This Gave Me Pause

When I was reading Daisy's post about Pfc. LaVena Johnson, I got stuck on one of the details. The indications of possible rape and other physical violence and murder all were troubling enough. But then there was this one detail (originally posted by Anne):

Indications that someone attempted to set LaVena’s body on fire

I immediately hear Billy Holiday:

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

I wouldn't necessarily think I should share this association as something for public consideration, except that I am also remembering something I first learned about on David Neiwert's blog: the military has become infested with Neo-Nazis.

According to a devastating Southern Poverty Law Center report (echoed in the New York Times), it's happening at an alarming rate. And it's happening because of the way the military is being handled at the very top:

Ten years after Pentagon leaders toughened policies on extremist activities by active duty personnel -- a move that came in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division -- large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world's best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way.Neo-Nazis "stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core," Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," he added. "That's a problem."The armed forces are supposed to be a model of racial equality. American soldiers are supposed to be defenders of democracy. Neo-Nazis represent the opposite of these ideals. They dream of race war and revolution, and their motivations for enlisting are often quite different than serving their country."Join only for the training, and to better defend yourself, our people, and our culture," Fain said. "We must have people to open doors from the inside when the time comes."

The problem, as the report explains, is the extreme pressure military recruiters are now under to fill their recruitment quotas:

Now, with the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military under increasingly intense pressure to maintain enlistment numbers, weeding out extremists is less of a priority. "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Department of Defense investigator Barfield."Last year, for the first time, they didn't make their recruiting goals. They don't want to start making a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military, because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they'll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists."Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, said he has identified and submitted evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year. "Only two have been discharged," he said. Barfield and other Department of Defense investigators said they recently uncovered an online network of 57 neo-Nazis who are active duty Army and Marines personnel spread across five military installations in five states -- Fort Lewis; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif. "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military," Barfield said. "Several of these individuals have since been deployed to combat missions in Iraq."

Okay, now back to Billy Holiday.The "sudden smell of burning flesh" ought to be as evocative of lynching as the nooses in Jena, LA. Lynching, after all, is extra-judicial execution of an accused person, usually Black, and it often involved burning the victims and otherwise mutilating them. Lynching does not need to involve a noose at all. In some cases, the lynch rope was only a means of displaying an already dead body. A google images search on "lynching" will get you a number of infamous photos of burning or burnt Black bodies (I'm not linking them).I am not claiming that LaVena Johnson was lynched. But indications that someone attempted to set her body on fire should raise our suspicion levels about the nature of this crime, just as we would be further alarmed if there had been a noose involved.Should I be connecting the dots this way? I don't know, but it is a possibility that will beg investigation until the military stops stonewalling LaVena Johnson's father and makes a commitment to uncover the truth and seek justice.Back to David Neiwert:

To what extent, really, does the spread of white-supremacist attitudes in the military bring about atrocities like the recent murder of a 14-year-old girl and her family, or the Haditha massacre? It isn't hard to see, after all, attitudes about the disposability of nonwhite races rearing their ugly head in those incidents.The larger political question, however, is a matter of accountability --- the avoidance of which has proven to be the Bush administration's most remarkable skill. Yet at some point, both the public and the military are going to have to ask: What is this administration doing to our armed forces?

Billy Hoilday, "Strange Fruit" (1939) [ 3:14 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download