Rape and Marriage

["Eli Stephens" <elishastephens@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Excerpts from an article by Gary Leupp on today's Counterpunch:

Quite a number of "anti-war" politicians...argue that while "we" were wrong
to invade Iraq, now that we're there, we need to stay for years, expand the
occupation force, hustle up an international military force to aid us, and
make sure that our security isn't threatened by an Iraq crawling with
al-Qaeda and other terrorists.

Personally, I didn't have anything to do with the invasion of Iraq, and
opposed it as best I could... So I respectfully ask to be left out of that
lousy "we." I further don't think the American people---even those duped
into supporting the war through the calculated hard-sell campaign undertaken
by a conspiratorial cabal backed up by an unforgivably unquestioning,
cheerleading press---are collectively responsible for the crime .

The troops on the ground, sucked into a horrible situation, who just want to
come home, aren't to blame either .

The Bush administration wrongly and brutally invaded Iraq, and now it wants
to stay as long as it takes to meet its (not my, not our ) strategic
objectives there and throughout Southwest Asia.

Some war critics view the invasion of Iraq as a "mistake." It was no such
thing. It was a conscious violation of international law, and the
appropriate object of global condemnation. It was a crime carefully planned
and undertaken, although its perpetrators may have miscalculated its
outcome. The suffering it has and continues to generate makes the following
analogy woefully inadequate, even if some might find it a little bit harsh.

There are some societies, past and present and widely distributed ( Celtic,
Kyrgyz, Ethiopian , etc.), in which a man who kidnaps and rapes (from the
Latin rapere or raptum , to seize) a woman might, if he "does the right
thing" and pays a bride-price to her family, and marries her, somehow undo
his crime. (For a Biblical example, see Deuteronomy 22:28-29.) But most of
us today don't accept that logic. Nowadays, what decent people with common
sense want to do is to separate that victim from the rapist, by as vast a
distance as possible (and ideally by a row of bars). The criminal can do no
good for her, other than pay reparations---and even those payments can of
course never undo the crime. His obnoxious presence will hurt her rather
than help her.

The ravisher here is not the common soldier, pressed into a supporting role
in the Rape of Iraq, and his or her own life violated thereby. The culprit
is something called U.S. imperialism.

Full: http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp10032003.html

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