Hazing. Not As Funny Out Loud.

I’m still getting these email* forwards by people. The latest included a defense of the ‘hazing’ in Abu Ghraib. The defense went something like this (and had these pictures!):

THIS is not “torture” or an “atrocity”. This is the kind of thing frat boys, sorority girls, and academy cadets do to newcomers.



Really? Because I thought we resolved all this back in 2004. I know I did. So, I must confess, I was a bit surprised to see the old hazing is just all right with me argument make another round.

Fortunately, I’m reading a book, The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander. It might as well be called America, Iraq and the Rest of the Planet. Let’s just run through it post haste.

Even though Barbara Coloroso agrees with me that hazing doesn’t have a place in this society, that’s not the reason the military should stop doing it. The military should stop because it is dangerous to the military.

Hazing is a form of bullying. According to Coloroso, there are four markers of bullying:

1. Imbalance of power. It is not between two equally matched opponents.
2. Intent to harm. Pleasure is taken from the hurt, it is not an accident.
3. Threat of further aggression. It is understood that there will be more to come.
4. Terror. “Bullying is systematic violence used to intimidate and maintain dominance.”

Coloroso adds that “once terror is created, the bully can act without fear of recrimination or retaliation.”

Which leads us to contempt. And contempt is what the whole issue is about. It’s different from anger. Contempt is “a powerful feeling of dislike toward somebody considered to be worthless, inferior, or undeserving of respect. Contempt comes packaged with three apparent psychological advantages that allow kids to harm another human being without feeling empathy, compassion or shame.” **

Here are the three advantages to viewing a person or a group with contempt. Entitlement, intolerance and the liberty to exclude.

Hazing includes the four markers of bullying and leads the bully to view certain people or groups with contempt. People may think it’s funny and harmless, but you have to wonder, what sort of human being finds humor in the degradation and humiliation of another.

Oh, so what? That’s the military’s job, to degrade and humiliate. I mean, that’s why people join, just for that power. Certainly for no other reason, like to bring freedom to the world, to protect my liberal ass from a smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud, or to get money for a decent education.

So here’s the larger context.

Currently, our soldiers think they are fighting the Taliban in Iraq. That Saddam somehow engineered 9-11 with his al-Queda buddies. And that the civilians of Iraq, no matter how young, are responsible for heinous crimes. Therefore, the civilians deserve to pay with their lives.

These gross distortions of the situation persist because Americans remain isolated from the majority of Iraqis. They engage them only when they go out to shoot or be shot at in an attempt to lure the insurgency out.

Does this mean that the only prolonged contact soldiers in combat have with Iraqis is through the prisoners? Prisoners, 70 to 90% who are innocent and “arrested during public demonstrations, at checkpoints and in house raids”?

The effectiveness of the military in Iraq is endangered by this hazing. Not only because a pyramid of naked prisoners piss some people off, but because it marks a contemptuous, bullying attitude toward people we want not to kill us.

If there was no contempt, no hazing, our soldiers might actually learn that a large portion of the prisoners, of Iraqis, are human.

~Lila Schow
Because Responsible Citizens Clean Up After Their Government http://goodusgov.org/

*Yes, because General George S Patton is exactly the person this country needs to emulate. ***

** Here’s what Patton has to teach us about contempt. "[others may believe]... that the Displaced Person is a human being, which he is not, and this applies particularly to the Jews, who are lower than animals."

*** sarcasm alert.