Off Topic: You Know

[LordOffender]

I don't know if the Moderators here will let me post this or not as it might be the wrong forum, but I like reading all the other off topic Posts and feel that the people of this forum are adult enough to discuss things rationally. If I am wrong, please feel free to move or delete this post.

Disclaimer:
Now I know I am going to catch flak for this but before I say what I am going to say please keep in mind that I do not condone brutality or heinous acts of violence. I do not support what happened, and hope that things of this nature do not happen in the future.

Topic:
About the sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

1. What they did was if you think about it from a humiliation POV, very effective. Here we have Iraqi males who believe that women are beneath them being forced to lay on the ground naked with a leash around their neck held by a woman. The humiliation of this would be horrific for them.

Having a women point at their groin and laugh would be the worst thing for any male to endure and especially so for an Iraqi who again think of women as objects and not people.

I believe they were ordered to do what they did and I feel that there only mistake was not to get these orders in writing. There is an old military rule that says, "Cover your own ***."

They failed to cover their butts and now they are on the cross for it.

If you look at what they did, and again I do not condone it, you can see the logic behind it. They did not harm these men, or if they did I have not read or seen anything about it, and for all intents and purposes they were following orders.

I do not believe these people are sadistic, not like the son of a b@#$@'s who are cutting peoples heads off.

In retrospect I feel the only reason this is an issue is because of all the anti-war out crying we are seeing around the world.

Again, not may call to say right or wrong, but I can see the sick logic behind what they were ordered to do. Sad very very sad indeed.

But that is how things are done in the real world. People like the Iraqis would be affected by being humiliated by a woman.

I do believe that the one who should be on the block are the CIA operatives who ordered the humulation torture.

And the second mistake would have been to take pictures, but I guess that was a needed tool as well, "We are going to show these to your family if you do not cooperate." But posting them on the Internet? Dumb, just plane dumb.

[dogscoff]

an Iraqi who again think of women as objects and not people.

Who says that Iraqis think of women as objects? That is a massive- and completely untrue- generalisation. Even in Saddam's time, Iraqi women were educated and had most, if not all of the rights enjoyed by men. Do I need to remind you that Saddam actively supressed religious fundamentalism, so the kind of attitudes found under the Taliban in Afghanistan just weren't prevalent in Iraq. Even before Saddam, the Iraqis were an affluent, well-educated, ex-colonial nation with an extraordinarily rich history. To lump them all into the bracket of "sexist arabs" is massively innaccurate, and only exposes in you the kind of bigotry that you accuse them of.

I believe they were ordered to do what they did and I feel that there only mistake was not to get these orders in writing. There is an old military rule that says, "Cover your own ***."

"Only following orders" is no excuse. If the US army does not have systems in place for soldiers to appeal against illegal orders then things are even worse than I thought.

If they had been ordered to line those prisoners up (many of whom have been proved to be just innocent civilians, wrongly arrested) and shoot them deead, would "just following orders" be OK then? If you were a soldier, would you follow that order? Would you do so with a clean conscience? Again, if the answer is yes, and you are, as I suspect from the language used in your post, an american, then you confirm a lot of the fears and criticisms that the rest of the world has about the US.

They did not harm these men,

Considering the it was the US that popularised making huge legal claims for "emotional trauma", I find that incredibly ironic. I'd also like to see you look a rape victim in the eye and tell them that sexual abuse doesn't harm the victim. Actually, I take that back. I wouldn't like to see it at all.

The idea that breaches of human rights- and the ones you have mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg as far as the US' breaches of the Geneva convention are concerned- can be swept under the rug as "anti-war hysteria" is outrageous, especially when the US administration is first to cry out when a US prisoner is abused in some way.

Finally, if this post seems harsh, it could have been a lot worse. I really had to bite my tongue to keep it as civil as it is.

[LordOffender]

I did not read it as harsh. I understand and am damn glad that you posted what you did. Thank you.

[General Woundwort]

Originally posted by dogscoff:
Who says that Iraqis think of women as objects? That is a massive- and completely untrue- generalisation.

Iraq’s “Ignorant Men”
Psychic claustrophobia.

By Steven Vincent

BASRA, IRAQ — Even though I know schwayya Arabic, I sensed the Iraqi truckers squatting in the shade of an 18-wheeler weren't happy. After all, seated on the sidewalk opposite them, a foreigner was chatting with a beautiful Iraqi woman whose beige scarf, worn with a maroon blouse and tan-colored slacks, indicated she was Muslim. As they waited to drive their vehicles through the British checkpoint, the truckers' stares burned holes through us. My friend, Nour Al-Khal, a 20-something press liaison for an American NGO, felt it too, but advised me to do what she did when confronted by what she called her country's "ignorant men" — ignore them. "Believe me, Steve," she said, stretching out her legs and crossing them at the ankles. "There's nothing you can do."

We were sitting outside the British military base at Basra International Airport, waiting for soldiers to open the gate. The afternoon was hot, a desert wind blowing dust and grit across the asphalt. As the boredom mounted, a trucker stood and crossed the roadway. Looming over Nour, he snapped something in Arabic, causing her expression to fall and her body to flinch as she curled her legs beneath her. As the trucker strode back to his companions, I asked Nour what he'd said. "He demanded that I sit more like a respectable Muslim woman," she replied in an embarrassed voice. Angered at the man's effrontery, I rose to confront him, only to be halted again by Nour's demurrals. "You'll only cause me trouble." Sadly, she was right. Convening a one-man Morals Police for the sole purpose of humiliating a woman, the trucker had acted in the name of the force we had no defense against: Islam.

A small incident, perhaps — yet it's hard to overstate its symbolism, or the problems its portends for Iraq's future. Something frightening lies at the heart of this nation, I've come to understand, something dark, irrational, thuggish, especially among the "ignorant men" of its lower classes. In public, it often takes the forms of a weaponized stare that glowers at an unescorted woman — or a woman accompanied by a foreigner — as if yearning to see her disgrace herself, do something scandalous or un-Islamic, in order to fuel invidious gossip and innuendo. In private, it manifests itself in the threat, and frequently the reality, of violence to restrain and subjugate females. To accommodate and placate this malevolence, Iraqi females learn to repress their own behavior and instincts, while safeguarding their most important social possession — reputation.

"Reputation is all — if I lose that, I lose everything," explained Nour, expressing a female sensibility as old as time. No wonder then, as we traveled around Basra, interviewing clerics, newspaper editors, and CPA officials, she forbade me from touching her, kissing her cheek, or paying for tea, cabs, or meals. Because of her scarf, I don't even know the color of her hair.

If this were Saudi Arabia, we might ascribe such misogyny to Wahabbism. But this is Iraq — a country that until the 1970s existed as a model for equal rights in the Islamic Middle East. Beginning with the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s, however, women's freedom began to contract. Today, turbaned clerics advocate ever-more vociferously for sharia, or Islamic law that allows men such conveniences as polygamy, temporary marriages, and divorce by repudiation — while denying women the ability to choose husbands, travel freely, or wearing anything but cloaks to cover their bodies and hair. "Women's rights must follow Islamic teaching," Sheikh Aoda El Obaydi of the Basra branch of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "We oppose open sex, free love — and insist that woman wear hijab."

Meanwhile, once relegated to rural areas, tribal mentality is flooding into cities, bringing with it the backwash of patriarchal domination. Anecdotal evidence suggests that increasingly men are preventing their daughters from going to school, inflicting "honor killings" on errant women, and treating females like brood-mares. For example, a friend recently told me of visiting a Baghdad man whose claim to dignity consisted of his two wives and 22 children — all of whom lived together in a two-room apartment. "We face the twin-headed problem of political Islam and tribal customs," says Yanar Mohammad, a Baghdad-based feminist whose views have earned her death-threats from religious extremists. "Women are expected to serve men, be good Muslims and produce babies."

It is impossible to grasp the psychic claustrophobia this attitude creates for women without actually experiencing it. One afternoon, Nour and I took a boat ride down the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. The pilot, a barely literate teenager, insisting on turning around and looking at us, as if supervising our behavior. Irritated by his glare, I suggested to Nour we ask the kid — or even pay him — to face the front of the boat. "Oh no!" she protested. "Then he'll think we are really doing something scandalous and he'll tell his friends and I'll never be able to take a boat ride again." For most of the trip, we sat under the teen-ager's gaze, trying to ignore it. As we disembarked, Nour muttered, "Now you see why I hate these ignorant men?"

She's not alone. The rage and despair women feel toward religious and social customs is palpable. Take TV newscaster Najiah Abdulsala. On camera, the attractive Basran reads the news sans scarf. "I know it's against Islam, but I don't care — it's my choice!" she told me at her office. On the streets, however, Najiah is careful to wear hijab. "Religious men verbally assault me and I've received warnings from the Islamic parties," she said angrily. "Fortunately, I am marrying and my husband is taking me to Kuwait." Another Basran is not so lucky. She told me how her four brothers dominate every aspect of her life — when she can leave home, with whom, for how long. "If I run away, they will track me down and kill me." Once, when they discovered that she planned to marry without their permission, they beat her so badly they broke her arm.

Paradoxically, many women turn to Islam for defense against Iraq's "ignorant men." "When I wear hijab, I feel freer," says Ala Abdul Qadir, a member of the Baghdad-based Muslim Sisters' League, an Islamic feminist group. "Men don't leer at me. The Koran frees us from tribal attitudes that do not take women lives into consideration." Argues Anwar Algebar, director of Basra's AM Radio Nahrain, "I gain more respect from men wearing hijab — as a professional woman I use hijab as a shield against them." The lesson was not lost on me. In Basra, when a group of loitering men fixed their stares on Nour, I surprised myself by blurting: "I'm glad you wear a scarf, it protects you from these goons." Nour smiled. "Now you understand."

I do — as much as any male can. And it makes me uneasy. I dislike writing too negatively about Iraqis, fearing I might add to America's frustration about the war. But we mustn't close our eyes to the character of the people whose fates we now hold in our hands. There are many wonderful individuals in the country — brave, idealistic men and women who believe in America and its promise of democracy. But beyond these shining stars lies a deep rift where Islam and tribal custom intertwine, spawning a demon of shame, impotency and self-loathing. We saw that demon erupt recently in Fallujah, devouring four lives in madness and fire.

For women, it is only a slightly less-malign beast that dominates their lives, restricting their freedom and driving them beneath the veil. True democracy will not flourish in this country until this terrorist, along with al Qaeda, is vanquished, too. I once asked Nour why she didn't leave Iraq. "Someday, I might," she replied. "But now, for the lives of millions of Iraqi women, I must stay and help bring moderate Islam and democracy to our country." I couldn't have scripted anything more noble, or more heartbreaking. For it's a fight against their own worse impulses that Iraqis now face in order to achieve a stable future. And as I found when I could not help as truckers shamed a remarkable woman worth ten times their lot, it is a fight in which America must stand aside and let the Iraqis, for better or worse, wage themselves.

— Steven Vincent is a freelance journalist who recently returned from Iraq.

http://www.nationalreview.com/commen...0405250838.asp

[tesco samoa]

LordOffender.

GWB also stated many times that one of the main reasons that the US went into Iraq was to remove the Torture and Rape Prisions. Then it was mentioned many times afterwards that Iraqis did not have to fear the Rape Prisions.

As they where no more.
what is a soldier to do when their President was stating this over and over publically in every major address ?

Perhaps listen and understand that their actions will harm one of the few remaining items the President has to fall back on.

[dogscoff]

Wounwort- point taken, but sexism can be found anywhere. More so in modern Iraq than modern usa, almost certainly, due largely to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism- which in turn is due to heightened Western/Middle East tensions. However, the very fact that the woman in your article is allowed to show her face in public, that she can work as a reporter, that she can go around town unescorted with a foreign stranger shows that these attitudes have not yet taken hold completely: That they are the exception- an ugly, very noticable exception- rather than the norm.

[General Woundwort]

I'd like to believe you're right, Dogscoff, but I have my doubts. He's right about one thing, though - it's a problem that military force alone won't be able to solve...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

What the women need is to become trained killers. Nothing like knowing the person your trying to abuse can break your neck before you even finish reaching for your knife.

[freduk]

Well, the Americans are known (among others) for being the only "western" country who still torture people, and of course they will do so; but I highly doubt it were the discussed soldiers orders to go and torture those Iraqi men, for most of them were just plain soldiers and rioting citizens (for what I've heard, I might be mistaken) who knew nothing.