans. We tell them to behave like boys, yet to resent and despise the male sex. Then Lynndie England shows up, and we profess utter shock. Or maybe we don’t.
The men? They are “Jackass” Americans: hyperviolent and hypersexual. And stupid. We teach them that women, to quote a sociologist, are little men and that men are big women. We teach them that anything goes, even homosexual abuse. Nothing is right or wrong. Products of late-20th-century schools, they can’t think for themselves.
Then again, neither can most Americans. That’s how we got to Iraq.
May 14, 2004
R. Cort Kirkwood [send him mail] is an occasional columnist for LewRockwell.com. His book, Real Men: Ten Courageous Americans To Know And Admire, is to be published next spring.
