I was reading an article over at Stark Offerings about the ways in which female American soldiers have been used to torture detainees at Guantanamo.

Apparently the United States has no problem with allowing its women soldiers to sexually titillate themselves by “provocative touching” of the prisoners — no word on whether or not they allow them to attempt blowjobs or full-blown rape, although there is some mention of the quaint Geneva Convention relative to the treatment of prisoners of war. And after the images that came out of Abu Ghraib, one hardly doubts American female soldiers would do all those things. (Be warned. That last link contains photos of naked Iraqi men, American female soldiers, simulated blowjobs and other poses of a sexual and sadomasochistic nature.)

But, oh!, the Convention relative to the treatment of such prisoners was written to say, “Below this line, no humane country would ever stoop.” And it was decided upon by all civilized nations of the world. The United States was once one of those nations, but as with the Kyoto Accord, we’ve apparently decided to withdraw. Civilized schmivalized! That’s for advanced primates!

And so we think it’s alright for our female soldiers to play with the genitalia — or act as if they will — of prisoners from a country that finds this much more horrifying than merely seeing Janet Jackson’s breast flashed briefly on national TV. (And what a pseudo-uproar that created. But we have no problem with putting on a pretense that sensuous American sluts in uniform will rape helpless prisoners.) If they happen to smear some fake menstrual blood on the guys while performing like sluts…no biggee.

The response of a right-wing commenter to that post was: “Do these guys have to pay for those lapdances [sic]?”

Seems to me that that’s exactly the kind of thinking that has earned the United States scorn throughout much of the world these days.

Taking someone and putting them through what in their culture might be the equivalent of being forced to eat feces (substitute whatever other thing you can think of that would actually truly horrify and disgust you) and then wondering why entire legions of them want to kill us…

Americans just aren’t very smart, are we?

On top of that, before we do all this we virtually steal their property out from under them and sometimes even install (or “merely” support) repressive regimes so that no one can stop us from doing so. To those capable of seeing things from another’s point of view — but that’s a human trait — it’s a no-brainer why they consider us the Great Satan.

Can we seriously not understand this? Or is it just a matter of not caring? Ve vant zee fuckink oil and ve vill haf it!

Americans may have fallen so low as to find indefinite imprisonment with slutty jailers performing “lap dances” and smearing us with fake menstrual blood enjoyable because it’s free. But from the perspective of someone steeped in the teachings of Islam, I suggest this would look very much like Satanic-inspired torture.

And we don’t even need to have that kind of provocation to want to kill them, so why are we surprised that they are so vehement in their desire to destroy us, even if they have to fight to the last Muslim?