Rape? What Rape?

This rape investigation in Iraq keeps getting worse and worse. And as I predicted, reaction in Iraq has been characterized by extreme anger and violence. Now the Iraqi government is going to ask the UN to end US soldiers’ immunity in Iraq, which keeps them from being tried by Iraqis for crimes they committed in Iraq.

And still, as I predicted, the American mainstream media has been shockingly tone deaf to this developing story and its disturbing implications. Violence in Iraq has increased to an almost unbelievable degree over the past few days, and not a single American media account that I’ve seen has linked this to the revelations about American soldiers brutally raping a 14 year old Iraqi girl.

That’s right, not “over 20” like the US Military first said. Fourteen years old. Reuters revealed this on Sunday. Prosecutors say four soldiers went to the girl’s home after drinking, intending to rape 14-year-old Abeer al-Janabi and left a fifth soldier manning their nearby checkpoint. They say ringleader Steven Green shot Janabi's parents and 6-year-old sister, before he and one other soldier raped the teenager and Green also then shot her dead. Afterwards the soldiers burned her body, I would imagine to get rid of the evidence. But perhaps it was just for their sick pleasure.

I guess we shouldn’t be expecting a made-for-TV movie depicting this any time soon. Where’s Jessica Lynch when you need her?

It’s not surprising that this is getting short shrift in the media, Americans don’t want to admit their troops could do something so horrible. But while we ignore it, the story is blowing up in the middle east, and reaction has been both violent (from the insurgents) and enraged (from the governments). Now the Iraqi government is demanding that they be able to try soldiers who commit crimes in Iraq, saying that the US Military has turned a blind eye to civilian killings over the past three years and has therefore created a climate of impunity, where American soldiers think they can get away with anything. They say the recent investigations, in which 16 US troops have been charged with murder in recent weeks (as many as in the past three years), reflect not an escalating number of violent and depraved incidents by US troops but rather a crackdown by the military on such incidents, which have been going on for many years now. And with the fog of war being so thick above the battlefield there, do we have any reason not to believe them?

There will probably be more revelations and investigations in the coming weeks, and though the military may intend for the investigations to restore their credibility with the Iraqi government, in reality it will most likely force us to leave, and leave soon. This will leave a chaotic nightmare on the ground, a civil war that is likely to spread to neighboring countries, and could have the effect of achieving the fundamentalist Islamic pan-Arab union Osama Bin Laden dreams of. And if that happens, we played right into his hands didn’t we? Not by leaving Iraq, but by invading it. It is inevitable that we will have to leave in failure eventually, and when we do it will be a geopolitical disaster.

Brace yourselves.