While U.S. poses as liberator of women
Rape charges rock Air Force Academy
By Monica Moorehead
The U.S. military is building up an ominous presence in the
Persian Gulf while the White House claims it intends to free
the Iraqi people. Whenever Washington wants to impose its
aggression on an oppressed country, it tries to portray the
Pentagon as a liberation army. When the United States invaded
and bombed Afghanistan, the Bush administration claimed part of
its objective was to liberate women in that country.
But this military machine's real character is seen in recent
revelations about the extent of documented rapes of women
cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.
There has been an obvious cover-up of these horrific crimes on
the part of the Air Force brass.
Many women who filed complaints of rape and sexual
harassment to the proper authorities say their complaints were
dismissed, and/or the women themselves were accused of being
promiscuous. Once a woman makes an allegation, her background
is investigated vigorously--but not her attacker's.
The women first went public with their accusations on Denver
television station KMGH-TV.
Dorothy Mackey, a former Air Force captain who resigned
after being sexually harassed by two officers, told the
Associated Press that the women "have attempted to talk about
it or find some assistance within the system. Instead they have
systematically been told to shut up by other cadets or the
system itself."
Mackey's lawsuit against the two officers was rejected by
the anti-woman U.S. Supreme Court.
Because of this "good old boy" type of network and thinking,
not one male cadet has been brought up on charges, much less
court-martialed. A number of these women decided to leave the
academy when their complaints were ignored.
Now that the word is out, Secretary of the Air Force James
Roche has called for a special review panel to assess how
sexual assault charges in the military are handled, especially
in the Air Force.
This smacks of the same old tactic of the fox guarding the
chicken coop. Once the panel has done its job, it will be back
to business as usual--open season on women.
These recent developments at the Air Force Academy are just
the tip of the iceberg. Women are subjected to sexual assaults,
insults and rape daily in all branches of the armed forces.
Most complaints about these incidents never see the light of
day.
In a separate but related development, four marines at the
Twentynine Palms training center in California were arrested in
mid-February on charges of raping an unconscious 17-year-old
woman in a motel.
In 1991, the Tailhook scandal exposed a massive cover-up of
sexual assault in the U.S. Navy.
A number of women officers were groped by male officers as
they made their way down a hall during a convention of the Navy
pilots' organization in Las Vegas. After the women named 117
naval officers implicated in this sordid incident, Navy
Secretary H. Lawrence Garrett was forced to resign and Chief of
Naval Operations Adm. Frank B. Kelso took an early
retirement.
Last August, another incident of sexual harassment took
place at the same hotel. A civilian woman was assaulted by a
group of naval officers.
The U.S. military does not serve as liberators, but as
potential colonizers. The fact that it promotes violence
against women as well as racism and homophobia inside its own
ranks should help make that reality even clearer.
And it should help to build even more massive opposition to
the war of conquest on Iraq--including from those inside the
military who are being sent to kill or be killed.
Reprinted from the March 6, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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