If You Say We’re Raping Iraq, Why Aren’t You Rooting Against Us?

by John Hawkins | January 9, 2004 11:59 pm

“…Susan Block, a California sex therapist who hosts a syndicated radio show and HBO’s “Radio Sex TV,” wrote an April 15 column titled “The Rape of Iraq” for the antiwar Web site Counterpunch (www.counterpunch.org).

…The column used rather elaborate metaphorical language to compare the conquest of Baghdad to rape.

…On Oct. 22, Yeni Safak, an Islamic journal in Turkey, published an article that said “thousands of Iraqi women are being raped by American soldiers. There are more than 4,000 rape events on the record.”

…The journal cited “Dr. Susan Block” as its source.

The U.S. Embassy in Turkey responded by condemning the Turkish journal for publishing “outrageous allegations based on a U.S. ‘source’ best known for her pornographic Web sites and erotic television program,” according to the Globe.

Whatever the source, Ilyas Kuncak of Istanbul was enraged by the reports, according to his son, Nurullah Kuncak.

“Didn’t you see? The American soldiers raped Iraqi women,” the son told the Globe’s correspondent in Istanbul. “My father talked to me about it. Thousands of rapes are in the records. Can you imagine how many are still secret?”

On Nov. 19, Ilyas Kuncak drove a car bomb into the Istanbul headquarters of the British bank HSBC, his suicide attack part of four separate al Qaeda-planned car bombings that also destroyed the British Consulate and two synagogues in Istanbul, killing 27 and wounding more than 400.

For her part, Miss Block says she is horrified and tells the Globe she never meant her charge of an American “rape” of Iraq to be taken literally: “I am appalled to be misquoted and even more appalled that the story inspired someone to such violence.”

As the “Inside the Beltway[1]” column I just quoted from mentioned, Susan Block DID NOT actually claim US soldiers were actually raping Iraqi women. However, I want you take a look at the opening of her column “The Rape of Iraq[2]“…

“The supreme victory for the rapist is proof that his victim “enjoyed” it. Though he may force his way into her property, demolish her home, murder her loved ones, pillage her belongings, though he may terrify and humiliate her, beat and batter her, break her bones and tear her flesh, spill her blood, wound her organs and lay waste to her very soul, if, in the midst of the rape, between tears and shrieks of agony, if his victim should, for a moment, for some reason, any reason, if she should smile, or, better yet, orgasm, the rapist is redeemed; he is even (in his mind) heroic.

This is why, when the Anglo-American rape of Iraq began, we so desperately searched the Iraqi faces on our televisions for a smile. And that is why, when after three weeks of horrendous carnage, we finally got more than three Iraqis in one place to smile at our handsome invading army and help them to topple a statue of our mutual accursed enemy, we declared the war to be, virtually, over.”

Now after reading that, I have to ask; Why is she “appalled that the story inspired someone to such violence”? I mean, she is morally comparing our invasion of Iraq in the most graphic of terms to a rape, right? Well, if let’s say you happened to be walking through a park and you saw a rapist and his accomplices sexually assaulting a young girl, would you feel bad about pulling out a gun, ordering them away from the girl, and blowing one of them away if they refused? Sure, you might not feel good about taking a human life, but would it be wrong? No way, it would be the right thing, the moral thing to do in that situation. So again, given that Susan Block seems to view what we’re doing in Iraq as the moral equivalent to rape, why is she “appalled that the story inspired someone to such violence”?

The people who toss around this sort of rhetoric, who compare Bush to Hitler, who claim we’re no longer a Democracy, who say America wants to rule the world, and who allege that we’re ravishing Iraq for empire, oil, and Haliburton should really understand that their words, albeit indirectly, may end up producing a bodycount if people take their arguments to their logical conclusions. I’m not suggesting in any way, shape of form, that people like Susan Block shouldn’t be free to level their criticism, but I am saying that they should be a lot more cautious about tossing off this sort of incendiary rhetoric.