Rare News Desk
Hackers circulated nude photos of famous women. Four college students invented a nail polish that detects date rape drugs and alerts the wearer by changing colors. Rand Paul argued in the Wall Street Journal that U.S. interventionism helped fuel the rise of the ISIS terrorists.
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Three recent, seemingly unrelated events. Yet they each triggered similar reactions. In all three cases, people complained about blaming the victim.
Some suggested that actresses like Jennifer Lawrence were unwise to store such personal images online. Guardian columnist Jessica Valenti complained of the nail polish, “Prevention tips or products that focus on what women do or wear aren’t just ineffective, they leave room for victim-blaming when those steps aren’t taken.”
Others likened Rand Paul linking the Iraq war and ISIS to his father Ron Paul’s talk about blowback from American foreign policy and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
They didn’t mean it as a compliment.
https://twitter.com/BenHowe/status/504807168626135040
Let’s stipulate that some people really do blame the victims in all of the above examples. Whether they have bad motives or just haven’t thought the issues through carefully enough, you can find cavalier dismissals of celebrities’ privacy, disgusting arguments that one can dress or behave in a way that invites rape, and loathsome apologies for terror.
No matter the context, hacking is always the hacker’s fault. Rape is always the rapist’s fault. Terrorism is always the terrorists’ fault.
People who violate a woman’s right to privacy, her bodily integrity or her right to life must face justice. Proactive steps to keep these things from happening must be taken.
But taking a comprehensive look at ways to stop people from becoming victims isn’t blaming the victim. It may be wise to lock your doors at night, install a home security system or have means of self-defense available.
Nevertheless, a person with unlocked doors, no burglar alarm and no weapons does not deserve to be burglarized. Their right to be secure in their persons and property is no less than the person with four pit bulls and the most expensive home security system on the block.
Similarly, the failure to take certain precautions doesn’t lessen a person’s right not to have their personal data stolen, their bodies raped or their lives taken by evil-doers with box cutters. And yes, that includes civilian populations of countries whose governments conduct questionable foreign policies.
We certainly live in a sick culture where a woman has to contemplate wearing a special nail polish to ward off sexual predators. But women have the right to make choices they think will enhance their personal safety, while taking nothing away from other women who make different choices.
Such safety measures don’t have to come at the expense of prosecuting rapists to the fullest extent of the law or educating young men about proper consent. (Though I tend to think a man who willfully drugs women’s drinks isn’t simply uneducated.)
Which brings us back to foreign policy. An unwise or even unjust foreign policy can never justify the beheading of journalists or flying airplanes into buildings. But just as misguided economic policies can hurt the economy, poorly conceived anti-poverty programs can prolong poverty and bad education policies can lower the quality of education, some national security policies can actually make citizens less safe.
If you are trying to reduce the incidence of terrorism and keep the American people safe, you have to ask the same question you would ask about any other government policy: Is what we are doing actually working?
The concept of blowback, especially as relates to 9/11, is controversial. Certainly, some of Osama bin Laden’s minions needed no excuse to attack America. Ideologues and fanatics can always find reasons to kill for their causes.
But the desire to avenge real and perceived injustices is as universal a human sentiment as the desire to defend one’s home, friends and family. The friends and relatives of collateral damage in foreign lands can easily be exhorted to take up arms. Others may simply become sympathetic to radical ideologies and less likely to report would-be terrorists in their midst to the authorities.
Yet Rand Paul’s op-ed wasn’t even as theoretical as that. It is beyond serious dispute that ISIS was not conquering vast swathes of Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. When debating whether to go on to Baghdad after the Persian Gulf War, many conservative Republicans—including even Dick Cheney—thought better of it because Islamist radicals might fill the resulting power vacuum.
Similarly, before President Obama’s military intervention in Libya, militias hadn’t seized control of the capital. National security experts didn’t call Libya “Woodstock” for jihadists. The New York Times now reports on the “fractious militias that have dominated the country since the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi three years ago—variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal.”
Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein were evil men. But what followed them has not been an improvement.
Pointing out that these wars haven’t worked as intended isn’t “blaming America” any more than it is blaming the people whose insurance plans were cancelled under Obamacare to suggest we rethink the federal health care law.
Instead of blaming victims, we must always look for ways to avoid creating more victims.
Otherwise we’re all victims of our past mistakes.
