ABSTRACT
It is impossible to watch, as Iraq spirals out of US control (I write at the end of April 2004), without noting the depth and combustibility of the masculine crisis that has taken hold in and around Iraq. The crisis is double-edged and dialectical; it has both Iraqi and American dimensions. The purpose of this brief essay is to examine the parameters and politico-military implications of this masculine crisis, which can be defined as the traumatic psychological and material consequences of the inability, or threatened inability, to conform to masculine role expectations.
