I am told you are the goddess of love, fertility, and war...

Dear Inanna:

I am told you are the goddess of love, fertility, and war, fond of the night skies of ancient Babylon. It seems you have been active in recent months. Are you, perhaps, alarmed, aggrieved, and angered by the hordes of American jet planes darting through your beloved desert air?

In photographs from the American run prison at Abu Ghraib I see signs of your vengeful play and, perhaps, the work of your associate Kiskill-lilla (Lilitu/Lilith,) the night demon.

In one picture an American soldier, a young woman, is shown pointing mockingly at the genitals of a naked male prisoner who has been forced to masturbate. She has an eager and wide smile as though she is pointing to a fish she has caught while out with the boys. We are told that she or another young female soldier caught up in the so-called 'prisoner abuse' returned home pregnant soon after the pictures were taken. So we have elements of war, fertility, and sex -- some of the hallmarks of your presence.

I write in hopes that you will be good enough to help me understand how it is that this American woman became an apparently enthusiastic participant in torture.

Before I explore this question I want to make clear that I try to approach such questions with due appreciation that “there but for the grace of goddesses go I.”

Psychologists have found it rather easy to elicit sadistic abuse from otherwise well-behaved middle-class college students who have been set up in situations of fairly unlimited and arbitrary power over other subjects. I don’t assume that I would not, through some combination of a need to conform to the expectations of my comrades and fear of exclusion or retribution, participate to some extent in a norm of abuse.

I do want you to know that sadistic sex play has never held any attraction to me. And, of course, this was not play, but real sadism. It was the exercise of sadistic power in a manner that would have made the worst characters of the Nazi SS proud.

As with the practice of the Nazis, there is in Iraq many of the signs of the dehumanizing “othering” of racism. I am confident that some of the American participants in torture brought a virulent strain of American racism with them to their job of guarding and caring for Arab prisoners.

The women in these pictures have joined the military which is a male institution at its core and which has a central function of organizing violence against people in other countries. These women are taught to kill, but also to follow orders and rules of engagement.

In today’s military culture there is constant questioning about whether the women are “equal” to the job, in other words, whether women belong there doing “a man’s job.” Women feel they have to prove they can “take it and give it out” as well as the men. Also they will earn favors from the powerful men if they “go along” and, perhaps better yet, reinforce the male behavior by doing it one better.

It is reasonable to speculate on the lives of these women before joining the military based on knowledge of the frequency of abusive behavior in American homes, schools, churches, and in dating relationships with men. These abusive female guards at Abu Ghraib may well have experienced physical and emotional abuse in one or more of the institutions and relationships in their lives.

Placed in a position of near total power over Arab prisoners in the late hours of the night, restraints relaxed by instructions, if not direct orders, to ‘soften up’ the prisoners, their emotions heightened by the proximity to “enemy” men who stimulate the fears they may once have felt with the men who abused them earlier, it is a situation perfect for the release of the rage they have held within them. Add to this the social context in which these women must always be careful to please the men who outnumber them and who set the cultural tone and the rules of the military institution and we have a stage set for vicious sadism complete with playful smiles.

Inanna, now I understand.

In this world where abuse remains prevalent we know that that the wounded will all too often turn their rage on the “other.” Revenge was easy on those who do not know how to heal their own wounds and are ready to “give it out” to prove something which can never be proven. Give them digital cameras and stir their rage in the excitement of their officially sanctioned power over other human beings.

While drunk on mortal power these young Americans had no idea what greater powers would envelope them in the desert nights of Babylon.

Inanna, you have taken your revenge and I am sorry for all who have suffered in its making. I wish that soon your desert skies return to peaceful beauty and that human beings leave off hurting the other.

Respectfully yours,

C.D.Knight
July 2004