Southern cross
Petronella Wyatt
What shocked me so unutterably about those pictures of US soldiers was the photograph of a member of my sex dangling a cigarette in her mouth and pointing mockingly at the genitals of hooded prisoners. Why? Because there is something inherently repellent about the sight of a woman being simultaneously coarse and cruel.
In my naive way. I still think of women as the world's nurturers. Yet here was a disgusting depiction of the very opposite. I would not be surprised if it is this picture which has caused most rage in the Arab world. With its strict rules on and expectations of female conduct, the sight of 21year-old Lynndie England mocking a naked man must have been the last straw.
Miss England has not only endangered other US and British soldiers and further muddied the cause of the coalition, but also disgraced her whole sex. And what harm she has done to Arab women. The liberation of Arab daughters and wives has been put back decades. If this is the way females behave when they are accorded equal rights and treatment, no wonder Arab men fear such a frightening new dawn.
Both England and Ivan 'Chip' Frederick, another soldier involved, come from Virginia. It seems odd at first that this should be so. When one thinks of Southerners one imagines chivalrous men and decorously behaved women. Ashley and Melanie Wilkes, for instance. Even Scarlett O'Hara, who mistreated convict workers at her mill, would have been constrained by ladylike thoughts from stripping them naked and jeering.
But most of our notions about the South come from old romances and films such as The Virginian. We deplore the fact that plantation owners kept slaves and sometimes abused them, but in general we have forgiven. As Disraeli rather flippantly remarked when questioned about the outcome of the civil war, 'The South will win because it has better manners.'
I was inclined to agree with such assessments until I went to live in Virginia. During the four months I spent there, I found it an alien and sometimes frightening place. Middle-class whites remain polite if insular. There is always the feeling that they still long for the good old days of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. But workingclass whites, those who used to be called 'white trash', constitute some of the most terrifying creatures on this planet. Lynndie England and her fellow soldiers come from poor redneck backgrounds. In my limited experience, rednecks seem to live on hate. They are dirty, overweight, rude, drunken and drive (recklessly) big trucks with the Confederate flag on the bonnet. They are brought up on a deeply racist gun culture. There are probably more gun shops in Virginia than in the rest of the US put together. And in their hearts, most rednecks would like to point them at a coloured person. They still blame freedom of the slaves for their impoverished lives. Indeed, the worst thing that could happen to the average Virginian would be for their daughters to take up with people they still call niggers.
This is the world Lynndie England has lived in all her life. Iraqis are regarded as no better than blacks, their ancient traditions dismissed as savagery. Whenever I argued for more understanding with regard to the 'peace', I was met with stares usually reserved for child-killers. There is no respect for foreign cultures in rural Virginia. No one would bother to read about them anyway. If any literature is perused, it is the local gun manual. This cocktail of disrespect, violence and ignorance is a lethal one for Iraq. Obviously, the US army has to take what it can, but, if anyone had asked recruits like Miss England for their opinions of Iraqis, they might have thought twice about sending them overseas.
Actually, I feel sorry for Lynndie England. She stood no chance in a Middle Eastern war zone. The fault lies not with her but with her world. Her world of stolen pigs and turkeys roasted on the roadside, of callous beliefs and revanchism. Very few young women in present-day Virginia grow up to be Southern belles; they grow up to be harridans who, given the opportunity, take their grievances out on helpless people with dark skins. The South once had a veneer of glamour and civilisation. Sadly, it has it no longer.
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