Is Hazing a Form of Torture?

Here they go again.

As reported by Huffington Post and other media outlets, we now have yet another scandal involving our security forces, this time involving guards at the U.S. Embassy Kabul who have engaged in extreme forms of violence. If you have the stomach for it, you can see photographs here.

According to the Project on Government Oversight, these episodes, which include simulated anal sex, are a form of "deviant hazing [that] has created a climate of fear and coercion, with those who declined to participate often ridiculed, humiliated, demoted, or even fired."

The participants in Kabul were contractors, not service members. But in the wake of Tailhook, the rape scandal at the U.S. Air Force Academy, and a long-term pattern of violence among members of our armed forces, we should get a few things straight about what's going on.

First, in no way do these incidents represent "bad apples" or isolated cases. As Youth Radio is about to report on the basis of an in-depth investigation, there are units in the U.S. military where such patterns of abuse are the norm, lasting for years at a time. In the story that Youth Radio will break, the Navy promoted the supervisor who oversaw the abuse even though the supervisor knew what had happened.

One of my doctoral students just completed her dissertation on military training, a project for which she actually went through boot camp as a part of her research. I begged her not to go to boot camp to do her research because i believed she could get assaulted. Sure enough, every single woman in her training was sexually harassed, including one woman who was raped.

Second, these cases are not hazing, they are torture. The Youth Radio investigation looks into sex workers upon whom our sailors unleashed attack dogs and female sailors handcuffed to a bed and forced to simulate lesbian sex while on video. By referring to torture as "hazing," or "homosocial behavior" we make the violence seem like it is okay, just boys being boys. In fact, the victims of such treatment often develop PTSD and have suicidal ideation.

Third, the pattern of violence is not an accident, but reflects official policy, including the "don't ask, don't tell" law which makes it almost impossible for gay victims to report abuse. And even though the military does have policies in place to deter violence against women, these policies often produce contradictory results. For example, I am aware of a rape case that was not reported because the base commander had announced a "zero-tolerance" policy for assault, which the troops took to mean (accurately according to people I interviewed) that he did not want to hear about incidents.

Today's news should be a reminder that war is a violent business, and the people we train to conduct it often direct that violence at one another. Whether we're talking about private contractors or military service members, our collective national stereotypes about the purity of the uniform leave a lot unspoken.