Sexual Assault Running Rampant in the U.S. Military: Not a Deviation from "Military Values"—Right in Line with Patriarchy!

May 17, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On May 1, 2014, the Department of Defense released its Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military for 2013. Their findings show that reports of sexual assault increased in all four branches of the military by 50 percent in the last year; a total 5,061 allegations of sexual assault were reported in 2013. The report also acknowledges that the number of sexual assaults reported reflect only somewhere between 11 and 20 percent of estimated sexual assaults that happen in the military.

Military defenders and apologists are claiming that the increase in reporting of sexual assault is a triumph, showing that reforms in the military reporting process are making female soldiers more confident and comfortable reporting sexual assault! Senator Claire McCaskill had the audacity to release a statement that heralded the 86 percent increase in reported sexual assault in the Marines as “concrete progress as our recent sweeping reforms continue to take root”!

According to the same report, half of the women who reported sexual assault in 2013 declined to press charges out of fear of retaliation. Forty-three percent did not think anyone would believe them. Seventy-four percent of women said they “perceived barriers” to reporting sexual assault.

The estimated total of unreported assaults is based on surveys that require the victims to tell the truth at great personal risk. The fact is there is no way for these imperialists to know if more women are coming forward with these stories, because they don’t know how many victims there actually are. For a woman in the military who has been raped to be dismissed, alienated, and retaliated against for reporting sexual assault is commonplace. To the extent that it may be true that the increased number of reports reflect an increase in overall reporting, the deeper problem is that rape and sexual violence against women are rampant and epidemic in the military, and in society at large.  But this is the question that is not being asked: WHY are women in the military being sexually assaulted by the untold thousands, and then being thrown headfirst into a hurricane of hostility, misogyny, rape apologetics and victim-blaming if they dare to report?

Colonel Mike Hudson, the top officer in charge of preventing sexual assault in the ranks of the Marines, says that sexual assault “tears at the fabric” of the Marine Corps. Actually, patriarchy is woven into the fabric of the imperialist system that the U.S. military fights to protect and expand, and the way that is revealed in this case is through a problem that this military itself cannot solve. Col. Hudson himself is not ultimately expressing concern for the lives or well-being of the women being assaulted, but about the coherence of the military: its ability to efficiently and effectively carry out the orders and tasks of an imperialist power (the U.S.) in the framework of a global imperialist system. The empire this military defends and expands by force seeks to dominate and exploit the resources and the people of the world, and to eliminate any barriers between itself and that domination and exploitation. Right now, that empire is waging an all-out war on women, and stoking the fires of religious fundamentalism—in the U.S., Christian fundamentalism is given legitimacy as the government continues to accommodate and justify fascist politics that are right now eradicating the right to abortion; in the Middle East, the real brutality and illegitimacy of wars and other attempted conquest by U.S. imperialism has generated the momentum for a strengthened wave of Islamic fundamentalism in opposition to it.  At the same time that it is contributing to an increasingly terrifying climate for women through the bolstering of both forms of religious fundamentalism, the U.S. government also accommodates and protects a multi-billion-dollar industry of violent and degrading pornography, and then calls that “progressive” in comparison to the older and more traditional expressions of patriarchy. The ways that women in developing countries are super-exploited by U.S. corporations, the fact that reproductive freedom is so hotly contested and controlled, and the constant sexual objectification or sexual repression of women in reality and in media representation, are all fully consistent with this imperialist system and the U.S. as a major imperialist power.

Any military is a concentration of the world it is fighting for. While some may say that the rampant abuse and violation of the bodies, minds, and reputations of female soldiers is somehow in conflict with the values of the U.S. military, in fact the opposite is true. The role of this military is to enforce and extend to all corners of the earth what that power is actually all about, including patriarchy, the systemic enslavement and domination of women by men.

Sexual assault in the military does pose a problem for the imperialists. Because of women's changing position in society, including the fight to enter into all spheres, they have brought women into the military; this is clashing deeply and violently with the culture of open male supremacy and misogyny which has been part of the military's cohesion: from those who carried out the slaughter of Native Americans slicing off the genitalia of indigenous women and wearing them as trophies, to the massive rape and use of brothels made up of impoverished and desperate women in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia, up through today’s epidemic of rape and violence against women in the military.

At a time when one of the favorite ways the U.S. likes to claim the moral high ground in the world is by wrapping themselves in the mantel of women's freedoms, the true horrific and woman-hating nature of U.S. capitalism-imperialism is revealing itself in uncontainable and epidemic proportions in the military. Consider the following stories from the military, revealed in the last year alone:

• Half of women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan reported being sexually harassed or assaulted by their peers, according to findings released last year by the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
• Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair pleaded guilty to several charges, including requesting explicit photographs from female Army officers, possessing pornography in a combat theater, and more. In this case, pleading guilty meant no jail time and the dismissal of other charges, including accusations that he forced his girlfriend into oral sex, and then threatened to kill her and her family.
• Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen, a “Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention officer” at Fort Hood, is facing 21 charges for organizing a prostitution ring of subordinate female soldiers who were financially desperate.
• Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, the head of the Air Force's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit, was charged with sexual assault.
• After 13 Secret Service agents were exposed for purchasing prostitutes in Colombia in 2012, several of the agents who were shocked that they were being punished (since this is such a common practice and totally acceptable in the culture—unless the New York Times gets a hold of it, and there’s pressure to respond) were told by their superiors that had they not become the focus of such intense public scrutiny, the whole incident would have been forgiven.
• A Pentagon study claimed that almost 90 percent of sexual assault cases go unreported.

There is a reason why the U.S. military cannot resolve problems of patriarchy like rape and sexual assault within its ranks. In the words of Bob Avakian:

“The interests, objectives, and grand designs of the imperialists are not our interests—they are not the interests of the great majority of people in the U.S. nor of the overwhelming majority of people in the world as a whole. And the difficulties the imperialists have gotten themselves into in pursuit of these interests must be seen, and responded to, not from the point of view of the imperialists and their interests, but from the point of view of the great majority of humanity and the basic and urgent need of humanity for a different and better world, for another way.” (BAsics 3:8)

Rape and misogyny are the trappings of patriarchy and are in the veins of U.S. imperialism and the U.S. military, not an aberration from it. The policies, programs, and all the lip service that claim to attempt prevention do not stand a chance nor do they even make an effort to challenge the essence, the interests, and the culture that has created this epidemic of rape and blatant hatred of women in the U.S. military. Neither the problem nor the solution will be presented by the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, or Congress. The problem is patriarchy and the overall system of capitalism-imperialism, which cannot eliminate and can only give rise to new and ever more perverse forms of patriarchy. The solution is revolution, to get rid of this system and get to a world without patriarchy, or oppression and exploitation in any form.

The U.S. military has no right to rule, here or anywhere.

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