The Romance of Lust
Anent the previous entry, the great uncovered story of the Iraq War is sex, no? The US military is still mostly male; war is still a passionate, emotional business fairly sloshing in testosterone. Traditionally war brings rape, prostitution, “liberty ports,” soldiers falling in love with nice local girls, R&R in the big city and all manner of imperfectly managed (by the brass) carnal chaos. This war has American soldiers spending a year or more at a time in places where local culture and the brute imperatives of guerrilla war would seem to tell against prostitution and falling in love with nice local girls. (There were some isolated cases of this early in the war.) “Liberty ports” and sexually open leave cities are thousands of miles away. The politics of “hears and minds” mean, I suspect, that nobody wants the press going anywhere near the question.
And yet, boys will be boys, you know? Theoretically girls will be girls too; as Belle Waring pointed out recently, that’s a whole other very vexed subject. I understand there are rules against fraternization, so sex between male and female service members is officially as illegal as sex between service members of the same gender, is it not? (Please correct me.)
If I had to guess, I’d say: It’s the contractors, stupid. Most American troops have spent the recent years of the war on massive bases with amenities that make them Little Americas. Little Americas staffed with foreign workers, since Iraqi workers are so grateful for being liberated that they are apt, at any moment, to set of a massive display of fireworks they have thoughtfully strapped around their persons. Foreign workers from, substantially, southeast Asian countries. The only articles I can find on third-country-national laborers (like this one) talk about bringing Asian men to Iraq, though, nothing about women.
Spencer, if you’re out there, see what you can dig up, ‘kay?
UPDATE: Commenters suggest the fraternization rules for off-duty personnel restrict sexual relations between officers and enlisted personnel only. This seems an odd choice, since a Sergeant Major may have more practical power over a lance corporal than any officer. But I’m assuming it’s true. So that’s one piece of the puzzle, maybe.
Comment by Derek Copold —
March 14, 2007 @ 12:12 am
Unless things have changed, rules against fraternization barred relations between enlisted personnel and line officers, or people in one’s chain of command. An NCO can’t boff a lower ranking person under his supervision. But, other than that, I don’t know of any ban, provided the people involved are off-duty.
When I was overseas, servicewomen would tend to turn up pregnant fairly regularly. The joke was that it had something to do with the water. There’s something of an urban legend about a naval ship that tried an early experiment with coed staffing by taking on eight female sailors. Within several months, six got pregnant, and the other two were caught together in flagrante delicto sapphonis.
Of course, a pregnancy is also a good way to get out of the service.
Comment by MQ —
March 14, 2007 @ 12:43 am
There was recently an article in Salon claiming widespread rape, er, fraternization, of female U.S. soldiers. (By male U.S. soldiers, of course).
Comment by MQ —
March 14, 2007 @ 12:46 am
Whoops, said article was debunked in the *post right below this one*. My credibility is now in tatters.
Comment by Madeline F —
March 14, 2007 @ 2:39 am
No worries about your credibility, MQ; only Karpinski’s self-aggrandization was debunked, not the article itself.
Other worries are still good to go.
Comment by ajay —
March 14, 2007 @ 5:40 am
KBR hires a lot of SE Asian women, ostensibly for “cleaning duties” on base, who end up operating in their spare time as, shall we say, private contractors.
Comment by Tequila —
March 14, 2007 @ 5:44 am
Ajay – Any proof of that? I haven’t heard anything about that from my Iraq vet friends, and trust me, grunts would know about any sex to be had.
Comment by Alex —
March 14, 2007 @ 6:28 am
In my Viktor Bout files I have some rumours about hookers being flown in on Irbis Ilyushin 18s to service the Zone, under the same sort of cover as Ajay suggests. But I have never been able to substantiate it.
Comment by IOZ —
March 14, 2007 @ 9:27 am
Rum, sodomy, and the lash.
Comment by LizardBreath —
March 14, 2007 @ 10:23 am
I think the situation in your update is covered by the prohibition on relationships with anyone in your chain of command — a subordinate or superior. That’d cover your lance corporal/sergeant major relationship. (Chain of command may be a term of art that only applies to commissioned officers, but I’d expect the prohibition to apply to NCOs as well.)
Comment by Alex —
March 14, 2007 @ 10:47 am
Oh yes, some interesting links in support of 7.
Comment by nadezhda —
March 14, 2007 @ 11:12 am
I’m impressed — what Henley wants, Henley gets in under 24 hours. Spencer on his tohotfortnr blog — the Iraqis are apparently wondering about the same thing Jim is. Still no definitive answers, so Spencer will just have to keep investigating.
Comment by Spencer —
March 14, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
Well, Nadezhda got in before I did…
Jim, I can only speak for Camp Liberty outside of Baghdad for now, but a few things. First, at every public place in Liberty — the chow hall, the gym, the computer center — are warnings against sexual harassment. (”Against the Warrior Code” is the phrase, I think.) That’s not the same as fraternization, but it does send the message that command will look on fraternization with an eye to sexual harassment, so that makes your furtive encounters all the more costly.
Second, as for contractors — and again, this is just Liberty — almost all the third-country-nationals I’ve seen have been male. It’s a really outsized, staggering ratio. I’ve seen a handful of women contractors, most of whom were running the laundromat.
If I can find more from Ramadi, where I’m headed next, I will report back. As a parting thought: the practical rule for fraternization, it was once explained to me at Guantanamo Bay, is never sleep with your immediate commander or your immediate subordinate. If at all possible, sleep with someone of the same rank.
Comment by MQ —
March 14, 2007 @ 2:17 pm
Also, there was a good book about the Green Zone called “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” that had a few references to prostitutes operating with the zone. Also, of course, to tons of sex between male and female civilian political appointees and contractors.
Comment by Derek Copold —
March 14, 2007 @ 4:10 pm
A friend of mine in the service flew a passenger out of Diego Garcia (a naval station in the middle of the Indian Ocean). She was in chains, charged with prostitution. He asked her if she regretted it. She said, no, since she had enough money to more than make up for whatever jail time she served.
Comment by Nell —
March 14, 2007 @ 10:54 pm
Thanks for being there, and for checking in, Spencer. Hope Ramadi is as calmed-out as the big Maliki-visit-show yesterday made it sound.
Comment by Tequila —
March 15, 2007 @ 4:25 am
Note that “fraternization” is UCMJ-speak for ANY inappropriate personal relationship between the ranks, whether sex-related or just overtly-friendly relationships. So you shouldn’t go out for beers with a sergeant if you’re a lance corporal, for instance, and NEVER with an officer if you’re enlisted.
Comment by Sean Peters —
March 15, 2007 @ 9:38 pm
Tequila – while it’s true that the UCMJ prohibits non-sexual as well as sexual fraternization, in practice, the “going out for beers with the fellas” kind is pretty much never prosecuted unless somebody gets into trouble. I’m a career officer and have done it numerous times. There’s a fine line between socializing with your people and being overly familiar with them, and most people don’t have a problem figuring out where the line is.
Sean
Comment by Jim Henley —
March 15, 2007 @ 9:43 pm
Thanks, Sean. That’s very informative. It doesn’t sound so different from the corporate world in some ways. Some of what the letter of the law might consider “fraternization” seems like it would really be “team-building,” no?
Comment by stonetools —
March 19, 2007 @ 10:24 am
There is always Suzy Palmer and the Five Sisters.
.
For what Ive read, masturbation is constant among the grunts