Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), who sought and received five student deferments from service in Vietnam, tried to school the military Tuesday on how to prevent sexual assaults. You might recall Chambliss from his ignoble attempts to paint his Democratic opponent Max Cleland, a Vietnam war triple amputee, as unpatriotic.
Chambliss’ words of wisdom were to do a better job vetting people and putting fear into them, to stop them from acting on their “hormones”. Also, tell them this won’t be tolerated.
Watch the NBC News June 4, 2013 broadcast via Raw Story:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Chambliss began by alerting folks that they should have known there was a problem when several females returned pregnant after going out on an aircraft carrier, “Several years ago when we had the first females go out on an aircraft carrier, when they returned to port, a significant percentage of those females were pregnant.”
In a sign of things to come, Chambliss suggested that pregnant servicewomen should be investigated to make sure their condition was the result of consensual sex. Somehow he missed the fact that women are afraid to report rape because it is often used against them. It’s called retaliation.
Chambliss lectured the panel of high ranking military officials that they aren’t putting enough fear into these servicemembers, “… (T)here’s gotta be some kind of fear put into these young people… Fear has got to be that chain of command that we elude to really is serious that these sorts of sexual assaults do not occur and by golly if they do, starting with drill sergeants all the way to the top, somebody is going to make sure that you pay the price if this does happen. And if you look at the private sector, if something like that had happened, there would have been an extensive investigation and it wouldn’t have been taken for granted that it was consensual.”
Never fear, Chambliss is here, “The easiest way to eliminate this problem is to make sure it never happens in the first place and that those men and women are trained early, uh, on as to the type of situations they ought to avoid and the consequences if something like this does happen.” Why didn’t someone else think of that? Tell them it’s wrong! Der. I guess Chambliss doesn’t get out to the bases in his state much, but there are signs everywhere that warn that rape is not allowed and offer help for victims.
Chambliss asked if criminal background checks were done, and it had to be explained to him that not all people with a propensity to rape are convicted criminals, therefor their background check… It might be helpful if someone made the entire Republican party aware of the low rate of reporting for rape and the even lower rate of conviction. Though credit must be given to Chambliss for not carrying his party line that these rapes might not be “legitimate rape”.
Chambliss suggested that the military should do a better job screening folks, maybe by getting references to their character from people who know them.
Yes, that will work, because rapists would of course ask the victim to provide that testimony. Again, it’s obvious that Chambliss knows nothing about the nature of rape reporting and the frequent targeting of a victim who speaks out. Assuming that the community would know if someone were a rapist even if the background check didn’t just exemplifies his lack of understanding. Why is the go-to answer for Republicans digging into the personal lives of people and trying to get their friends and neighbors to report on them? It was another Georgia Republican who suggested that friends and neighbors report on women who suffered a miscarriage, so that they could be investigated for possible tampering with their pregnancy.
Chambliss then blamed the “hormone level created by nature” for military sexual assaults, saying hormones set in place the possibility for “these types of events to occur.” No. No, sir. Not at all. Rape is not an act of passion. Rape is an act of violence and aggression. It is not nature, and it is not hormones. Many people suffer from surging hormones and yet they are not rapists.
Chambliss put on a decent show of caring about the issue, even though it was replete with his archaic framework of blaming nature for rape, but Chambliss doesn’t have a great record at showing up for important things. For example, Chambliss once took off to play golf with Tiger Woods, while his colleagues held a closed-door session discussing the need for an inquiry into Bush’s WMD lies.
There are many troops who do not commit sexual assault, therefore the “nature” argument is dubious at best. Chambliss meant well, perhaps, but he clearly doesn’t understand the first thing about rape and/or rape culture, and his suggestions to the military only demonstrate that he doesn’t really get how it operates either.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
