Ratcheting up the rhetoric is an essential part of prewar propagandizing, so it’s no surprise that President Bush’s speech last night included a litany about “no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms.” This isn’t the reason we’re going to war, of course. We’re going to war to disarm Saddam, giving up on a peaceful process that was already disarming him, successfully — why do you think we need a force only half the size of what we needed in 1991 to pursue war against Iraq? — but too slowly for our leaders. If the war were about protecting dissidents and preventing torture and rape, we’d have our hands full all around the world. But language like this isn’t about logic, it’s about emotion; it’s designed to get us angry, so that we don’t think too hard.
Thinking, alas, is sometimes involuntary, and I flinched when Bush started talking about rape — not because I have any reason to doubt that that particular crime is on the roster of the evils of Saddam Hussein’s rule, but because, unfortunately, our own military has its own serious rape problem, that’s coming to light, inconveniently, on this eve of war. If you’ve missed the headlines, the story is of the United States Air Force Academy’s long history of essentially condoning the rapes of what seem to be hundreds of female cadets. These crimes and coverups are not isolated incidents, but indicative of a military culture that views rape as a minor offense — and that treats women who insist on reporting the crime as traitors to be drummed out of the ranks. Former Salon columnist Debra Dickerson writes movingly about this on today’s New York Times op-ed page.
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