Townhall Columnist: Our Troops In Iraq Desperately Need More Protection -- From Porn

Grow up, lady.

Not only all our troops suffering from "porn addictions" every bit as pernicious as the post-traumatic psychosis suffered by Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter, but porn even caused Abu Ghraib:

Chaplains are reporting that pornography addiction is a serious problem among our troops, even though alcohol and porn are banned for those serving in Iraq:

In Iraq, alcohol and pornography - including Internet porn - are banned for enlisted personnel out of sensitivity to adherents of the country's dominant religion, Islam. But despite the prohibitions and blocking software on military computers, Father Mark Reilly, who served as a Marine chaplain in Iraq this year, said increasing numbers of both men and women serving in Iraq have access to porn and have become addicted.

"I don't think I've ever been confronted as much face-to-face with men and women - in and out of the confessional - saying, 'I'm addicted to porn and I don't know how to get out of it,'" Father Reilly said. "They're looking for a life preserver. It's wrecking their marriages. Like any addiction, they lose control."

British historian Joanna Bourke said that at their worst, pornography causes imitative behavior like the Abu Ghraib photos - made by and for porn addicts. "The abuse is performed for the camera," she wrote in the London newspaper The Guardian. "These obscene images have a counterpart in the worst, non-consensual sadomasochistic pornography."

Janet LaRue wants the DoD to fund more "sexual purity" kits (that's what they're actually sold as) to help the troops block porn from their computers and their lives. I suppose I agree to some extent -- if some troops want such things, why shouldn't they have them? If a cheap little widget can help a military man fight temptations which he does indeed wish to fight, I'm in favor of giving it to him. Just as I'm in favor of getting beer to the warriors who might want a drink. And, frankly, if some soldiers aren't so worried about being tempted by porn, I'm in favor of letting them improve their morale by letting them knock one out when they wish. Ms. LaRue disagrees:

The Department of Defense (DOD) cannot effectively protect our military from pornography and its copious adverse consequences by banning porn only in Muslim countries. The DOD needs to understand why the troops at home are ordering the "sexual purity kits" - they need homeland security from pornographers.

For starters, the DOD must strictly enforce the Military Decency and Enforcement Act of 1996 (Act) on U.S. military bases, which it hasn't been doing. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the constitutionality of the Act in General Media Communications v. Cohen and the Supreme Court denied review.

So, she's not just in favor of helping those troops who want help in avoiding porn, she wants to make sure any troops who might actually want to view such filth can't see it.

She's not really interested in helping the troops. Or, I guess, she's in favor of helping them, against their wills if need be, because she knows what's best for them.

And that just serves as a warm-up for demanding a nation-wide crackdown on Demon Porn.

All plainly unserious, yet another example of a reductivist retard trying to use the war to advance The Great Big Single Issue That Enables Them To Simplify A World Which Is Distressingly Complex.

Found, ironically enough, at Pandagon, who shares LaRue's single-minded idiocy. Just an idiocy of a different sort.

I Guess I Was Unclear: Pandagon finds this absurd; she's not linking the article because she agrees with it, but because she finds it to be an example of goofball rightwingery. I agree with that. (Though her slam of it is kind of silly, for reasons I won't get into; but even with such an easy target, she can't manage a rebuttal without lapsing into illogic.)

What my last sentences were intended to mean were that LaRue and Marcotte were two sides of the same goofball reductivist coin. Both have a limited capacity for comprehending the complex world as it actually is and find, therefore, a great deal of comfort in crudely reducing everything into cookie-cutter paradigms that are simple enough to let them feel the've got a pretty good handle on things.

That's what I meant by "ironically" there -- yes, Pandagon saw this woman as the crude reductivist she is, but Marcotte can't see she's cut from the same dogmatic, anti-intellectual, religious zealotry cloth.

And Marcotte is religious, of course. A true fundamentalist. That she doesn't believe in God is no proof of her irreligiosity -- a religion can survive without having a God, but every religion needs a Devil. And Marcotte's got one, or, rather, three billion of them -- men.

Pardon the lapse... I decided spur of the moment on Saturday morning to go to New York, and, due to problems in every single phase of my trip, it took me almost ten hours to get from Boston to New York. And then there were still further problems after that, so finally, after dealing with buses, subways, etc., for almost twelve full hours, I had to get really drunk, and I'm still hung over two days later. Not just from the booze, but from exhaustion.

posted by Ace at 05:55 PM

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