Weighing in on Jamie Leigh Jones

Two years ago, an employee of a Halliburton subsidiary was gang-raped in Iraq. When she reported the rape, she was treated at a military hospital and given a rape kit.

Then she was held in a storage container, without food or water, for 24 hours before a sympathetic guard let her call her father and tell him what was going on.

This is not an isolated incident. The Green Zone is a prime example of lawlessness, and women report that they are terrified of going to the latrines after nightfall for fear of being raped. This has led many women to refrain from drinking water after 3 pm, and there are three cases of women dying of dehydration as a result.

Unfortunately, there is no accountability. There is no governing body with jurisdiction over the Green Zone. The military has their own legal system in place, but from what I've been reading, it's sorely under-used and abused on behalf of the rapists in cases of women being assaulted. The private contractors have no oversight or accountability beyond not being fired.

And how is the media reacting? The same way they react to every rape victim who comes forward with her story. She might have consented. She was a slut. She's making it up as part of the anti-war effort. She knew the risks when she signed on.

Ah, yes. The risks. The risk of being shot by an insurgent. The risk of being kidnapped by extremists and having your execution videotaped and sent back home. The risk of driving over a landmine. The risk of death by dehydration. The risks of having your coworkers sexually assault you, then accusing you of lying/being a slut and having all the evidence of your assault conveniently lost.

Rape is a part of war. That's just the way things are (see entry #2 for my thoughts on that).

It's been long noted that part of training men for the military is to divorce them from the feminine aspects of themselves. To separate them from their mothers, to make them tough and manly by inducing them to hate weakness, and to equate weakness with womanliness. This is a dangerous tactic - women have just as much a part in the armed services as men do. Archetypal warrior women take up arms to defend their families and their communities - look at Athena, a brave goddess of defensive warfare, and the patron saint of Athens during its heyday. She should be an inspiration, an example of what the feminine aspect of Mars is capable of. We shouldn't reject that, especially in this day and age, in this war we are fighting right now. The protective and defensive aspects of warfare have just as much a place as the conquering and dominating aspects. Without the former, the latter will run rampant until we end up with a Jamie Leigh Jones and women like her.

What, though, is the excuse given by the independent contractors? They had no such gauntlet of psychic reconstruction. No, they have just been let loose in an environment where they can do as they please as long as they don't get fired.

We need our government to do the right thing and the just thing and hold every man accountable for his actions. We need the rule of law in place. We need the soldiers there to be as much protectors as they are conquerors, to protect the civilians working next to them and the female soldiers who would rather die of dehydration than risk becoming a rape victim in Iraq (and while we're at it, it would be bonny if they'd also protect the scores of Muslim women dying for allegedly violating Shari'a).

And we must all of us fight the notion that, "rape is just a part of war."