Why Is it Different When Americans Rape?

Posted by Byard Duncan, AlterNet at 2:22 PM on May 22, 2009.

Now that Steven Green, the former U.S. soldier convicted of raping and killing 14-year-old Abeer Qasim Hamza Al-Janabi, has ducked the death penalty, it's worth asking how we've contextualized his actions in terms of our own cultural assumptions. In a TIME article published yesterday, Green's deeds are labeled "outrageous" and among "the most notorious crimes conducted by U.S. servicemen during the Iraq War." The article, titled "When a Soldier Commits Murder: Life in Prison for Steven Green" seems baffled by its own findings: An American guilty of unspeakable acts of brutality - -- how could this be possible?

CNN has parroted this mock innocence. In a May 18 story, they painted a picture of Green's childhood as "troubled and stressful." Green's story, according to his attorneys, is one of a "broken soldier," caught up in a series of circumstances that pushed him over the edge. He is to be understood as a victim of circumstance. An anomaly in an otherwise tidy, structured framework of ideals.

Given such sensitive scrutiny over Green's case, it's a bit surprising to look back to another TIME article -- this one published exactly six years ago -- that treats an identical crime in a very different manner.

Brian Bennett and Michael Weisskopf, in a piece about Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay Hussein titled, "The Sum of Two Evils," paint a picture of Uday as a "tameless" barbarian who kills for fun and lacks any semblance of self-control. When he rapes a 14-year-old girl, it is not because of any sort of mental disorder, but rather because he has "an insatiable sexual appetite." The story begins with Uday perched atop a balcony, searching for a victim:

At his first outing in 1998, at the posh Jadriyah Equestrian Club, he used high-powered binoculars to survey the crowd of friends and family from a platform high above the guests. He saw something he liked, recalls his former aide Adib Shabaan, who helped arrange the party. Uday tightened the focus on a pretty 14-year-old girl in a bright yellow dress sitting with her father, a former provincial governor, her mother and her younger brother and sister.

As Uday's bodyguards proceed to kidnap the girl and force her into a van, Bennett and Weisskopf can't help but comment on the elder son's inherent depravity and idolatry. Not shaped by his surroundings the way that Green was, he "live[s] at the center of a complex universe of ciphers and rituals he concocted." Uday is the unequivocal picture of evil, lacking all nuance and complexity.

For this reason, his de facto 'death penalty' at the hands of U.S. forces is morally excusable -- different somehow from Green's fate because Uday's savageries were more instinctual, animalistic. Near the end of Bennett and Weisskopf's piece, as U.S. forces dig through the rubble of Uday's sprawling palace (sorting shoes to give to Iraqi workmen), the two journalists come to a self-satisfied conclusion: "The matter of succession is settled. The brothers are finished."

Where does the need to create a distinction between American and Iraqi acts of rape come from? Whether the personal histories of Steven Green and Uday Hussein are equally insidious is irrelevant; what matters is how their crimes -- actions that are identical in premeditation and maliciousness -- are framed. Can we really feel comfortable considering Steven Green a victim of exterior circumstance? Can we really treat Uday Hussein as a mindless savage whose sole motivation was the destruction of innocents?

The two criminals might be more similar than we let ourselves believe.

Tagged as: rape, steven green, uday hussein