THE RAPES OF THE JOCK

This rapes-in-the-military thing keeps popping up. I’m not obsessing here; some of these articles are valuable for what they reveal about the methods and objectives of their authors and of the movement, and beyond that also reveal to Us templates by which We can look around in our Advocacy-addled society for similar patterns in other areas. It pays to be able to read the wind and the waves and the sky when you are at sea. And that We are indeed.

Truthout runs something written (I’m not sure ‘article’ is correct, for reasons seen below) by one Helen Benedict, a journalism professor (and this is disturbingly relevant, for reasons seen below) at Columbia and “the author of several books concerning social justice and women”. See "Why Soldiers Rape", http://www.truthout.org/article/why-soldiers-rape.

I’m all for society and justice, and all citizens deserve a fair shake; but as the Catholic Church found out after its Second Vatican Council, some very curious alchemy results from blending – especially under field conditions – ‘society’ and ‘justice’ into the compound ‘social justice’. Although the feminists (certainly of the Second Wave) had no use for the Beyond or for the Church (except – oddly – to get themselves ordained in it), their deploying of the phrase ‘social justice’ ignited that same alchemy. And thus We are well advised to understand that the sum of that phrase is a hell of a lot more than its parts, and not necessarily in a benign sense; and that therefore when We see the phrase We cannot simply assume that If ‘society’ is good and ‘justice’ is good, then anything calling itself ‘social justice’ must be double-good. That only really works for certain types of chewing-gum; We concern Ourselves with much larger matters here.

Once again, the reader encounters those two old stand-bys of the shell-game: definitions and statistics.

She asks: Why do soldiers rape? Fair enough as a conceptual project. And rape – the unwanted and forcible penetration of one human being by another (which is how I understand it) – is never a ‘good’ and should be and is (and always has been) a crime.

But immediately these days, questions have to be asked and the article and author have to be ‘interrogated’ by the reader even before getting into the author’s chosen story. Just how is ‘rape’ defined now? How is it defined legally? How is it defined by the Advocacy speakers and writers? By this writer? And are We told? In this case, Benedict doesn’t tell Us how she defines the word. It’s neat: if the reader assumes my ‘classical’ definition, but Benedict is using a far more elastic and broad definition, then the honest and trusting reader is going to get the impression that there are a heck of a lot of actual rapes going on, while Benedict gets her stampede without leaving herself open to the charge that she purposely misled her readers. Neat. Kewt. Is that operative here?

And what is the definition of ‘sexual assault’? Again, the ‘classical’ definition is grounded in that vivid term ‘assault’: physical force and violence used against somebody for the purposes of deriving sexual gratification, but short of actual rape or the attempt at rape. But is that what Benedict refers to? Or is it something that can include much lesser (if not necessarily more mature or honorable) actions? In a crisis, you want to have the most accurate information and the least amount of cloudy miscommunication; if Benedict’s subject is a crisis as she claims, then she (and the entire Advocacy machine) should want Us to have the most accurate information they can give Us. But of course, if their objective is not to inform Us but only to stampede Us, then ‘facts don’t matter’ and all they want from Us is Our approval or – if necessary – just Our passivity, so that they can go on and on.

She quotes some ‘studies’ and that leads to statistics. Whenever you run into ‘studies’ you have to ask yourself a whole passel of questions: Who conducted the study? What was the methodology used? The definitions? What were the actual questions presented? Were the interviewers and interpreters of the answers objective? To what extent are the ‘answers’ anecdotal (the interviewee simply telling a ‘story’) and to what extent was corroboration (by confirmed facts not under the interviewees’ control) obtained?

In this case, the studies are all by women. Well, OK. You certainly can’t presume that all studies conducted by women are tainted by the revolutionary assumptions (‘facts don’t matter’ and ‘there is no objective truth’) of the feministical agenda. And you don’t need to be a female to be a feminist (although being an OTF – other-than-female – might still prevent your attending all the klatsches and aromatherapy sessions simply because your ‘energies’ are incompatible).

A 2004 study of vets from Vietnam to the present conducted by a psychotherapist (a professional term sufficiently elastic as to include Ph.D.s and somebody who talks a bit after reading the tea leaves) “found that 71% of the women said that they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving”. Those two elastic definitions, and if you’ve ‘studied’ two categories, why not then give Us the percentage for each category, rather than just the composite total?

The next study quoted is from 2003 by a psychologist “and her colleagues”, and is actually a “survey”. What does that mean? Did the psychologist simply solicit ‘stories’ and ‘anecdotal evidence’ (a more scientific-sounding term for ‘story by the individual involved’)? Ach. Anyhoo, this survey “found that 30% said they were raped in the military”. Well, if a respondent knew that no corroboration would be required, how reliable are the survey responses? But presuming that all the responses are true (and that is indeed a stretch for any ‘survey’ in any field) then might We infer that 41% of the 2004 study’s 71% are not rapes but only sexual-assaults (however defined)? It’s verrrry hard to say and the prudent reader in search of objective information is advised to tread carefully.

The next study is from 1995, which targeted “female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars” conducted by that same “psychotherapist” who conducted (in some way) the 2004 study. This 1995 study “reported” (a very strong verb to use without verification) that “90% had been sexually harassed”. Another term: ‘sexually harassed’; although Benedict does immediately go on to note that this term “means anything from being pressured for sex to being relentlessly teased and stared at”. OK. But if We are being asked to invest great time and energy and military resource to deal with the level of school-yard dopery, then the question has to be asked: Is this trip necessary? If military women find this (admittedly immature) behavior unbearable then why not simply separate the genders into gender-specific units? And if they find this foolishness unbearable, are they going to have a better time handling the experiences of killing, being under fire, the experience of sudden and violent death all around you, and the incessant demand to possess oneself and keep one’s rational control under the most awefull demands of a 4GW frakfest?

Of course, one might then proceed to ask that if Nature endows life forms with certain gifts suitable to their tasks (as Evolution saith), and women appear as best We can tell to be assigned by Nature to bear and nurture children (as at least some of the feminists admitteth), then will the gifts and strengths of nurturance serve a woman well in the setting where violence must be deployed precisely not to nurture others but to kill them? Or is this thinking too much?

Or is it possible that the very tendency to violence and aggressiveness that provides the pretext for the constitutionally monstrous domestic-violence and sex-offense manias is somehow a reverse-side of the male ‘gift’ of being relatively more attuned to the deployment of violence? Or is that thinking too much? Because it would then lead to the question as to why women would ever want to get into this sort of ‘war’ situation in the first place, and whether it is at all wise or responsible to subject one’s nurturing-attuned gifts to such anti-nurturing as combat (let alone 4GW combat), and whether it is at all a sound government policy even to permit persons to take such risks. (I mean, if you can’t ride a motorcycle without a helmet on, or drive a car without a seatbelt on, is the government saying it can’t really place any limits on who can expose themselves to frakfesty combat?)

And if the female of the species is relatively less attuned to physical violence, then why on earth load the military organization with them? It adds an entire layer of ‘training’ whereby the females have to super-exert (and even contra-exert) themselves to reliably equal the level of violence-toleration that the males are naturally endowed with. Or alternatively, the females (those steroidy sensible-shoes to some extent possibly excepted) are kept away from combat either out of an awareness of the nature of their gender-gifts or in order not to burden male troops and unit commanders with yet another random and unpredictable variable in the field and in the face of the enemy: i.e., that the less-violent females will not be up to the effective deployment of the required violence and the emotional suppression (or – worse – repression) that combat requires. Not that the military requires that emotional suppression the way it requires a green rather than an ochre uniform, but rather that the military requires that emotional suppression of combat forces precisely because such violence and emotional self-manipulation is what the Combat itself imposes upon any who venture to participate in it, or who find themselves in it.

And a final “survey”, done by the VA in 2007, that found “homelessness” among female veterans “rapidly increasing”. And immediately, so as to keep that urgent and hardly surprising development ‘on her side’, Benedict then writes that “Forty percent of these homeless female veterans say they were sexually abused while in the service.” And We are back to “say” and “sexual abuse” again. Around and around We go. Around and around the Advocates lead Us.

The gist of this and other pieces I’m coming across is that the military is ‘dragging its feet’ in meeting the agenda demanded by the feminist Advocacy. Of course, the Advocacy presumes that We will simply accept its ‘facts’, its ‘story’, its ‘narrative’ at face value and thus be ‘led’ to accept its preferred ‘solution’.

I hold no brief for the Pentagoons nor any of their pomps nor any of their works. But I'm wondering if what the Advocacy is ‘reporting’ as foot-dragging is to some extent the military realizing either that A) there are other explanations for the experiences of military females or B) there are inescapable demands of combat that are not susceptible to the demands of the Advocacy and that the demands, if implemented, would actually degrade military capability (even more than Bush and the hairless neocons have already done) or C) there are a lot simpler and less costly and more probably effective solutions to this set of complaints.

I’m not saying I know just what the Pentagoons are thinking here; but I am saying that there are plenty of other reasonable possibilities to explain the military foot-dragging besides the single explanation insisted upon by the Advocacy: that female troops are being raped or otherwise made to feel uncomfortable by male troops in huge numbers and that the solution can only be to beat down the male troops into more acceptable behavior because the military is simply enabling the male troops – training them even – to be brutes.

The article then goes on to finger (so to speak) a “culture of misogyny” and a “rape culture”, incorporated into the very basics of military training, as one of the causes of this whole thing. Military training will certainly spark the Viking exertions and the attitudinal ethos of young males in large groups; if you’re going to train large numbers of young males to reliably function as a team, to identify as a member of a team, then that’s how it works with young males. These are the actual complexities un-noted by the screenwriters for Captain Picard’s starship “Enterprise”, whose oeuvre seems to have been the only professional resource for several decades of Beltway advisers and commentators on things military. The military is not training troops by whim; its training is structured to the realities it knows they will face in the field and the frakfest.

And therefore too, forcing the military to impose a kindler, gentler training regimen is not going to yield ‘kindler, gentler’ combat. Because, contrary to civilian assumptions, the military does not ‘own’ or ‘make’ the field of battle and war; that awefull Ground belongs to Ares Ferox et Atrox, and mortals, even in their millions, must obey his blood-iron laws.

And this brute fact – as objective as a round right between the eyes - runs precisely counter to the Advocacy-friendly philosophy that i) ‘there is no objective reality’, and ii) it’s all a matter of the ‘story’ you tell yourself and others, and iii) sufficient political pressure and agitprop will change anything that a determined cadre wants to change. In this present matter, it’s not the military that’s thumbing its nose at the monstrous realities of human struggle, it’s the Advocacies. They might as well demand that ships be constructed without compartmented hulls so that ‘women’ won’t be forced into any dark corners. It is utterly impossible for a modern warship to survive without compartmentation and it is a sentence of death on any crew required to take such a vessel into harm’s way.

Militarily reliable violence does not come with natural ease to humans, males especially. Chimpish bar brawls, abhorrent rape – yes. (And thus males need to grow up with mature male guidance … but that’s another matter.) But militarily reliable organized and coherent violence, and the ability thus to restrain oneself when violence is not tactically advisable and to exercise stunning violence when it is tactically demanded … this kind of violence does not come easily.

To tap into the largest common denominator of energy (and potential violence), so as to both stimulate it and harness it, is what the military has to do; this is imposed on the military by the nature of war and combat itself (the screenwriters of Picard’s ‘military’ avoided mass-training altogether; hence the Beltway and Advocacy ignorance of this point). Sex is a primal conduit of vital human and male energy, and to keep the psychic ‘juice’ (no pun intended) flowing both to endure long exertions and to form an identity with other males … in that way, and aiming for efficiency’s sake at that least common denominator, you wind up with those unlovely ditties the instructors bawl out while on a five or ten mile run or the fifteen or twenty-five mile hike with a pack and rifle (if such distances are still allowed in the kindler gentler military of today).

This bodes a lot of dangers for the young military males themselves, even before one gets around to the Advocacy’s focus on the female troops with whom the males will soon be mixed. To reinforce the Inner Chimp in a teen is going to necessitate repairs after the buckaroo leaves the military. If his service should include actual combat, then to require the soldier to activate and deactivate on-demand his Inner Baboon in the face of serious episodes of combat is going to lead to even more serious damage and require even more serious repairs (and isn’t it strange: if the Second Wave was right, all the males should frakking deliriously thrive on sustained violence, and yet they don’t). And in the utterly rule-less and boundary-less setting of 4GW, unremitting and continuous, some and not a few males are going to either retreat to or be forced back to the Inner Baboon and be fused to it, with only modest chances of ever resuming an upward maturational trajectory again. And these are the most unacknowledged casualties of all. Upon them be peace, but We cannot leave it at that.

And “military culture demands that all soldiers keep their pain and distress to themselves”, accuses Benedict. Yes, it does. Because of the awful places and experiences where a soldier has to go and still be capable of controlling his emotions in order to accomplish the task at hand, he must be taught to ‘possess himself’, as scripture would put it. To go all kablooey and give vent to one’s emotional reactions to aspects of one’s surround that – however gruesome or distressing – are not immediately relevant to the mission … that’s not going to get the job done or protect the hearthfires or however you want to put it. What good is a fireman or a cop or a paramedic who in the midst of an emergency cannot suppress immediate emotions in order to focus on how to help? Is it really socially useful to have a bunch of them crying or screaming in a huddle around the engine as flames roar or bullets fly or – hey – ‘the children’ remain horribly trapped on the third floor? Not gonna be a ‘hero’ that way. Nobody’s gonna tell a nice ‘story’ about that. Nobody is going to get helped, either.

Of course, this requirement runs completely counter to the Advocacy modus operandi: decalre yourself a victim, get in touch with those feelings, and bawl them in front of the nearest useful recording device. And it also - according to some feministical theory, at least - runs counter to the operating dynamics of the female psyche, which is emotional and relational and expressive. But while the Advocacy might - thanks to the Dems - manage to get one up on the Pentagoons, the Adovcacy and its votaries will have absolutely no effect nor gain any leverage on Ares Ferox. In this way - and they say there isn't a God and that He has no sense of irony - the Second Wave cadres are sending young women into combat the way Miss Jean Brodie sent her unwitting students into the maw of war, though she herself was in her prime. The hell-hot ironies.

I think the military has never really faced up to its responsibilities in de-Chimping troops once they are finishing up their service. I think that We are going to have huge amounts of psychological casualties, and spiritual casualties, and moral casualties, from this Long War (even SecDef Gates is getting onto the bandwagon now). I cannot even begin to imagine how the female psyche is going to handle all of this, nor am I at all reassured by an Advocacy that insists that a) female troops are every bit as capable of combat as male troops and b) female troops are desperately in need of much, extra military organizational protection and services and c) that there is no difference between the female and the male psyche and d) that there is a world of difference between the female and the male psyche.

Nor on the basis of such representations – no matter how loudly and vividly made – can I take the military organization to task (although it does, all things considered, have a lot to answer for, as God knoweth).

But I do think this: the Advocacy stuff being churned out as ‘science’ and ‘reporting’ in this military-women brouhaha is a scam. And the manner of it is on this wise: from its vantage point the Advocacy sees, the awefull figure of Ares looming beyond the military’s perimeter, and knows that the military cannot but shape itself in response to the laws Atrocious and Ferocious thus imposed. At the same time, the Advocacy knows that the average reader and citizen cannot from his/her vantage point see that awefull figure, and would thus presume that the military is pretty much its own boss in shaping itself and that if it refuses to change its shapes in response to the Advocacy’s demands, well then it must be because of pure mule-headed, ornery, sex-driven male stubbornness.

And they are playing on that, these members of the Advocacy are.

Not all of them. More than a couple of them actually know nothing of the monstrous nature of combat.

Either way – through cynicism or ignorance – they keep the military and Us distracted by the still-thumping demands of their agenda.

I’d say that there are far more urgent emergencies just now. Separate the units by gender, and take an honest and objective look at the whole matter, thoroughly and soberly.

But I don’t think anybody wants that now. Not anybody who’s a ‘player’. The Dems want to keep the feminists happy; the military bosses want to get promoted so they have to keep the Dems happy; the neocons and Republicans have made enough enemies without needing to take on ‘the feminists’. And the beat will go on.

If you happen to be leading a life that does not include prayer to a just and benevolent deity, I think now would be the time to revisit that approach.

And not for yourself, but for the troops. Their genuine welfare, male or female, is not on any player’s agenda in that hell-mouth called the Beltway, be it Democrat or Republican, 'liberal' or 'conservative'. They are in the hands of terrible gods. And goddesses.

SEX AND SOLDIERING

Lord, it’s turning into a full-court press. Now a retired colonel is claiming that there is a DOD cover-up of sexual assault in the military. “Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-up?” (http://www.truthout.org/article/sexual-assault-military-a-dod-cover-up).

I wouldn’t be surprised. The Pentagon has gotten pretty good at covering up just about everything in the past few years. Actually, it’s been going on for a lot longer than that, although the increasing professional imbecility of the mainstream media has helped immeasurably. And it’s not just out-and-out cover-up; the pregnancy rates on Navy ships heading to the first Gulf War were so scandalously high (for a variety of reasons, rape not being one of the largest) that the Navy simply ordered its doctors not to keep records. No records, no unpleasant and potentially complicated ‘facts’.

The colonel-author here is exercised because the DOD hasn’t really been spending a lot of time nurturing one of the many flora blossoming in the over-crowded garden of that cottage-industry known as ‘women’s issues in the military’: the SAPRO (Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office) committee of 15 civilians, chaired by one Dr. Kaye Whitley.

Why, you ask yourself, would a thoroughly modern military want to neglect such a bureaucratic entity? The fact that it is losing two wars and maybe a third could be one reason. Fighting wars is, after all, one of the more important functions of a military, and there are even some who would assert that fighting and winning wars is the primary and overriding purpose of the military.

The fact that the budget is kinda tight – even with all the money the Pentagon is getting – and the dollar bids fair to lose much of its fabled national and international status – might be another. Ferrying yet another committee around? All over the world? Wherever women have issues? Wherever there is sex? That could eat up some cash and tie up more than a few resources.

But I’ll go out on a limb and suggest another possibility: the military quietly realizes that in the military setting (and especially if there’s a war or three going on) the ‘prevention’ of ‘sexual abuse’ as it is currently defined, is about as possible as the prevention of sex. And given the wide definition of sexual abuse, the two almost amount to the same thing. And that having allowed itself to become the stage for the ongoing drama of women’s issues back in the salad days of the early ‘90s when there was scads of money, no USSR, and no prospects of any shooting or heavy lifting, it is in no position now to throw more money into the upkeep and expansion of the series and all its mini-series; there’s a war on.

The shooting and heavy-lifting of ‘old school’ military life has come back with a vengeance; and there’s not even money to try to make modern military service conform to the tasteful décor and button-pressing non-exertion of a Galaxy-class starship. So the thoroughly predictable problem of whether nature ever intended the female psyche (even in its sensible-shoes variant) to immerse itself in the brutal chimpish frakfesting of modern (or classical) war – and 4GW at that … that thoroughly predictable problem has raised its head. But it can’t be discussed – the mothers of the revolution insured that, pulling along the Democratic Party by its increasingly short hairs.

But even more basically, the mother (if we may) of all problems has reared its head: how do you control sexual interactions among a) teens, b) who have not necessarily enjoyed the most comprehensive up-bringing, c) and ‘liberated’ by decades of sexual ‘freedom’, d) under conditions of the closest physical intimacy, e) and far, far from home in a strange land, f) and under the unrelenting pressure of combat operations, and g) where almost all the more ‘advanced’ stress-relievers and distractions of modern American youth are unavailable?

The feminist ploy was to quickly move the issue to one of ‘command responsibility’ – i.e., that officers who are paid and trained to command can solve the problem if they want to. Or problems plural. Or problems innumerable.

It was a shrood and kewt trick, but like so many other feministical ploys of the Second Wave, it was itself a cover-up. The mothers of the revolution rushed the whole argument right by the fundamental questions: Is it even humanly possible to control sex under these circumstances? Is it even worthwhile to try?

This, to the mothers, was over-thinking things. And oppressively so. ‘Just do it’ or it will prove that ‘you just don’t get it’, and then we’ll sic our Dem dogs on you, and they’ll cut your funding off and you’ll never get promoted. Peacetime militaries are receptive to this type of presentation. Alas.

Now, of course, the feminist Advocacies in this cottage sub-industry of women-in-the-military are in a kinda tight spot: there’s an election coming up, and they have to make some hay while they can. But the wars aren’t going well, and their complaints – and they have to be ‘complaints’ for the industry to stay in business – might tend to seem a little out of proportion, all things considered. What to do?

Apparently, the plan is to bawl loudly about ‘sexual abuse’ while selectively highlighting just a few of the very worst (and least numerous) type of cases. Yet avoid casting aspersions on the male troops. Indeed, the colonel reveals a not-altogether relevant factoid that 12% of the sexual assaults are on males. But there’s a method to her irrelevance: thus, you see, the ‘women’ aren’t really blaming the ‘men’; indeed, they’re doing this ‘for’ the men. Shrewd. And charming. Although I thought the whole feminist vision involved not doing things for men anymore. It’s hard to keep up with the memos. But as best can be made out, the new scheme is to claim that the 'women' are not the only ones 'abused', that the men are victims too, and that the women are doing all this for the men.

This sudden and doctrinally –if I may – extraordinary shift merits a closer look. Sexual assault has traditionally been the feminists’ main gambit against ‘men’. It is the basis of both the domestic violence initiative and the sex-offense mania. It has been successful in this objective (although its presumably unintended consequences have been hugely damaging of the country’s constitutional ethos and democratic politics, as noted in previous Posts).

Why would one of the linchpin tactics of the entire feminist strategy in regard to the military suddenly be changed? Why expand the scope of ‘sexual assault awareness’ to now include males rather than to indict them?

One possibility is that in the context of the desperate and unsuccessful lethal military operations over there the original tactic appears mean-spirited and out of proportion to the dangers posed. A public realization that the demands of the feminist gambit are bereft of any sense of proportion would break the spell of victimhood that has lubricated the entire anti-male campaign for decades. And such a breaking of the spell would lead to public skepticism; and that skepticism would fuel a closer, more thoughtful and critical analysis – something that for decades the feminists have struggled mightily and ruthlessly (and truthlessly) to prevent.

And such skepticism would not be limited to feminist agitations in the military. It would most likely spread to other gambits in even wider realms of the common weal, and result in a clearer public awareness of just how much damage has been done. There is every possibility that obstructions of justice, miscarriages of justice, false information, junk science, and all manner of shady manipulations will be uncovered, extending to the professional Advocacies, the mainstream media, the law enforcement and even judicial organs, and even to the legislative chicanery that induced sweeping and ill-advised laws to be passed with almost no careful analysis. Such revelations would do to the feminist cause what similar examinations have done to the credibility of the current Administration’s preventive wars and its corrosive assault on civil liberty and the constitutional ethos of America itself.

Another possibility is that despite the hype there are not so many incidences of ‘sexual abuse’ as public opinion has been led to believe. And that in order to ‘keep up the numbers’ and keep up the stampede of public opinion – in order to stay in business as well as prevent closer examination – then the potential field of victimizations has to be expanded. But this is a risky gambit, because to embrace ‘men’ as a survival tactic threatens to dilute and dissipate the intense gender-identity that is the core of feminism’s ‘true believers’ or ‘old believers’, that Second Wave who spear-headed this first and largest of the Revolutions of the Identities. After all, this is not simply the tricky gambit of enlarging the ‘tent’ but of bringing into the tent the very enemy against whom the tent was constructed (and fortified) in the first place .

But I think that it’s a little more nuanced than that. The strategic thinking of the feminist Advocacy has been – in its short-sighted way – too astute to simply reverse itself so quickly and massively as to unseat the most fundamental dynamic elements of the Second Wave’s revolution. No. I think that the embrace of ‘males’, the quiet but sudden change from ‘sexual assaults against women in the military’ to ‘sexual assaults in the military’ is a deliberate but temporary tactic to soften the hard edges of feminism’s image, and to sweeten its noxious traces, so as to stay at the table and in public opinion’s good graces during the electoral season. To keep its organizational cohesion and impetus while – for the purposes of lulling public opinion – blunting the cutting edge, and – nicely – achieving all of this while appearing to generously and heroically don the mantle of protecting all the troops, not just the females.

And yet I think it goes even deeper: this tactical shift, if successful, would undercut the suggestion to establish same-gender units. We recall that the feminist campaign against the military succeeded because three distinct changes were telescoped into one, and this ‘bundle’ most economically and shrewdly surfed in unexamined on the one wave of public enthusiasm. Women in the military – not such a big thing; women in combat – quite something else again; mixed-gender units in the field – hugely questionable. But if ‘sexual assault’ is affecting males as well as females, then configuring the units into same-gender composition would not be a logical solution to the ‘crisis’.

Neat. And it might also open up possible tactical alliances with elements in the military opposed to gay soldiers. (Although this is risky: I’m guessing that the sensible-shoes component among ‘military women’ might get sucked into the line of fire in any anti-gay initiatives, and their interests comprise a substantial fraction of feminist agitations in the military realm.)

In any case, there can be little doubt that the decent American presumption that ‘advocates’ are merely simple, disinterested folk performing the innocent service of calling attention to this or that issue is not adequate to the reality of high-stakes, professional Advocacy such as it has evolved. Feminism as it now exists is deeply enmeshed with K-Street-level manipulations and tactics. While this is not to deny the validity of some large feminist insights and concerns, it certainly indicates the need for a more careful analysis and appraisal of the various initiatives pressed by the Advocacies: actual objectives, the quality of information deployed to support the claims, a full examination of the consequences of any action proposed or demanded. This is especially true for legislation, and especially for any legislation affecting judicial procedure and civil and – most assuredly – criminal law.

And in another gambit that worked well for the domestic-violence and sex-offense subsidiaries, the dark implication is bruited about that many of the female suicides and accidental deaths are actually hushed-up murders committed by jilted lovers or violent, sex-crazed, looney-toon males. Anything is possible. But the possibility of a percentage of troops from any intense and losing war coming back and doing purposeful or accidental violence to themselves or to each other can hardly be left out of the equations.

Of course, to actually start thinking-through the stuff doled out by the feminist advocacies’ PR folks is ‘oppressive’ and ‘victimizing’. It’s all about ‘sex’ (and that’s something they should have known decades ago when they started this whole thing).

So I’ll share a couple of my own rules of procedure in considering this type of thing. One, I’m very careful about accepting ‘facts’ and statistics from Advocacy PR folks. There’s too much ‘extrapolation’ and not enough actual plain old disinterested and accurate counting. You can't listen to the stories of 10 individuals, figure that one way or another 6 of them have had some sort of experience according to your hugely elastic definition of - say - 'abuse', and thereby put on your white lab coat, go in front of the cameras, and claim that by extrapolation it is scientifically valid to claim that 60% of the troops are being abused, which works out to x-hundred thousand or y-million incidents a year, and that it's a 'crisis' and that almost everything is being massively covered-up.

Two, I do not put full and immediate trust in ‘stories’. They are insufficient as a primary basis for determining social policy and passing legislation, especially in criminal law. The colonel-author is particularly upset that her wish to bring in four soldiers (women) to tell their stories was declined. We recall the effect of such ‘stories’ in the run-up to the invasion of Poland in 1939: the German public was subjected to numerous ‘stories’, many of them staged and all of them vetted by the Propaganda Ministry, from German women and mothers who were ‘victims’ of purported Polish outrages and atrocities.

We need not go all the way here by pointing out that feminist doctrine – or at least some versions of it – asserts that men process information rationally through analysis while women process information relationally through stories. Stories are much more telegenic than rational analysis and that has seduced the mainstream media even down to the local-news level; this has been a substantial enabler of the damaging initiatives and manias that have already taken root. Analysis, even among legislators, has almost disappeared, resulting in bad laws passed on waves of emotion with little thought as to consequences, especially unintended ones. And this lethal dynamic has spread to foreign policy as well, evidenced by the run-up to the Iraq invasion and ensuing debacle.

Three, just as I no longer take Advocacy statements at face value, I also no longer take ‘scientific’ reports at face value; the development of ‘advocacy’ science – the purposeful tailoring of reports in the ‘good cause’ of furthering this or that advocated conclusion – has corrupted significant swaths of what ordinary citizens would presume to be disinterested and ‘honest’ scientific research and reporting.

Four, the same goes for ‘advocacy journalism’ which has had a similar effect on the media. And this noxious development is only reinforced by the ‘corporate’ philosophy that the media are supposed to be profitable, the public are ‘consumers’, and the role of the media is simply to give the public what they ‘want’ and what they ‘like’, regardless of any now-abandoned responsibility to provide comprehensive accuracy and perspective. Again, what We are seeing of the mainstream media’s largely complicit and even collusive role in the perpetrations – foreign and domestic – of this Administration was first practiced in the media’s indulgence of the (shrewdly manipulative and telegenic) professional Advocacies.

Five, there’s way too much vagueness not only about how many ‘incidents’ there are, but just where they lie on a spectrum of intensity: of x thousand ‘incidents’ how many are outright murder, how many are lesser actions? And so very often, but only after some digging, much lesser actions.

Six, I want some reliable definitions: just what constitutes sexual ‘abuse’? Just what constitutes ‘rape’? Just what is 'trauma' compared to garden-variety, perennial human 'bad experience'?Just what are the actual effects of 'trauma' that are reachable by law as a relief? This is not grinch-like, uncaring bean-counting and pedantry. This is essential to form an accurate picture of what’s going on. Both the domestic-violence and sex-offense subsidiaries have upon close examination yielded profoundly disturbing manipulations of definitions that would not occur to an average reader of good faith. Thus, for example, the ‘battering’ of domestic violence law can include telephone calls from long distances, and does not even require verbal threats – indeed, a woman can be ‘battered’ by there being no conversation at all. Such elasticity serves to inflate matters to 'crisis' proportions. It also, you'd have to admit, keeps the numbers up - which is good for certain types of business.

I say this not to belittle anybody’s pain, but to point out that this type of definitional elasticity is unacceptable – pure and simple – if one is to formulate an accurate picture of the purported problem. And if one is a legislator and is going to make laws, and laws with hefty civil and even criminal penalties, then one should really have the most accurate picture humanly possible. But in this matter I think We have all been hoodwinked by these Advocacies for whom ‘facts don’t matter’ and whose basic approach to politics is the revolutionary’s end-justifies-the-means, do-whatever-it-takes ruthlessness and cynicism.

So I’d like to have more accurate information. I mentioned my concern about the vagueness of the definitions of ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘rape’. How much of the ‘abuse’ is actual forced genital activity? How much is in the lower spectrum of unwanted touching or lewd verbalization? How much is ‘rape’ as traditionally defined? How much is ‘rape’ as nowadays defined: yes at the beginning but no later on in the process or a day or a week after the fact?

For that matter, how many of those 12% of those rapes of males in the military are perpetrated by females? Other males? Were those ‘rapes’ of the ‘classical’ type or the ‘nowadays’ type? And for that matter, how much of the sexual abuse of women in the military is perpetrated by … well, other women (or Other-Than-Males; OTMs, in Pentagoonian)?

There were 2,212 cases of rape – however it may be defined – in the military last year, according to the author. Consider the number of males times the number of interactions with females that might yield a ‘rape’ situation however defined. Then divide by 2,212. I’m thinking that’s going to be a pretty small percentage. But this is the type of math that the advocates don’t want you to be doing. You may not think there’s quite such a ‘crisis’ and that’s the end of their business. And if we include the possibility of same-sex interactions, then the final percentage becomes even more miniscule. Which is not to say that unwanted sexual advances are OK; but it offers a bit of proportion.

Professional Advocacies – and they are all professional now – operate like K-Street lobbyists, and their comments – I think – are to be accorded the same level of trust and confidence. If ya get my drift.

I’m not saying that there are no problems, or that there are no things that need to be addressed. But I’ve had it with the constant stampedes of this or that reported ‘crisis’. There was the children-abducted ‘crisis’ 30 years ago. There was the satanic-worship sex-abuse of children ‘crisis’. There was the unending procession of sex-offense ‘crises’ that had a lot of decent folks thinking that murderous, sex-crazed strangers were and still are materializing like Martians out of thin air in every city and state in regimental strength.

In a hell-hot irony, I think the Administration deployed the tried-and-(un)true ‘crisis’ type of play to create a stampede toward war against Iraq. But the result was that the play re-introduced the post-Soviet US military to old-fashioned, guy-intensive, macho, chimpish, bloody, ground combat, and of a virulently intractable new strain. And that ‘reality’ has proven an awesome tester of the airy assurances and assertions and accusations tossed around by the advocates for women in the military back in the long-ago, long-gone days of Starship combat.

I suggest again: To stamp out sex or sexual abuse or relational dysfunction, especially in the military, is like declaring actual war on ‘Terror’. Which is to say that it’s like trying to interfere with radio transmissions by swinging vigorously in the air with a hammer, or – what they hey? – shooting vigorously in the air with a rifle. Ain’t gonna work. ‘Sex’ and ‘Terror’ aren’t going to be stamped out, and dysfunction seems to be pretty much the natural state of human affairs.

What to do then? At this point, separate the genders, have same-sex units, and keep them from too much opportunity for … ummm … hooking up. That can be done comparatively quickly.

The long-term problems will need to be addressed: Using the military as an employment source in order to attract volunteers? Slyly calculating that the presence of the opposite sex will be a recruitment attractor? Cynically figuring that advocating for an impossible goal will keep one in the advocating business for years? These are all matters for further consideration. And perhaps we need to re-think an all-volunteer force that will become some sort of globe-girdling gendarmerie.

But to presume that any military can control sex and relationships in such a way as to satisfy ‘zero tolerance’ (yes, the colonel-author mentions it directly) is to expect that a general or an admiral can succeed in stopping the tides by wading out into the surf and issuing an order. Our own Chief Orderer has had his own unhappy experiences with this type of solution to bethumping problems, even those largely of his own creation. I don’t think it’s wise to keep trying to run the same failed play and expect that ‘this time’ it will ‘work’.

As the Greatest Generation used to say: There's a war on. And: Is this trip really necessary?