Courtesy of the shuffle function on my iPod, I was reminded today that my favorite song from the musical On the Town is “Let’s Go to My Place,” in which a young soldier gets into a cab and lists all the things he wants to see in New York, and the saucy female hack informs him that all of those things are closed, but there’s lots to “see” if he goes on back to her place… if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

Fitting, since it was just Fleet Week. I don’t know about you, but I love Fleet Week. One of my friends complained that there were sailors all over the city—few things are a bigger nuisance to a New Yorker than a preponderance of out-of-towners—but… there were sailors all over the city.

But then a friend of mine said to me on Saturday that she hated Fleet Week because seeing all the sailors left a bad taste in her mouth: she’d soured on the military in general because of all the news of late of atrocities committed, especially on women, by soldiers.

We’ve had this argument before. I won’t name my friend, but she knows who she is. We’ve basically agreed to disagree on matters military, because I don’t think we’ll ever see eye-to-eye, but we respect each other’s opinions. On Saturday, I dutifully argued what I always do: that I know (and am related to) many fine members of the armed forces so I can verify that there are many really great men and women serving right now, and that the truly awful situation of sexual assault and other atrocities at the hands of our troops is created, at least in part, by stress and peer pressure: some of the men abroad, the very men committing these atrocities, have been in Iraq a tour or three longer than they really should have, and it’s a tough, highly stressful situation, and sometimes men break under such difficult circumstances. Which obviously doesn’t excuse heinous behavior, but some of it could have been prevented if, you know, we hadn’t gotten into this ridiculous war to begin with.

I was dismayed to learn that some of the photos Barack Obama decided not to release may or may not show American soldiers raping prisoners. If it’s true, it’s horrifying and heartbreaking. But what I don’t agree with is the liberal/feminist blogosphere going bonkers and making blanket generalizations about the troops.

I can concede that there is much broken in the military. We can sit here and list policies we disagree with: recruitment techniques, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the treatment of female troops, etc. It’s leadership that’s the problem, though, not the troops themselves. Let’s get that straight.

I don’t mean to pick on any one blogger, but here are some posts I ran into today that prompted this (well-tempered, don’t you think?) rant.

I hate to pick on Tiger Beatdown, because I only recently discovered this blog and have enjoyed it immensely, but she says:

Not to point out that military culture is tied to the performance of a very specific, very violent form of masculinity in which to be a “pussy” or a “bitch” or a “faggot” is the worst thing imaginable, that it is a culture that promotes and tolerates pro-rape attitudes, that it is a culture that promotes and tolerates rape. Not to point out that military culture systematically cuts the hearts out of our young men and women, makes them into sociopaths and racists and misogynists and sadists and murderers, in the service of allowing them to more efficiently torture and kill an Other, because recognizing the Other’s humanity would only slow our boys down. Not to point out that rape is inevitably a part of war, that rape is a weapon of war. No. None of those would be the most direct consequence.

Just… no. No doubt there’s misogyny in the ranks, no doubt some people are corrupted by their experiences, but it’s slander to make a statement like this as regards all troops, that vaguely defined “military culture” makes “sociopaths and racists and misogynists and sadists and murderers.” In my, albeit limited, experience, this is just not the case.

There’s a car I walk by almost every day that’s got a bunch of Army stickers in the window and a bumper sticker that says, “Thank a Vet!” I want to! I know a few Iraq war vets, their experiences vary, but these are good people who sometimes fought in a war they didn’t believe in because they thought their work would help keep us safe at home. I also thought today of this guy who lived in my dorm when I was in college. He was in the reserves, and he’d get all decked out in his uniform every so often to go report for duty. It was kind of wild to see the crisp uniform, because this guy mostly wore pajamas around the dorm otherwise. He was a really sweet guy, too, as I recall. He was in the reserves partly so the Army would pay for his degree, but he got something significant out of it, too. You know, “military culture” is also full of discipline and camaraderie and friendship and the value of teamwork and hard work.

I never supported the war, but I do support the troops and veterans. They didn’t start the war, a lot of them got and are getting a raw deal. I realize everyone’s horrified and angry at what these photos may or may not contain, and I recognize that, but let’s not go over the edge and start making pronouncements about how the whole military is like this. It’s a subset, a few men who behaved abominably. If prisoners were raped, let the rapists be court martialed and punished. Let’s not punish the whole dang military.

The greater offense seems to be that Obama won’t release the photos. (There is some interesting stuff in the post linked about the conflation of photos of rape and pornography, FYI.) Personally, I respect Obama’s decision. I certainly don’t want to see the photos, the fact that any photos of what happened at Abu Ghraib exist is enough for me. Atrocities were committed there. If Obama thinks releasing them creates a hazardous situation for the troops still fighting abroad, as he’s argued, then fine. The mere discussion of the photos’ existence has created plenty of anti-military backlash (I’ve seen it all over the web today), which doesn’t do anybody any good. Let’s not make the soldiers’ job harder worse, eh?

I mean, let’s change the military where we’re able. End the war, try those accused of crimes, eliminate Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, etc. Don’t let military leaders condone bad behavior.

So, how about that Manny Ramirez? I sometimes go back and forth on my feelings on steroids, because on the one hand, these are “performance enhancers,” meaning the guys taking them were already talented (the drugs didn’t magically grant them the ability to hit a baseball), but on the other, it still feels like cheating. I thought A-Rod was the great hope for a while, as he’d be the next person to break the career home run record, and he’d be untainted, but so much for that. Blah.

Babe Ruth was one of the greatest players of all time. His performance enhancers? Booze and women. Can we go back to that?

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Manhattan: 1609 vs. 2009. Some very cool photos and renderings; it’s pretty surreal.

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I’m watching Rachel Maddow, and she’s doing a segment on Lieutenant Dan Choi, a West Point grad and Arabic translator who lost his job because he is gay. You can guess how I feel about this, but just on a practical level, doesn’t it seem silly to you to kick people who want to serve out of the military, especially when the military has a recruitment problem?

President Obama says he’s going to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. So… can he get on that?

Also, similarly, go Maine!

There’s a blog by a active-duty girl sailor, which lately includes monologues from a piece called “Forward Deployed.” It’s interesting stuff.

Gothamist has a 2-part interview with a soldier who was in Iraq: part 1, part 2. The soldier, Jason Christopher Hartley, has a book out called Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq. I always think these soldier’s-eye view tales are fascinating, plus I think hearing from actual soldiers humanizes the troops on the ground. I’ve seen both sides of the war debate discuss soldiers as mindless automatons, either their to do our bidding or else only capable of committing atrocities, so it’s good to see what it’s like first-hand, the situation we continue to send out family members and fellow citizens into.

In December, I started writing a novel about a man who comes home from the war in Iraq and starts kidnapping and murdering young girls. It sort of grew into the piece about the after-effects of war. Timely of me to start it, then, since soldiers and PTSD and homicide were big news last week.

I’ve been compiling articles and blog posts on the issue, so here’s what I’ve collected so far:

Last week’s Times magazine story. That soldiers commit homicide is not really news. My interest in the story is about the why. What happens to these men (and women) when they are overseas that makes them unable to reintegrate into society, to make them think it’s necessary to carry an assault rifle to 7-11.

From the article:

“He came back different” is the shared refrain of the defendants’ family members, who mention irritability, detachment, volatility, sleeplessness, excessive drinking or drug use, and keeping a gun at hand.

“You are unleashing certain things in a human being we don’t allow in civic society, and getting it all back in the box can be difficult for some people,” said William C. Gentry, an Army reservist and Iraq veteran who works as a prosecutor in San Diego County.

The nature of the counterinsurgency war in Iraq, where there is no traditional front line, has amplified the stresses of combat, and multiple tours of duty — a third of the troops involved in Iraq and Afghanistan have deployed more than once — ratchet up those stresses.

In earlier eras, various labels attached to the psychological injuries of war: soldier’s heart, shell shock, Vietnam disorder. Today the focus is on PTSD, but military health care officials are seeing a spectrum of psychological issues, with an estimated half of the returning National Guard members, 38 percent of soldiers and 31 percent of marines reporting mental health problems, according to a Pentagon task force.

Decades of studies on the problems of Vietnam veterans have established links between combat trauma and higher rates of unemployment, homelessness, gun ownership, child abuse, domestic violence, substance abuse — and criminality. On a less scientific level, such links have long been known.

The problem here is that there’s insufficient screening for mental-health problems when soldiers get home, and there’s not enough support or follow-up care.

Blogger reactions:

Amanda at Pandagon: “While the murders themselves are an important story, the larger story here is that war—and wars that are primarily about shutting down civilian resistance like the Iraq War is—leave many more casualties than the ones officially logged by the government.”

Samhita at Feministing: “If we haven’t already exhausted the reasons for why we should not be at war right now, let this be one of the issues that comes to the forefront of national attention.”

The Mahablog: On the rightie blogger reaction.