Genital Injuries, Prosthetic Devices and the War on Terror

[donsu]

http://counterpunch.com/rosen06232007.html


The Hidden Cost of War

Memorial Day has come and gone and all they media hype about America's glorious "hero" soldiers can be put to rest, at least until Veterans Days next November. The failed "war on terror," the battle against al-Qaeda/the Taliban and the imperial occupation of Iraq, is devolving toward it's eventually debacle.

In its wake, U.S. military casualties will litter the nation for generations to come. Like the physically and psychologically devastated soldiers who staggered back from Vietnam a generation ago, today's "heroes" will be left to suffer for the failures of the political leadership never held to account.

-snip-

The real story that has gone unreported is the refusal by the Department of Defense and military hospitals to release data about the casualties soldiers have suffered, the medical procedures being performed or other data that can help suggest the long-term consequences of the current horrendous military misadventure. In particular, little to no information is available as to the injuries suffered by U.S. military personnel associated with male external genitalia. (Even less is provided about the true scale of suffering of the Afghani and Iraqi people.)

Since Homer's "Iliad," war has been an incubator of patriarchal masculinity. Many have commented on how erotic is the savagery of battle. However, from the most personal hand-to-hand combat to the use of the most impersonal improvised explosive device (IED), the male genitals have been a zone of conflict with both physical and symbolic significance. Nothing seems to have changed with Afghanistan and Iraq.

-snip-

Soldiers who survive suffer much more grievous injuries. Bulletproof Kevlar vests protect soldiers' bodies, but not their limbs, groin and genitals. The amputation rate is double the rate of past wars.

-snip-

Dr. Imbascini said he amputated the genitals of one or two men every day.

-snip-

For men reared under the tyranny of patriarchal masculinity, nothing is so shameful as the loss or severe injury to one's genital, to a man's ability to sexually perform. Many men experience it as castration. The loss of an eye, hand, leg or other body part doesn't make a man any less of a man; each organ can be replaced, thus sometime even strengthening, empowering the man. However, the lose of the ability to sexually perform, to fuck, is for (some?, few?, many?, most?) men in America experienced as a lose of masculinity, a challenge to self-hood.

The "war on terror" has been accompanied with many dubious expressions of masculinity. It opens with "shock and awe" pulverizing a weakened adversary. It grew with a pathetic president parading on an aircraft carrier in an Air Force flight suit declaring "Mission Accomplished". It reached its nightmare apex with the torture chambers at Abu Ghraib, eroticized with dog leashes and collars around naked Iraqi men's necks along with fetishistically-garbed U.S. servicemen and women inflicting S&M punishment while smiling into the camera.

Today, the bravado of masculinity, of patriotism, is deflating with the growing number of military casualties.
-snip-
----------------------------------------


PRISON - put the neo cons in prison!!

no more wars started by males

we can share what is left of the world in peace

[donsu]

1. kick

nt

[AzDar]

2. W. T. F. ??

How is this being allowed to continue? Why are we not besieging D.C.??

[donsu]

3. shame on DU for being so silent about the horrors male soldiers

are going through with their injuries.


we must stop the occupation now. how long will that doctor remove one or two genitals a day?

how in hell do these young men cope with such a loss? do we have adequate mental health doctors?

tutoring for the families?

STOP THE DAMN OCCUPATION

SPEAK UP

[Missy Vixen]

4. On to the greatest page

It's hard to comprehend how anyone can continue to believe it's okay to send other people's children into this nightmare.

Julie

[FloridaJudy]

5. Rather puts the circumcision threads in perspective.

Here's the real horror. It makes me wince, and I'm not even a guy.

[donsu]

6. kicking for one more day - can't stop thinking about the Dr. removing

one or two genitals a day. what is that, 26 genital-less men or maybe 52 young men so far this mo.?

the horror of that for the young soldiers.

BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

[Zookeeper]

7. I hadn't even thought of that kind of injury, but it makes sense...

Young men with a long life ahead of them that will be devoid of full sexuality and biological fatherhood.

How angry are they going to be? Where will they channel their rage?

Heartbreaking. :cry:

Thanks for posting.

[me b zola]

8. I had been wondering about this

There have been a couple of times that I have seen video footage of GIs with wounds around the genital area and have wondered how prevelent those injuries are.

I suspect that genital mutilation or amputation are psychologically traumitizing injuries above and beyond the "ordinary" psychological trauma of combat.

What hell have the * administration monsters created.



FUGWB :grr:

[TahitiNut]

9. We're talking about something on the order of 3,000 young men.

Appalling. :cry:

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. This is one of the major cultural tropes associated with warfare

Just as a quick catalog:

Born on the Fourth of July: Tom Cruise as Ron Kovic, yelling at his mother "PENIS! PENIS! I have no PENIS!"
The Big Chill: William Hurt's character informing his friend that he can't impregnate her because of what happened to him in Vietnam.
Apocalypse Now: "Why do all you guys sit on your helmets?" "So we don't get our balls blown off..."

There's a great scene in Michael Herr's Dispatches during which a new reporter in the press pool visits some older hands in their room at the Saigon Continental, and after a series of irritating questions asks "what he really wanted to ask all along:" What does it look like when a man gets shot in the balls. Sean Flynn responds, "Oh, I dunno. It all just goes sorta gooey..."

[OnyxCollie]

12. There's a scene in The Big Red One

of a soldier getting his testicles blown off by a land mine.

[KamaAina]

11. Can we give Bush** a Darwin Award by proxy?

For removing hundreds upon hundreds of other men (plus the thousands of dead ones, of course) from the gene pool, through his endless pigheadedness and stupidity?

[Alcibiades]

13. I've been asking this all along

If you tell an 18 year old that the military will give him the chance to play with real guns (big ones!), that his service will mean a great deal to his country, but there's a small chance he might die nobly in battle, he'll sign up, particularly if he's patriotic.

Tell him, however, that there's an even better chance of having his groin swept as featureless as G.I. Joe's, however, and no amount of college money will get him to sign up.

The nature of IEDs, I suspect, is such that castration rates will be far higher than in earlier wars.

We need to get the truth out about this. How is this idiotic war pro-family, if it kills so many Iraqi families and prevents so many of our boys (and girls) from having them? Remember, the birth control pill wasn't covered by insurance until Viagra came on the market. This kind of thing resonates powerfully in the minds of men, particularly the sorts of men who are likely to be the last supporters of the war.

[TexasThoughtCriminal]

14. Reading that made me cringe

And even more so with each -snip-

Hell is too good for these Bushco warmongers.

[burrowowl]

15. Mention circumscision and

100's of replies on DU! Mention what happens to lots of soldiers and so far not many replies!
Legend has it that GIs often placed their helmets to protect their family jewels as opposed to their heads.
People, if something blows off your legs and goes higher, what the hell do you think happens.
Read: The Sun also Rises or is it the other one I can't remeber, by Hemingway.