Military Rape Survivors Call On Congress To Stop The Silent Epidemic

Business Insider
Lauren Brown

Today a group of veterans delivered letters signed by 200 military sexual assault and rape survivors to Congress urging them to pass the STOP Act. The letters were presented to Congresswoman Spier who introduced the Act to congress in November of 2011.

If passed, the STOP Act would remove the reporting of sexual assault and rape in the military outside of the chain of command and into the jurisdiction of the military's Sexual Assault Oversight and Response Office which is comprised of military and civilian experts.

Despite 17 congressional hearings over the past 25 years, there's been no major action taken to stem the "silent epidemic" of sexual assault in the military. It's been estimated that nearly 20,000 servicemembers were assaulted in 2010 though only a little more than 13 percent of the incidents were reported.

The group of women delivered the letters with the human rights organization, Protect Our Defenders, which provides support for men and women who have served in the military and been victims of sexual assault. A number of the women who went to Congress today were featured in the documentary, "The Invisible War," a film which gives voice to the staggering number of horrific sexual assaults that have gone unpunished.

The letter was from:

"200 Veterans who have been raped or sexually assaulted at least once while serving in the United States Armed Forces between 1971 – 2011. Retaliation, including discharge and punishment, happened to many of us who tried reporting the crime."

Many victims say that the way they were treated by the military after the incident and the military's failure to prosecute the assault is worse than the actual incident.

The Arab uprising is a rebellion against Washington’s Empire: William Norman Grigg

Kourosh Ziabari
Aid Netherlands

William Norman Grigg

William Norman Grigg is an author and journalist of Mexican and Irish descent. He was born on February 4, 1963 in Idaho. He was a senior editor of “The New American” magazine and has authored several books from a Constitutionalist perspective. Grigg graduated from Utah State University in political science. He was a “Provo Daily Herald” columnist for a while and also covered the United Nations summits and conferences from 1994 to 2001 for the John Birch Society’s official biweekly magazine.

Grigg is also a studio musician and served as lead guitarist in the Wisconsin band “Slick Willie and the Calzones” until his 2005 move to Idaho.

Grigg has interviewed prominent world leaders, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. His investigations of terrorism and international organized crime included interviews with high-ranking officials of the Chinese Communist Party, former operatives of the Soviet KGB, and – long before the group was thrust into the spotlight during the 2008 presidential election – leaders of the New Black Panther Party.

Will writes and publishes the Pro Libertate blog, and is a frequent contributor to LewRockwell.com, the most widely read freedom-oriented website in the world. He also produces the “Liberty Minute,” a one-minute syndicated radio commentary archived at www.prolibertate.us.

Grigg has published several books of which we can name ” The Gospel of Revolt: Feminism Vs. the Family” by Northwest Publishing Inc. and “Liberty In Eclipse: The Rise of the Homeland Security State” by Welch Foundation.

William Norman Grigg joined me in an exclusive interview to discuss with me the latest developments in the Middle East, the prospect of Egyptian revolution, the massacre of peace activists and pro-democracy demonstrators in Egypt and the blurred destiny of Libyan civil war.

Kourosh Ziabari: Let’s start with a question which has been occupying my mind for a number of days. What do you think about Bahrain’s suicidal act of destructing the Pearl Roundabout? It was a childish act; wasn’t it? They thought that they can quench the revolution of their angry people by destroying the symbol which their movement was associated with. At the same time, it was a fabulous act, like the TV cartoons! What’s your idea?

William Grigg: Every ruling elite attracts a disproportionate share of a human type inclined toward the “rule or ruin” mindset. Bahrain’s al-Khalifa clique is a pampered imperial pet who can rely on Washington to service every whim, so their eruption of authoritarian petulance doesn’t surprise me at all. The idea here seems to be that by destroying a symbol, the rulers have repealed the relevant history. I’m gratified to see that so many of the protesters – people who are insanely courageous – have simply shrugged off that little tantrum.

KZ: Let’s get a little bit more serious. Why did the Arab world rise in rebellion so suddenly and unexpectedly? Today, some ten Arab countries are entangled with the waves of popular uprising by their people who don’t want to tolerate them anymore. What did pull the trigger of these consecutive and chained revolutions in the Arab world? Was it all about a street vendor who committed an act of self-immolation before the municipality office?

WG: I suspect that the Arab uprising, which I perceive as a rebellion against Washington’s Empire, and may it succeed and prosper, is a magnified aftershock of our October Revolution of 2008, in which the Federal Reserve emitted an unprecedented gusher of “liquidity”, that is, inflation, to bail out Wall Street’s politically protected oligarchs. The resulting debasement of the dollar has to be a contributing factor in the price shocks – particularly for food and other necessities – that have driven people into the streets in many countries, both in the Middle East and elsewhere. Egypt has been particularly vulnerable, since that country imports all of its wheat.

For decades, Washington’s power apparatus – the Federal Reserve and the military-industrial complex (MIC) have been able to export inflation, which was a great deal for the investor class but a huge burden on the rest of us. That game is probably going to come to a very end very soon, and what we’re seeing in the Arab world is something of a foretaste of what we’re likely to see here, as well.

In U.S.-sponsored police states like Egypt and Tunisia, people were willing to countenance a great deal of abuse as long as there was some reasonable expectation that they would be able to feed themselves. It’s not surprising to see their forbearance evaporate in the heat of the ongoing economic meltdown. It’s interesting to see that the triggering incidents in both Tunisia and Egypt were episodes of casual, arrogant abuse by police officers who consider themselves to be imperviously clothed in official privilege. We have more than a little of that kind of thing here in the U.S., as well, and I suspect that at some point someone somewhere is going to be pushed too far by an officious prick in uniform – and then all hell will break loose.

KZ: We are told that Bahrain has a black human rights record. Essentially, all of the Arab countries of the Middle East have black human rights records. They flagrantly censor, arrest, incarcerate, punish, torture and then release. How much significant was the role of humanitarian demands in the formation of Bahrain’s revolution? Are the Bahraini people after obtaining social dignity, self-esteem and basic human rights in their protests at the 30-year dictatorship of Al Khalifa?

WG: The deadliest foe of the Bahraini people isn’t the vicious little clique ruling them directly; it’s the imperial sponsor of that clique in Washington, who supplied the military and “security” hardware being used to murder them. If Washington were to butt out of Bahrain – as our Constitution and soundest political principles require – the Bahrainis would be able to work things out for themselves. Pending that day, however, I’m not optimistic regarding their chances.

KZ: It was on the news that during the past decade, the Bahraini government gave citizenship to scores of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indians to distort the demographic structure of its population and put in shade its huge Shiite majority. Political commentators believe that the Shiite majority of Bahrain has been long entangled in the discriminatory scaffolding of the kingdom and deprived of their most essential political and social rights. What’s your evaluation of the situation of Shiites in Bahrain? Why has the government adopted such a hostile stance with regards to them?

WG: I don’t know most of the details of the demographic re-engineering of Bahrain’s population, but assuming you’re describing it correctly this appears to be an example of Brecht’s cynical aphorism that in a dictatorship, it is the people who lose the confidence of the ruler – and the ruler responds by dissolving them and “electing a new people.” This kind of thing happens quite frequently in history, we’ve seen similar experiences in North America – just ask a descendant of the Cherokees or the Nez Perce. Bahrain’s situation, in which a Sunni elite is ruling a Shiite majority, offers an ideal setting for this kind of forced-draft population manipulation, which will eventually end very badly. To describe it in terms of applied physics: There’s a great deal of stored energy here in the form of officially cultivated resentments, and when the incumbent regime is removed, as it will be, eventually, the result is likely to be explosive.

KZ: Bahrain hosts the United States Fifth Fleet and is one of the main partners of White House in the Persian Gulf region. UAE is also another major friend of the Untied States in the region. Does the United States consider Bahrain and United Arab Emirates proxies to eliminate Iran’s supremacy as a regional superpower? Do the anti-Iranian movements of the Bahraini and Emirati governments emanate from the provocations of the United States?

WG: The desire to contain Iran figures prominently in most of Washington’s military ventures in the region, and this is an outgrowth of Washington’s utterly indefensible meddling in Iranian politics from 1953 until 1979. For decades, Washington built the Shah into both a domestic despot and an international power; this was particularly true under Nixon, who strove to turn Pahlavi’s regime into a nuclear-capable superpower. There was a splendid opportunity back in 2003 for a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran, but the Bush administration wasn’t interested, and the Obama administration is, if anything, even more inhospitable. I’m convinced that there is a huge constituency in Washington for war with Iran, which would be a calamity for everybody. My own prejudices in this matter are Jeffersonian: I support free trade with everybody, and non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. My own experiences with Iranians, including my old Judo instructor and most of the members of our Judo/Jiu-Jitsu Club, have been uniformly pleasant. I’ve long been interested in attending a training session at a Zour Khaneh. I don’t see any reason why America and Iran are fated to be enemies. Then again, one of the chief purposes of government, I’ve become convinced, is to save us from the scourge of peaceful commerce.

KZ: Let’s move to Libya, where the 42-year tyranny of the delirious dictator – if I may – has exhausted the oppressed people. Gaddafi has so far refused to sign any willingness for leaving the from power and his family members still hold crucial positions in the government and have immediate access to the public wealth. What’s your idea regarding NATO’s military intervention in Libya? Has it been successful in its proclaimed goals? Basically, do you support a foreign military intervention option on Libya? What’s your proposal for the termination of bloodshed and violence in Libya?

WG: The Libyan war isn’t going to “succeed,” because nobody responsible for it can define “success.” The Obama administration insists that “regime change” isn’t necessary,” while backing a CIA/SAS-funded group that wants to be treated as a shadow government. Up until practically the week before the war began, Gaddafi was receiving military and economic assistance from Washington. It honestly looks as if someone decided to attack Libya simply because … well, because the Arab revolution was marginalizing Washington, so the U.S. military simply had to be bombing somebody, somewhere. It’s possible that Gaddafi, who is a genuinely despicable thug, will end up being allowed to remain, or to leave on favorable terms, after thousands have been killed pointlessly. The whole thing reminds me of the “Flower Wars” waged by my Aztec ancestors — staged affairs in which huge armies were led to battle and then betrayed into captivity by tribal leaders who had been bought off by the Aztecs.

KZ: And for my final question, what’s your prediction for the prospect of Egyptian revolution? Will the freedom fighters in Cairo finally find their dream of having a democratic government realized? Does Mohammed Elbaradei have the sufficient potentials to become the symbol of Egypt’s revolutionary movement? What will be the fate of Hosni Mubarak? Does the international community have enough backbone to put Mubarak on trial for the crimes he has committed during his three decades of government?

WG: Back in 2009, Foreign Policy magazine noted that the Egyptian military was positioning itself to stage an auto-coup for the purpose of replacing Mubarak with Suleiman, the secret police chief — who, unlike his predecessors, had become a public figure. It seems to me that the military establishment accomplished most of what it set out to do, and now that the “revolutionary moment” has passed they’re consolidating power. May God grant the Egyptians the strength and wisdom to persist until they’ve actually uprooted the police state Washington planted and cultivated in that country for a generation. As for Mubarak, if I remember correctly, Herodotus reported that Cheops, the ruler who built the Great Pyramid at the cost of 100,000 lives and the entire public treasury, fell into such well-earned disrepute after his death that for centuries it was a crime even to speak his name. I think Mubarak richly deserves a similar fate.

Opposing a war machine in overdrive

Indigenous People's Literature

National antiwar protests this weekend can reflect the new mood of resistance.

BARACK OBAMA, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, is in command of the world’s most powerful war machine–and it has been kicked into overdrive, with escalating wars abroad and greater repression at home.


The U.S. still has 50,000 troops plus tens of thousands of private contractors in Iraq. In Afghanistan, another 100,000 U.S. troops are deployed, twice the number from when Obama took office. In Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, the U.S. has carried out air strikes, with the death toll mounting by the month. And now, the Obama administration is leading NATO’s war on Libya.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to run a prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; the FBI has carried out raids against at least two dozen Palestine solidarity activists; and Obama’s latest reversal on civil liberties was to announce that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of September 11, would be tried in a military tribunal at Guantánamo instead of a federal court.

At the same time, the harsh budget cuts and austerity measures that followed in the wake of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression have put a spotlight on the connection between lavish spending on war overseas and calls for “shared sacrifice” at home.

That’s why the national antiwar mobilizations this weekend–on April 9 in New York City and April 10 in San Francisco–come at a critical time. They are especially important to publicize, build and participate in.

The world is generating new potential audiences for antiwar ideas and organizing, and it’s up to activists to find creative ways to connect the people who want to stand together in solidarity–from opponents of war and occupation, to workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere fighting austerity, to the people of Egypt and Tunisia who overthrew their dictators, to the rebellions still unfolding in the Arab world. We can start this weekend.
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DURING THE 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s stated opposition to the U.S. war on Iraq inspired many people fed up with eight years of the Bush administration’s cowboy diplomacy and arrogant expansion of U.S. military power. But though Obama has a different style, the content of his foreign policy has been a continuation, rather than a break, with the Bush agenda.

By highlighting his reputation for a “kinder, gentler” approach to world affairs, Obama won new allies and disarmed critics, at home and abroad–even as the number of foreign wars that the Pentagon is engaged in multiply and escalate. The “humanitarian intervention” in Libya is only the latest effort by Obama, in the wake of the disastrous occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, to win new legitimacy for the use of U.S. troops in the Middle East.

Obama’s apologists say that at least he’s better than a Republican in the Oval Office. But the truth is that the Democratic Commander-in-Chief is responsible for a human toll every bit as terrible as his predecessor–from the casual disregard for human life on display in the actions of the U.S. Army’s “Kill Team” in Afghanistan to the shocking level of civilian casualties caused by drone attacks in Pakistan, now estimated at 32,000 dead.

Obama also pledged to bring a new commitment to civil liberties and government transparency to Washington. Yet Pfc. Bradley Manning, the alleged source of classified documents released by WikiLeaks, faces a possible death sentence and is being confined in near-total isolation and forced to sleep without clothing. These conditions led former State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley to say that Manning’s treatment had been “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid”–comments that appear to have led to his resignation days later.

It’s outrageous that Manning is facing possible execution for allegedly being involved in exposing the U.S. government’s embarrassingly close relationships with dictators around the world–while the Bush administration officials responsible for ordering torture and carrying out wars of aggression in violation of international law roam free.

But the fact is that Manning isn’t alone. The liberal Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers in two years than the U.S. government managed in the previous 40 years.

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans are debating how to address the ballooning federal debt. Both parties are agreed on carrying out massive cuts in federal spending that will hurt the most vulnerable in society–the only difference between them is how far to go.

But neither will consider a significant reduction in military spending, even though just a 30 percent decrease in the Pentagon budget would save more than $2 trillion over the next decade, and still leave spending on the means of destruction almost 20 percent higher than when George Bush took office a decade ago.
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ANTIWAR ACTIVISM today must therefore confront a political question that was more easily dodged during the Bush years–the role of the Democratic Party as a coequal partner with Republicans in the U.S. imperialist project. That includes the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which has been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the war on Libya, because the violence of the U.S. war machine has come has come in the guise of “humanitarian” intervention.

During the Bush years, after the initial massive mobilizations against the invasion of Iraq, the antiwar movement went into a prolonged decline–chiefly because leading organizations and figures were willing to tailor the agenda and activities of the movement to the needs of the Democratic Party’s electoral strategy.

Now that they control the White House again–and until this year both houses of Congress with big majorities to boot–it’s clear the Democrats aren’t allies of the antiwar movement.

The challenge now is to rebuild activism on the basis of independence from the two mainstream parties–and the demonstrations this weekend will be a step in this direction. The mobilizations are spearheaded by the United National Antiwar Committee and have drawn together labor unions, student activists, Arabs and Muslims, military veterans, defenders of civil liberties, Palestine solidarity activists and more.

The impressive breadth of the organizations endorsing the demonstrations is a reflection of the new mood of resistance taking root in the U.S. and around the world–especially in the Arab world, where two U.S.-allied dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt have fallen already this year and more regimes are threatened by mass rebellion.

That same spirit took root in the American Midwest with the challenge to Republican austerity and union-busting in Wisconsin and other states. The inspiration of the revolutions in the Middle East was obvious from the popular slogan “Fight like an Egyptian”–a stark contrast from the years of Islamophobia and demonization of Arabs that accompanied the “war on terror.”

Accompanying the protests against austerity and the even wider discontent has been a further rejection of what the media and the politicians once portrayed as the “good war”–the occupation of Afghanistan. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans now say that war in Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting.

The poll also highlights a growing gap between the actions of the Obama administration and the expectations of the millions of people who supported Obama in 2008. As the Post reported:

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say Obama should withdraw a “substantial number” of combat troops from Afghanistan this summer, the deadline he set to begin pulling out some forces. Only 39 percent of respondents, however, say they expect him to withdraw large numbers.

The connection between austerity and war is obvious in the spending priorities of the federal government–no expense is spared for the Pentagon, while public-sector workers at every level of government are enduring wages freezes and worse, and desperately needed social programs are slashed to the bone.

Since 2001, the U.S. has spent nearly $400 billion waging war on Afghanistan, a country with an annual gross domestic product of $30 billion–and that’s a bargain compared to the nearly $800 billion spent on invading and occupying Iraq since 2003. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is stripping public-sector unions of collective bargaining rights and attacking workers’ compensation to save about $150 million–roughly 0.03 percent of war spending in Afghanistan.

Another encouraging aspect of this weekend’s protest is the new level of participation from Arab and Muslim communities, which have suffered the brunt of the war at home unleashed by the federal government. In particular, the recently formed Muslim Peace Coalition drew together 100 imams in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to call on Muslims to attend the April 9 rally in New York City “to oppose wars, condemn terrorism and fight Islamophobia.”

There will also be a pro-Palestine contingent in New York that aims to show how U.S. support for Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestine is connected to Washington’s backing for other dictatorships in the region–a clear indictment of U.S. government claims to be acting in the interest of “human rights” and “saving civilian lives” in Libya today.

The combination of war abroad, austerity at home and renewed confidence among activists presents an exciting opportunity to make antiwar and anti-imperialist ideas relevant to a new generation of workers, students and others looking for alternatives to war and repression. Anyone dedicated to the struggle for justice should look forward to the largest possible turnout on April 9 and 10.
http://socialistworker.org/2011/04/06/opposing-the-war-machine

Military to Iraq: Are You Really Gonna Kick Us Out?

Danger Room

There are fewer than nine months left in the U.S. military’s long war in Iraq. By the end of the year, the remaining 47,000 U.S. troops will finish packing up their gear and leaving. It’s safe to say their leaders are feeling a certain separation anxiety.

Most notably, Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Iraq last week and loudly warned that its fractious political leadership was running out of time to request the U.S. to stay. If that construction seems odd — and reminiscent of a jilted lover — it’s out of diplomatic necessity and bureaucratic reality.  The U.S. and Iraq signed an accord in 2008 mandating a full military withdrawal. To halt that withdrawal requires a cumbersome renegotiation, and the host nation has to initiate it. Clock’s ticking.

Gates has signaled for months that he’d be open to keeping some residual force in Iraq. But now that Iraq has traded places with Afghanistan as a “forgotten war,” he’s been a chorus of one. Now the military command in Baghdad is starting to register angst. An anonymous senior military official assembled reporters on Wednesday to warn that a continued U.S. presence would be “best for Iraq,” especially if the country wants to avoid the political turmoil plaguing its neighbors.

That’s an odd message to send. The U.S. war in Iraq has been an anguished experience. Nearly 4450 U.S. troops have lost their lives there — most recently on Sunday. And the two-year long drawdown has largely been successful, even while Iraq spent months without an elected government in 2010, avoiding the predictions of a return to chaos. Now that getting out looks doable, U.S. officials aren’t arguing that staying in Iraq is in the U.S. interest, they’re arguing it’s a great deal for the Iraqis.

But it’s not hard to see what’s going on. Precisely because the U.S. war was so arduous, many in uniform have whispered for months that they’re wary of the post-Saddam enterprise collapsing in the wake of an American pullout. After this year, the U.S. military presence will diminish to a few hundred troops to help with U.S. weapons sales and training. But the State Department will raise a hired army of 5,500 contractors — something it’s never done before — to protect 17,000 civilian employees. All this while the Mideast is in the midst of a historic wave of revolution. No wonder there’s some anxiety at U.S. Forces-Iraq.

U.S. defense officials have said they’ve heard from their Iraqi military counterparts that they want the U.S. to stay. Indeed, last August, the chief of the Iraqi military said he’d need U.S. help until 2020. Politically, that’s been a nonstarter, owing to the residual desire among Iraqis to be done with U.S. occupation. Tens of thousands of Iraqis loyal to the U.S.’ nemesis, Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, greeted Gates’ comments with protests pledging a renewed insurgency. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needs Sadr’s support to govern.

There’s a similar dynamic in Washington. Barack Obama won the presidency in part by pledging an end to the Iraq war. That’s a promise he’s on track to keep ahead of his reelection, and his top aides have shown no sign of backing off. Gates is on his way out of the Pentagon this year, so he’s free to speak his mind. (He certainly feels Iraq is more central to U.S. interests than an ill-defined war in Libya.) The idea, in a nutshell, is that Obama would be boxed into staying if Maliki came forward and requested it.

In other words, the obstacles to a prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq are the leaders of both countries — one of whom wants to get out in order to stay in power, and the other can’t ask his counterpart to stay for fear of losing power. Both of them feel there’s greater political risk to a prolonged U.S. military presence then to its end, but that calculation carries the risk of alienating their defense establishments. Nine years of a painful war should have taught everybody that getting out is the hardest part of all.