May 30th 2004

Now the Iraqis are truly liberated..... Some of them have been lucky enough to practice the most advanced forms of western bondage practice. Those Iraqis could never even dream of the possibility before the blessed American came and opened their minds. This is what liberation is all about. Toppling Sadam was just an excuse. From its very beginning, it was all about introducing the Arab people to the advance and beauty of American female domination and general S&M.

As matter of fact I am pretty confused and not just because of these images. I have seen worse. I do find it pathetic that no one has yet come up publicly, to confront us all with the obvious fact that, at the centre of images of torture of Iraqi detainees, we find young females in uniform. The image of a giggling female soldier pointing at the pines of naked hooded prisoners is, no doubt, a novelty. In our western wars, women in uniform always had kept the most precious position. They were providing the fighting men with care, love, mercy and calmness. In their white nursing uniforms they were often described as an instance of sanity and humanity in the midst of a masculine flesh-mincing machine. Not anymore, under the command of Mr Donald Rumsfeld, Private Lindy England and her comrade, Specialist Sabrina Harman are serving as angels of death. Women in the American army have a new role, they are providing the enemies of America with sexual humiliation. They are providing all of us with the ultimate pornographic image of war.

Let’s face it, Private England didn’t invent the notion of sexual abuse. Abuse has been here since time began. More than one victorious army celebrated its triumphant moment raping the defeated nation. Usually it was women who were the first to pay the price. We all know about Nazi platoons who brutally raped Soviet women all the way to Stalingrad. Soviet soldiers were not different when arriving on German soil. American GIs did it in Nam, Serbs did it in Kosovo. Apparently war is a horny event. The confrontation with death and blood leads the active participants towards a vivid and extreme realisation of the notion of life. More than a few London grannies would enthusiastically share their hot juicy blitz tales. Apparently, the engagement with young fireman in action, as well as young off duty American pilots, turned WW2 Britain into an explosive libidinal setting. War, as it appears, has some positive erotic connotations.

But yet, ‘strategic sexual humiliation’ is very new to us all. Moreover, it seems to be a ‘well orchestrated’ new American doctrine. The Americans have always proved to be innovative in introducing evil strategies and destructive weapons. If they do something they do it big. But yet, it is hard to realise how they got so far this time. Thinking about the subject in military terms leaves me pretty puzzled. The story of 20th century wars does not provide us with any sort of historical background relating to tactical sexual humiliation. I cannot recollect images of naked Soviet soldiers sexually abused, neither by sporadic female SS officers nor by male Panzer platoons. We can neither remember any form of such abuse conducted by any Allied soldiers. True, Jews where stripped of their clothes before they where pushed into gas chambers but again those scenes had nothing sexual, erotic or pornographic in them, just a devastating practice.

No doubt, these new American images are a complete revelation; and yet no one points out that we might be confronting an unprecedented, new image. No one points out that it is a female soldier at its very centre. No one dare say that the notion of femininity might have gone through a serious metamorphosis. We might confront here a newly devastating feminine role and yet hardly anyone stops to reflect about it loudly. This is probably the beauty of political correctness. Willingly, we are becoming slightly blind; imposing on ourselves a form of foolishness. It is a cheerfulness that is coupled with stupidity. This very idiocy is the ultimate condition of the post colonial western democracy. We would politely blame Blair and Bush for dragging us into wars; we will democratically protest in the centres of our big cities; we would raise questions about WMD; but we will turn a blind eye to the evident fact that the women around us, the core of our innermost libidinal desires, might change their spots. Somehow, they appear to be far more cruel than we have ever pretended to acknowledge.

***

It took more than a while for Women's Groups to generate enough pressure to persuade orthodox Generals to allow their young sisters to become combatant soldiers. Those resistant orthodox Generals were always repeating the same laconic silly argument. A female soldier, they used to say, would confront some severe risks of sexual abuse when falling into enemy hands. In fact, they where completely wrong, it is very much the other way around. It is the male POWs who find themselves bare, naked, confronting relentless humiliation in the hands of those young enthusiastic armed ladies who entertain the joy of power beyond any recognised measure.

Using those orthodox General’s arguments, it would make sense to argue that men should be left out of the battlefield just to save them from the chance that they would fall in the hands of devoted female combatants. As it appears, both Private England and Specialist Harman enjoy the colour of war to the very limit. It might be that those Women's Groups were right all the way through. Women are far more qualified for the battlefield. Men tend to complain all the time, some of them prove to be cowards when asked to kill. It is more than likely that we should leave wars for women, for sure the food in the front lines will improve a lot.

***

But the issue is slightly more complicated. Since, one should agree, that the sudden appearance of sexual humiliation in military life is a real novelty, we should ask ourselves what really went wrong?

I can think of two possible answers:

1. That American society is going through a severe process of moral and intellectual regression. Sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees is just a single symptom.

2. The introduction and presence of the female combatant in the firing zone turned the battlefield into a theatre of erotic domination.

The former is pretty obvious; America is going through a rapid process of moral and intellectual deterioration. The fact that America is the last country on earth to back Israel is enough to prove that something has gone dramatically wrong on the other side of the Atlantic. But again, leaving the Zionists aside, it is clear that the war in Iraq is involved with more than one immoral aspect. Actually, it is pretty impossible to find anything moral about it. For more than a while we are facing an endless stream of pornographic images. To start with real-time images of mass destruction and murder of innocent civilians - and to end with explicit images of brutal sexual abuse. The Internet is flowing with images of Iraqi women being raped by American GIs. Many of those images have now been found to be forged. They were commercially made just to satisfy the thirsty American market demands. The brutal rape of a defeated nation is transformed in Bush’s America into hard-on-cash. This is no doubt a new form of a collective masturbation.

But we do not have to go that far. The genuine photos of abused Iraqi POWs that where shown repeatedly all over the American media say it all. While most American commentators appear to express deep disgust, we have a good reason to suspect their honesty. Dr. Susan Block, the American sex therapist says in an article about the subject that many of her clients “will say something to disgust them at first, only to confess a few sessions later that it really turns them on” (Bush’s POW Porn, Dr. Susan Block , Counterpunch 14.5.04). While Block was referring in her article solely to Bush, I would suggest we attribute her diagnosis to the entire, allegedly devastated American media, and the political world. America is full of contrasts: on the one hand, an extremely conservative society and deeply sexually oppressed, but on the other hand, it has the biggest porn industry and by far the wildest one. In that very sense America, a place conceived on opposites, these images serves as a snap shot of some very devastating reality. I would say, a glimpse into the Lacanian ‘Real’. A gaze at the reality of brutally deteriorating society. An explosive image of volatile sexual domination. This reality is so terrifying and hard to acknowledge, that most of us, both men and women, cannot even articulate it verbally.

The later option is leading towards even further complications. The fact that females, when protected with power, expose a completely new form of sexual domination and abusive practice is rather alerting. First, we have to ask ourselves whether we were mislead all those years, assuming that our beloved women are caring and loving. If this is the case, if women are in fact wild, brutal creatures, we must believe that the female peaceful image we were so used to was just a camouflage, or might even be a conspiracy. If women are brutal and monstrous we must assume that the very attractive image of them, soft and caring, is a direct outcome of the male patriarchal society. Now that women are liberated we can see what they really are. While a confrontation with the odd militant separatist feminist might support such a wild assumption, being surrounded with men-loving women makes it hard to take such an option seriously. As a matter of fact, here I want to declare: women are generally great, we love them all, in every shape and colour. Also, it appears, I am failing to produce an argument. True, but then, after seeing Private England in action I prefer to be on the safe side. The last thing I need is to have the feminist women coming up against me and cutting off my testicles in the middle of the night.

Another way around the loophole raised by Private England et al. is to assume that there is something pretty particular about those strange women who join the armed forces in the first place. I think that many would agree that there is something unique about those women who want to be 'man'. I myself find it bizarre, mainly because ‘man’ is a pretty vague concept. Most men do not have a clue what being man means, they simply can’t be bothered. All we know about ourselves is that we like cars and computers. By the time we know how to entertain women our biology turns against us. From that stage, more or less, we are just running down the slope. We usually enjoy the down-hill journey, mainly because our female counterparts become sexually frustrated. Women are very amusing when defeated by their desires. By the time our women buy their first pair of stockings we are too tired to keep our eyes open after ten o’clock news. It is great fun being in the centre of the desire of the other without being able to do anything about it. Giving our pathetic condition, thinking of all those young women who want to be us, is really ridiculous. I assume that those poor militants, tom boys probably, hold a rigorous, deloused, picture of what man is all about. Mistakenly they endorse an awkward vision of man as a brutal and violent creature while in fact, we are deeply romantic.

As we know, in most cases the impersonated version is far more extreme than the real McCoy. Those kind of tragic amplified misinterpretations can easily lead towards an radical strengthening of evilness. It is typical for marginal political movements to fall into this very trap. Zionism exceeded, far beyond most political movements of its time, in its interpretation of the notion of Nationalism. The result is devastating. A notorious bloodthirsty nationalistic society entirely occupied with daily murder of Palestinian civilians. Militant separatist feminists are no different at all. Like the Zionist they went too far in their demand for rights and equality. Unlike Zionist they are yet to assassinate their opponents. When one is stressing the importance of equality, the image of equality is often replaced with a claim for supremacy and even an appetite for hegemony.

In general most marginal political movements fail on this very particular issue. In the long run those opposing tendencies leads towards a clear intensification of unbearably vulgar behaviour. I assume that Private England fail right there. She tried to be a man, but found herself exercising a brutal amplified version of her original prototype. We must admit that we have never seen a photographic image of a male soldier standing staring at a naked hooded woman, ridiculing the shape of her clitoris. It might be the right time for women to ask whether being man-like is a very clever choice. But yet, we should give some justice to Private England and Specialist Harman. We should mention that they were not acting alone; as a matter of fact they were surrounded by perplexed men, who very much like these two women tried to pretend to be men. Not that hard to understand, since it is almost impossible for one to impersonate oneself. In a social environment, where women are supposed to be "as man", men tend to forget what "man" ought to be.

***

So now the Iraqis are truly liberated. They all know what America stands for. But then who is going to liberate the American people? Who is going to sustain those women who want to be men? Who is going to save the man who wants to be a man?

Private England is probably sorted, we shouldn’t worry about her, for the type of services she gave in Iraq for free she can make a fortune in down town Manhattan. In the end of the day America is all about money.

God save America. Because if it is down to the Americans they don’t have much time left.