In a recent precedent setting decision handed down by the UN sponsored International Criminal Tribunal, three Serbs were convicted of crimes against humanity: for systematically raping and enslaving Muslim women during the 1992 Bosnian Serb conflict.
Montreal Serai magazine decided to make the UN court decision the subject of its editorial debate. Normally, there is 'approximate' consensus of opinion among the editors, but this time, there was a dissenting voice. The following dialogue highlights the arguments FOR and AGAINST the court decision, and how an editorial dispute is resolved.
FOR: So you disagree with the court decision?
AGAINST: I support the court decision in principle; I have a major disagreement with the sentences which range from 10 to 28 years in prison.
FOR: You felt the sentences should have been longer, that capital punishment would have been more appropriate?
AGAINST: To the contrary. I feel the sentences were too severe.
FOR: I'm listening.
AGAINST: It strikes me as inconsistent that a soldier can kill 100 of the enemy and come home a hero, but if during the performance of his duties he participates in rape or even systematic rape, he might have to spend between 10 and 28 years in prison.
FOR: The conventions of war allow him to kill the enemy in uniform; he cannot rape - PERIOD.
AGAINST: I'll grant you that, but war is a messy affair. Some have characterized it as insanity. Soldiers are trained and conditioned to kill, to perform our savage deeds for us while we sit at home, sipping our cappuccinos, following the war on TV or the newspaper. We must allow for the fact that soldiers are not machines, that the programming isn't perfect. Soldiers make mistakes. The freedoms we take for granted depend on them; they risk their lives for our freedoms. They should be judged according to the totality of their performance as soldiers.
FOR: You're saying that due to the exceptional circumstance of war, rape should be implicitly condoned?
AGAINST: I'm not saying that, only that it happens, and it has to be put into a proper context. And of course rape constitutes a hegemonic exercise of male power in a male dominated society. But I still think it's unfair to look at rape through the prism of civilian life. Life and death in the war zone is a unique experience and should be taken into serious account in the arbitrary sentencing of soldiers who, admittedly rape, but risk their lives every day. War is an experience even the most imaginative civilian cannot begin to fathom. In their wisdom, I believe the framers of the law were mistaken in the imposition of 'civilian' law in conditions of war. You don't prescribe morphine to get rid of a headache.
FOR: If you don't cut off the limb, the gangrene festers and spreads and eventually kills. Anyway, how you can claim to address the insanity of war when you yourself have never fought in one?
AGAINST: True enough. But many years ago I traveled several months with a Viet Nam vet who had seen and done it all.
FOR: The Viet Nam veteran is hardly a role-model for how a soldier should conduct himself both on and off the battlefield, notwithstanding the fact that that war's shameful tone was set from the top down, beginning with Kissinger and Nixon. If you're justifying what happened in Viet Nam to disagree with the International court decision, I think you're living on a dangerously slippery slope. But let me ask you this: what do you think the length of the sentence should be for a soldier who systematically participates in rape and sexual enslavement of civilian women?
AGAINST: I don't know. I'm just saying that 10 to 28 years are too long and unfair. Is it not hypocritical that we pay our soldiers to kill, to act like savages, and then we punish them for being savage? Imagine, you're an 18 year old kid, programmed to kill, 4 of your best buddies were killed in the past few days, you're going crazy living in constant fear for your life, you've had a few drinks - you're not positively disposed towards the women of the enemy who wish you dead, and with perhaps less than 24 hours to live, you're not particularly inclined to go courting - so you rape.
FOR: I find that funny - if not deeply disturbing.. You're saying that because the soldier hasn't time to court he should be allowed to rape? Mutual consent and 'only mutual consent' is the issue here, with or without courtship.
AGAINST: I'm not condoning rape. It's a brutal, savage act that must be condemned and punished -- but the law should be contextual. A good law is one that is commensurate to the imperfectability of the people it serves. Not having experienced war at first hand, the international justices are simply not qualified to make the laws that apply to war. Rape has always been an unfortunate by-product of war. If we don't like it, we should eliminate the conditions that spawn it. Let us recall that in this century alone, 180 of the world's 192 countries have gone to war. It's in the nature of beast, don't you think?
FOR: It might be the nature of the beast, but we don't have to encourage it, do we? I think we should support any decision that encourages both civilians and soldiers to behave civilly. The march from barbarism to what we are now has been a tortuously slow one, with gains extracted at a great price. Your position would undo a centuries worth of women's social progress. Is this the kind of message our magazine should be sending out?
AGAINST: I'm all for women's causes. Our magazine has consistently supported women's issues. I'm only arguing that the sentences are too severe.
FOR: I think you're missing the point, which isn't the length of the sentences, but the fact that the International Tribune is broadening its definition of crimes against humanity. The court is not only setting a precedent, but a tone, which may only trickle down at best, but it's a trickle our magazine should encourage. And to your point about the law. Our laws should be better, not commensurate to the people they serve.
Your empathy with the soldier is admirable; I've yet to hear your empathy for the Muslim woman that has been passed around from soldier to soldier night after night, week after week, subjected to sexual and physical abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and the child she gives birth to who reminds her of the soldiers that raped and tortured her, left her in a ditch to die. Where's your humanity?
AGAINST: Sometimes pedophiles and even murderers get less than 10 to 28 years.
FOR: Again, you're missing the point, which is not the sentence. It's the precedent that declares that rape and sexual enslavement are no longer acceptable by-products of war, and guilty soldiers will now be prosecuted. Perhaps legalizing prostitution in the war zone is an idea that deserves serious consideration.
AGAINST: That would be a practical extension of what Bob Hope did for the Viet Nam soldiers in bringing over a chorus line to entertain the troops. Legalizing prostitution would make rape less predictable as an outcome, and for the women who would volunteer to service the soldiers, they would be seen in a much more positive light, and the profession, mostly regarded in ill-repute, would benefit.
FOR: That's another subject for another editorial. But for this one, can you agree that our magazine should fully support the war crimes Tribunal's decision?
AGAINST: I still disagree with the length of the sentences, and I don't think it will stop any soldier whose living on the edge from committing rape, but I agree that our magazine should support the decision rape is an abominable crime that must be punished.
FOR: So you'll write the editorial?
AGAINST: Why me? You're the one who unconditionally supports the decision.
FOR: Did you ever see the movie Gandhi?
AGAINST: I did.
FOR: Remember the scene where a repentant Hindu comes to Gandhi and asks what he can do to make up for his sins against his Muslim brothers. Gandhi counsels him to adopt a Muslim orphan and raise him as a Muslim?
AGAINST: A great moment in the film.
FOR: And a precedent for your editorial.
THE END
From ABDELATI KHALED: akhaled@sympatico.ca
This last editorial was very disturbing. I mean someone was saying that raping is fine and understandable when it is done during wartime during a war against the enemy? I don't know but that is frankly sick. There is a huge difference between killing and raping. Killing takes 2 minutes to the soldier who is following an order when he has the enemy in front of him.
As for rape that's another story. I don' t even want to think of the details let alone sexual enslavement. I mean come on, how sick can you be to think that 28 years of prison for such disgusting atrocity is too much? And anyway, killing during war isn't a crime since the soldier is there to kill and is ordered to do so. Rape is a crime since a soldier isn't ordered to rape but to kill only. I don't know but it was a very disturbing editorial knowing what happened in Bosnia. I still can't believe that there could be someone out could hold such an opinion.
Letter writer Abdelati Khaled's point is well-taken. The Montreal Serai Spring 2001 editorial 'Shrapnel, Death Knells and Soldiers That Rape' was very disturbing.
Mr. Khaled argues that according to law and custom, a properly waged war legitimizes some (but not all) types of barbarism. He contends that a legally sanctioned kill is an acceptable, expectable and reasonable outcome of war, but that we must draw the line somewhere; that a state of war permits a soldier to kill another soldier by bayonet, bullet or bomb, but does not justify rape, torture or enslavement.
With all respect for Mr. Khaled's appall, is there anyone who doesn't realize that the religion of war is power, that its sole purpose is to subjugate and if necessary decimate human lives? Death by war is rape. War, whether it's waged in the killing fields or a high school gymnasium is the rape, torture and enslavement of all participants, be they soldier or civilian. The atrocities won't stop until the institution of war is forever abolished, until, to quote that hackneyed aphorism, the bomb is finally banned and the proliferation of both conventional and nuclear weapons ends.
As was mentioned in the editorial, war is insanity. Equally lunatic is the oxymoronic concept of a humane war. There is no such thing. There is nothing humane about the wholesale slaughter of human beings. As for rules of war, in spite of International Law, only two exist. Rule #1: There are no rules. Rule #2: See Rule #1.
The question today is the same as it was forty years ago when Bob Dylan asked "how many times must the cannon balls fly before they're forever banned?" The answer, now as it was then, is still blowing in the wind, and given the troglodytic direction of Planet Earth's leadership, and its own unlimited supply of wind to blow, I don't expect one any time soon.