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Man On A Leash

By Alexa

Almost immediately, two thoughts come to mind when I hear Lynndie England's name: The infamous photo of the nude Iraqi prisoner on a leash and The Stanford Prison Experiment.

In sentencing testimony, England, who had faced a maximum of nine years behind bars, said she was sorry for her actions but that she remained an "American patriot."

Lynndie England is incurious and unsophisticated. She doesn't read the newspapers. Were it otherwise she'd be as puzzled as her limited intellect would permit. And the question she'd ask, if she could find anyone else to discuss such matters with is "was it fair?"

It would be easy to dismiss England as a follower, as an obedient soldier who thought she was just following orders (her defense), as a pliant young woman desperate for approval of her boyfriend (Specialist Charles Graner) and approval on the job, as it were.

But in the final analysis, it would be dishonest and disrespectful to England's victims to give her undue credit, for simple and coarse though she is, she has a moral compass. She knew right from wrong.

A US soldier was . . .  sentenced to three years in jail and given a dishonourable discharge for her role in the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Lynndie England appeared in several photographs that were published around the world of prisoners in degrading poses.

In one image, the 22-year-old soldier held a naked prisoner on a leash; in others she posed with a pyramid of naked detainees and pointed at a prisoner's genitals. She was convicted on six of the seven counts against her.

Lynndie England almost certainly doesn't understand why she's in prison for three years. Somewhere deep down she knows what she did was terribly wrong and she shouldn't have done it. Before her sentencing she apologized for her role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal "to coalition forces and their families that lost their life or were injured because of the photos."

England is doing penance for those in charge who permitted the abuses to occur. She is serving three years in prison. She'll not be spending any time with her toddler son, Pvt. Graner's last gift to her before they quit being friends.

England, 24, described how her sexually charged relationship with Graner - who she now describes as a "shithead" - focused on her efforts to please him. He would take photographs of her during sex, sometimes as she performed oral sex on him. "I didn't want him to take them but he took pictures of everything," she said. "He kept a camera in his cargo pocket. He was always taking his camera out."

These photos not only shook and shattered the image of Americans in Iraq. They were gender-bending to the breaking point. A country barely used to the idea of women in war was suddenly confronted with the portrait of a woman as an equal-opportunity abuser.

We were also appalled by Charles Graner, the ringleader of the abuse, a former prison guard from Pennsylvania run amok. But it was the femaleness of the young reservist that prompted a rash of stories titled "Explaining Lynndie England." It was woman-as-torturer "angle" behind the profiles describing her as a "hell-raiser" from a trailer park family who first married at 19 and joined the reserves to get money for college and a career as a meteorologist.

By the time the legal proceedings began, the slight, smirking woman had been transformed by eight months of pregnancy. What female archetype did that fit? A defendant in a maternity uniform? A madonna as sexual abuser?

As women go to war, the military offers a sometimes glorious and sometimes dismal reminder of equality. A reminder that women have as many points on the moral compass as men. That women soldiers have won an equal chance to bring honor or shame to themselves and their country.
If and when war demands heroics, it produces heroines too. But if and when war brings out our worst, the human in the word dehumanizing also includes women.

To all of us who have been charged, we all agree that we don't feel like we were doing things that we weren't supposed to, because we were told to do them. We think everything was justified, because we were instructed to do this and to do that. -- Lynndie England

CBS: Symbol of Shame;
The Observer;
Doing A Lynndie;
Marie Clare: A Soldier's Story (subscription);
Guardian;
Scotsman.com;
The Stanford Prison Experiment.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on August 21, 2008 (boomark / email).