Originally posted at Liberal Street Fighter

Editor & Publisher asks a vital, if disturbing question:

When Is a 14-Year-Old Girl a ‘Woman’?

NEW YORK Ever since the case of the raping and killing of an Iraqi and the alleged murder of three of her family members by U.S. troops went public, the age of the rape victim had been in dispute, ranging from about 15 to 25. Two days ago, Reuters and others news agencies produced proof that she was 14, based on a passport and identity card. Most news organizations then started calling her a girl — but some persist in referring to her as a “woman.”

The girl was apparently born August 19, 1991. Yet a widely published AP story today by Robert H. Reid repeatedly referred to the girl, whose last name was al-Janabi, as a “young Iraqi woman” and later again as a “woman.” The story was in reference to the gag order being requested by attorneys for Steven D. Green, an ex-soldier who is one of the men charged with the rape and murders. It begins: “An al-Qaida-linked group posted a Web video today purporting to show the mutilated bodies of two Fort Campbell soldiers, claiming it killed them in revenge for the rape-slaying of a young Iraqi woman by American troops from the same unit.”

When confronted by unpleasant facts, many in the corporate media seem to understand that most Americans would prefer to remain blind, deaf and dumb.
Much of the continuation of our cozy comfort in our inherent exceptionalism relies upon a long history of willful blindness on the part of Americans. This isn’t unique to our tribe, of course, but we seem to have perfected it. When unpleasant facts can’t be blocked out of sight, out of hearing … when the stench of rot can’t be ignored any longer … we blame the victim. We proclaim that they are some version of non-human, that they are savages or evil. When THAT fails, we turn on our fellows who refuse to help bury the truth.

Then the evil spreads.

Change is impossible without clarity. Clarity is impossible if reality remains clouded by self-justifying myth and blanketed by layers of lies. We need to confront the crimes committed in our names. We need to confront how those crimes were enabled by our willful ignorance and the rapacious greed of the ruling classes in our country. We need to look at the roots of hate here in our own land, founded on blood and chains, and recognize that we have some amongst us who want to use our military to perpetuate their hate. We need to absorb this simple fact, that in the sweep of history we’ve committed terrible crimes, that we CHOSE to do so, and that we’re just like everyone else.

Peace is only possible with compassion, and compassion is only possible through clarity. If we can’t look with unjaundiced eyes at ourselves, if we can’t recognize the shared humanity in others, others that the warmongers amongst us would slaughter, then we are truly beyond redemption.

Calling a teenaged victim a woman doesn’t change the monstrous nature of the alleged crime … it serves only to salve the feelings of the rest of us. Even that sad fact reveals a pathetic need to excuse by building up layers of justification. “If she was a WOMAN, then maybe she ASKED for it,” you can here the piggish unspoken whispers proclaim. “Our boys are under stress, after all,” some would excuse, proclaiming a childish innocence for grown men in body armor and heavily armed while denying the innocence of a victim.

While remaining blind, deaf and dumb may produce a state of willful bliss, eventually it all collapses. Eventually the truth comes into lazy eyes in harsh brilliance, searing the mind and soul.