by No War! / Earth First! Newswire



In a telling incident, the chief sexual assault prevention officer of the Air Force Jeffrey Krusinski was arrested yesterday for allegedly groping a woman while drunk. The timing of this incident is particularly incredible, considering that the Air Force is set to release their annual report on sexual assault on people in uniform tomorrow.

At the Earth First! Journal and the Newswire, we have worked hard to bring you cutting edge news about the military industrial complex. The US military is far and away the most earth-destroying, climate changing, soul crushing organization around. For many, it also represents the total accumulation of patriarchy.

The inclusion of women in the military has created a crisis of rape. Women are regularly raped in the military—19,000 rapes are reported every year, and that marks the few who are actually able to come forward. Like the prison industry complex, the hierarchical structure, presence of command chains, and interminable bureaucracy of the military destroys the efforts of women to gain or maintain a free life.

Just last month, the new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagal jumped forward with a demand to change the power that commanding generals have to void sexual assault convictions. While Hagal was lauded by many in the military, activists with Protect our Defenders insisted that his decision addressed “only one part of much larger fundamental problems.”

Of course, the internal sexual assault scandal that this creates might give us pause to consider the invisible women assaulted by military personnel in West Asia and everywhere the military of the US is stationed (Krusinski was stationed in Afghanistan for a while). It might also give us an insight into how to challenge the military as a body.

Like the inclusion of women in such a patriarchal organization, the greening of the military has led to business as usual, with a veneer of acceptability for our liberal climate. In 2010, President Obama instituted the first program to “green” the military by doing such courageous things as adding hybrid hum-vees to the manifold, building solar-powered tents, and manufacturing fuel cell tanks. Is rape still possible in a solar-powered tent? Is the destruction of the planet still possible with fuel cells?

The US is a deeply corrupt and sinister institution of murder and the destruction of nature. It cannot be reformed. It must be destroyed.