Review of The Invisible War (2012) by Mike C — 24 Mar 2013

Kudos to the American armed forces. Not really. I'm not dumb enough to make a blanket statement that applies to all men and women who serve, but damn, we can do better.

I want to call every man and woman who serves a hero. Sadly, that's just not the case. Stories about dishonorable behavior are virtually endless. This Oscar-nominated documentary focuses on a very specific behavior: the rape of men and women who choose to serve their country, and then the systematic cover-up of those crimes. Good for you, once again, United States government.

It's pretty infuriating and heartbreaking really. Estimates are that 1:5 women in the armed forces are victims to some type of sexual assault. Another study shows that men who sign up for the armed forces are twice as likely as their civilian counterparts to commit sex crimes. Yaaaay! But this does not come as a real shock to me. It's just fucking disgusting that, when we have a problem, we cannot address it.

Imdb is notorious for stupid posts. One poster on this movie said it is one-sided because it focuses only on victims and not the system that creates all the sexual assaults. What does that mean. I don't care if the women are required to train in the nude with signs around their necks that say, "Free Sex." Unless she is very specifically consenting to any given male, he should keep his goddamn hands off. And if he can't, his rank should not matter. He should be subject to the same punishments as the civilian population.

But sadly, the cover-ups are rampant. So you have these people trying to serve alongside their brothers and sisters only to be victimized. Then they try to make it right and get victimized again. The government could step in and sometimes they pretend to. The only good one I've really seen is in the HBO documentary Hot Coffee where a woman is told she cannot do anything about a rape because basically it was part of her service and she'd signed a disclaimer before serving. Senator Franken ripped some heads off. It's not justice, but his passion was at least directed in the right direction. The official they have in this movie is a fucking idiot and didn't even show up to speak to congress.

I'll stop here. I have yet to see the documentary that won the Oscar this year but it's on my list. I hope it is good. Maybe this movie is lacking in entertainment value...it's mostly just people telling their stories and some stats...and it's sexual assault so it's not very entertaining. But it's a hugely important issue. Our country loves war and therefore needs soldiers and needs to love them. But this is unacceptable on every level. The only way to fight the cover-up is to make the fight as public as possible. Good luck doing that with our armed forces and government.