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“It’s like everyone gets raped,” says one victim. “The military’s like a big rape cult.”

The Rape of Petty Officer Blumer »
Inside the military’s culture of sexual abuse, denial and cover-up.

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While bigots in the U.S. debate whether or not female soldiers are ready to withstand the demands of a war zone, the reality is that women in the military have been operating for years within one of the biggest war zones in the world — the US military.

For what else besides a “war zone” can one call this eminently-hostile environment, in which sexual violence and threats of abuse and death are a daily fact of life?

This is also why it is so utterly despicable when the US media uncritically parrot the narrative that the US military is the only force standing between the women of Afghanistan and the barbarian hordes waiting to rape and murder them. There is no horde of barbarians anywhere in the world more saturated in a culture of rape and murder than the US military (a point which has been made by many Afghan feminist freedom fighters).