I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.
-William Lloyd Garrison
First editorial in The Liberator
January 1, 1831

Friday, June 6, 2014

THE BERGDAHL BROUHAHA: RAPE CULTURE ON DISPLAY

Summary: The right wing rush to convert the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl into some kind of “scandal” represents an example of American rape culture at its worst.  Of course, Americans, who used to stand up for their own who were held in foreign captivity, now eagerly take up the cause of the captor, not the captive.  Watching the right wing whip its base into a lynch mob mentality over the circumstances of Sgt. Bergdahl’s recovery and whether Bergdahl was “worthy” of being repatriated has been embarrassing on many levels.  This whole episode has spoken very ill of our national character, and his demonstrated once again not only the contemptible cravenness of the Republican Party, but also the cowardice of the Democratic Party.  Watching this whole tawdry melodrama unfold makes one embarrassed to be an American and equally embarrassed to be a Democrat.

There has been of late a nasty shift in the way Americans view their fellow Americans who fall into the custody of foreign actors or states which bear this country ill will.  Our foreign policy has been infected by an unhealthy dose of American rape culture, in which blaming the victim has become the default posture of American conservatives.

Time was that if an American was held captive in a foreign country, other Americans would rally to his or her support.

Not anymore.


In July, 2009, three Americans,  Joshua Fattal, Sarah Shourd, and Shane Bauer, who had been hiking in Kurdistan, ventured too close to the Iranian border and were grabbed by Iranian border guards who had crossed into Iraqi territory.

The three were held in Iranian custody, Shourd for the next 14 months, and the other two for more than two years.
During the time of their captivity, American conservatives rallied, not to their side, but the side of the Iranians.  The three were subjected, while still in captivity, to a barrage of nasty, often highly personal, criticism and finger-pointing of such intensity as to rise the level of defamation.

More recently, Andrew Tahmooressi, a former Marine, was arrested on gun charges in Tijuana, Baja California, after he inadvertently crossed the border with a gun on his person, violating Mexico’s rather strict, if laughably unenforced, gun laws.  Instead of rallying to the support of this incarcerated American, American conservatives rallied to his captors, subjecting him to all manner of hateful criticism and abuse, though he remains incarcerated.

But the worst example of how “blame the victim” rape culture has infected our foreign policy has to be the case of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.  Bergdahl, who was held prisoner for roughly five years by the Afghan Taliban.  While Bergdahl was in Taliban hands, Republicans and conservatives alike gleefully belabored the White House, accusing President Obama of being inexcusably remiss in securing Sgt. Bergdahl’s release.  Had Sgt. Bergdahl died or been killed while in Taliban hands, Republicans and conservatives alike would have gone into full meltdown/attack mode over the issue.  There would, no doubt, have been hysterical, hyperventilating calls for Obama’s impeachment.
But Bowe Bergdahl remains inconveniently alive, as much as the Republican Party and the American right would much rather have seen him dead, if for no other reason than as a convenient stick to beat the Obama Administration with.

And so now, in a display of political cravenness and cynicism almost unparalleled in the history of the Republic, the Republican Party and its minions on the right, including the serial liars at Fox “News,” have engaged in a spectacular volte-face on Sgt. Bergdahl’s release, putting forward a three-pronged offensive against the ex-prisoner. 

First, they squawk, the president allegedly violated the law by not giving Congress prior notice of negotiations for a prisoner exchange, notwithstanding that Congress had been made aware of the pendency of such negotiations almost 2 years since. 

Second, they complain that somehow we “paid too much” to get Bergdahl back.  Where was their outrage when Israel released 1,027 Palestinian militants to secure the return of Gilad Shalit?  Many of the Palestinian militants sprung to recover Shalit were and remain far more dangerous than the five washed-up Taliban operators we released from Guantánamo —released, mind you, not back to Afghanistan, but into the custody of the government of Qatar. 
Third, as is now typical of the American right, Republican and conservative strategists launched an all-out attack on Sgt. Bergdahl himself, alleging that he is a “deserter,” a “traitor,” and someone who was, to all intents and purposes, unworthy of repatriation.  Moreover, not content with smearing Bowe Bergdahl himself, the right wing scream machine has now sought to employ a typically North Korean, Kim Jong-Un tactic of attacking the entire Bergdahl family.

And such lynch mob tactics seem to be working.  Democrats, once again displaying all the spine God gave an axolotl, have managed to show their usual cowardice in the face of an all-out conservative media campaign directed against both Barack Obama and Bowe Bergdahl.  Democrats have been consciously and purposely distancing themselves from the President and the quondam prisoner of war, with prominent Democratic legislators racing to criticize the president for not having kowtowed to Congress.  That Democrats will always go into a crouch and wet or crap themselves every time Republicans say “boo” is no surprise.  That Democrats would behave so cravenly on an issue so freighted with moral significance is contemptible.  What the fuck is the matter with my party?


Of course, if my party has managed to live down to its reputation for wetting itself and floating away on its own fear pee every time Republicans say “boo,” the Republicans have managed to live down to their own reputation for relentless, nihilistic political Maoism.  Mao Zedong used to exhort his followers that “[they] should oppose everything the enemy supports and support everything the enemy opposes,” and that they should “always put politics in command.”  To a Republican Party that has adopted in their fullest form the mindsets of Francisco Franco’s Falangist outlook, Democrats and reasonable Americans are a collective enemy to be destroyed by any means necessary.  Republicans would have applauded when the Franquistas herded more than 900 Spanish loyalists into the bullring in Badajoz in 1936 and machine-gunned all of them to death.

In Bowe Bergdahl’s hometown of Hailey, Idaho, plans to welcome him home had to be shelved after the town fathers and mothers were besieged with angry phone calls and emails, including death threats.  Rather than put up with the mouth-foaming vigilantism of a mob whipped to frenzy by conservative operatives in slick suits, Hailey took the line of least resistance.  Of course, if conservatives were worried about real traitors from Hailey, they ought to remember that it was also the hometown of whack job poet Ezra Pound, whose aid and comfort to Bonito Mussolini’s Italy earned him an indictment for treason following the Second World War.

But Bowe Bergdahl is no Ezra Pound.  While all manner of allegations have been whipped up against him, largely at the urging and conjuring of the Republican Party and the conservative scream machine, nothing has been adjudicated, no competent evidentiary facts have been developed, and any case against Bowe Bergdahl at this point remains far thinner than was ever the case of United States brought against Ezra Pound.

Yet, the rush to blame the victim has become so much a part of the poisonous discourse of American society that any speculation about its etiology necessarily leads us right back to an examination of America’s rape culture.  In rape culture, the rapist is never responsible.  The rapist is always led on by the victim, who, if female, enticed the rapist by either dressing immodestly, or behaving seductively, or just existing.

Rape victims are routinely characterized on the right and in social networking as “sluts,” “whores,” “skanks,” “tramps,” or any of a series of other shaming monikers.
  We saw rape culture on its fullest display when Rush Limbaugh spent two full days of his program slut shaming Sandra Fluke for having had the temerity to openly discuss her need for birth control medications to control ovarian cysts.  As usual, Limbaugh could not be bothered to get his facts straight before launching into his disgustingly misogynistic attack.

As usual, the “Bergdahl is a traitor” crowd cannot be bothered to get their facts straight before launching into an attack that is embarrassing to all right-thinking Americans.  To speak of Bergdahl’s traducers as a lynch mob is metaphorically, if not necessarily literally (yet) accurate.  What we see is rape culture in action.  Because Bergdahl is not dead, and thus his metaphorical bloody shirt cannot be waived before the Republican base to whip up another frenzy of hatred against an African-American president they cannot stand, then Bergdahl must be punished for his transgression of still being alive.  What better way to score political points off a President whose race is objectionable to the right than by crapping in the punch bowl of the relief Bowe Bergdahl and his family must feel that he is out of Taliban hands?

 
There is enough cravenness on both sides the political aisle to justify damning both political parties to hell. 
The Republicans have been exponents of everything we profess to dislike about rape culture, blaming the victim, attacking the victim’s family, and attacking the institutions put in place to help the victim.  The Democrats deserve a universe of contempt because, with the heroic exceptions of Barack Obama and Harry Reid, most of them have soiled themselves before Republican bullying and sullied themselves in their dishonorable haste to cover their own asses.

There have been very few times in my life when I have been embarrassed to be an American and embarrassed to be a Democrat.  This is one of those times.

-xxx-

PAUL S. MARCHAND is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California.  The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily the views of the Democratic Party of which he is a member and County-level official, largely because the Party lacks the hardihood to stand up unconditionally and say that no American should be left behind to languish in the captivity of barbarians.

No comments:

Post a Comment