I am a U.S. Army veteran with three deployments to the Middle East, two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, where I witnessed atrocities that will never leave me. I have also heard far worse firsthand accounts from fellow service members. For many who deployed to these regions, the deepest scars are not always from combat but from moral injury: the forced silence in the face of evil.

Below is a small sampling of comments from just one X post in 2025, in response to a straightforward question:

• “Did the high ranks really tell American soldiers to stand down and not interfere when children were being sexually assaulted in the Middle East?”
  • “Yes, we were ordered to do so. It’s a ‘culture thing.’ Don’t interfere.”
  • “YES. They did. And it was, and still is, infuriating.”
  • “I had a teacher get real angry before telling us a story about being stationed in the Middle East. He and his platoon shared a building with local soldiers. He saw a child chained to one of the bunk beds. He asked his superior about it and was told to ignore it. Later, he could hear the boy being raped. The next day he asked if he could free the child and deal with the pedophile. He was ordered to stand down—‘because it was their culture.’ It was one of the reasons he left the force.”
  • “Yes. What I’ve seen there will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
  • “This is one of the biggest sources of trauma for servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.”
  • “This is 100% true. We had a police captain in Afghanistan who kept chai boys (sometimes several). It caused immense internal frustration among the Marines. Why the hell are we protecting this monster just because he was ANSF?”

This practice, known as bacha-bazi (“boy play”) or the use of “chai boys,” involved the systematic purchase, sale, abuse, and torture of young boys, all excused in the name of “culture.” To this day, when I watch my young son run freely and play without fear, I often fight back tears, knowing what children his age endured in the very regions we were sent to liberate. Most veterans who served there remain largely silent. Speaking out has accomplished little; we are dismissed, and there has been no real accountability for those who ordered us to look the other way.

This policy did more than inflict moral injury on American troops. It ended careers and, in some cases, cost lives. Consider Army Captain Quinn and Sergeant First Class Charles Martland, who were investigated and punished by U.S. forces after confronting an Afghan police commander who was raping children. Quinn eventually left the service; Martland faced expulsion until a U.S. Congressman intervened. Things ended even more tragically for Marine Lance Corporal Gregory Buckley Jr., who was shot and killed on his base in Afghanistan by one of the “tea boys” of the local police chief. These incidents reveal the disturbing lengths to which elements of the U.S. government and military have gone to accommodate and silence opposition to such practices. The issue extends beyond the Middle East. During training exercises in India, I saw how the caste system and entrenched cultural myths have normalized sexual violence. Victim-blaming is widespread, reporting rates remain abysmally low, and the societal tolerance for rape runs deep. 

This is not merely about immigrants importing a “rape culture” into the West. It is also visible in subtler domestic forms, such as the booming romance novel genre that has swept through many women’s reading circles. My wife, who prefers cozy mysteries, now struggles to find recommendations from friends because so many have shifted to “dark romance” titles that romanticize non-consensual acts, coercion, and dominance, packaging sexual assault as passion or love. Some academics defend these stories as harmless fantasy spaces for exploring power dynamics or “reclaiming” alpha-male archetypes. Yet true strength and masculinity do not require force or manipulation. Glorifying violation, even in fiction, risks desensitizing readers and blurring critical lines around consent.

We know the precise definition of rape: sexual assault without the victim’s consent. That same principle of non-consensual violation has come to describe broader assaults on our society. Our lands are being “raped” through eminent domain seizures for massive data centers and power infrastructure, all without any actual consent from the community and its citizens. Western legislatures have pushed to sell or transfer vast public lands, again bypassing the will of the people. Our privacy has been steadily taken without our consent for decades, through the Patriot Act, FISA expansions, the Freedom Act, and now widespread public-private surveillance networks like Flock cameras, which track citizens across cities without warrants, probable cause, or even suspicion of wrongdoing.

Our most fundamental rights are being taken without a shred of consent. Every layer of society, our children, our sovereignty, our freedoms, is under assault. We must reject the excuse that “this is just their culture” or “this is progress.” Rape is never culture. It is a violation, whether of a child in Afghanistan, a woman in any society, or the foundational liberties of a nation. The time to stand and end these abuses is now.