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UNACCUSTOMED AS we are to women as warriors, women have often played important symbolic roles during times of war. Joan of Arc is France’s national hero. During World War I, propaganda posters made prominent use of women — as the symbol of Belgium, being raped by "The Hun" (a German), and as images of death, either from venereal disease or from war itself. In World War II, Rosie the Riveter was a home-front heroine, filling the wartime factory jobs left vacant by our fighting men, and Tokyo Rose was the evil traitor. The Vietnam War was characterized at least as much by the anti-war movement as by the fighting itself, and the two best-known figures were both women: Jane Fonda, the "bad" protester, who visited North Vietnam and spoke out against the United States, and Joan Baez, the "good" protester, who only wanted peace.

Moreover, womanhood — motherhood — is itself an important symbol of war, says Lloyd deMause, editor of the Journal of Psychohistory. War can often be explained, he says, as a way of appeasing a neglectful or abusive mother. In artistic depictions, men are frequently portrayed marching off to war bearing guns, tanks, and other weapons — phallic symbols of the father — while, on high, a female figure (France’s republican symbol Marianne, Mother Britannia, Mother Russia) is seen urging them on for the protection of the "Motherland." (Granted, this isn’t quite that simple, given the "Fatherland" imagery of Nazi Germany or, for that matter, our own Uncle Sam.) In psychological terms, deMause says, Jessica Lynch was "Mommy in danger: she was under attack, and we’d better go save her." By contrast, the symbolism of Lynndie England is that "Mommy is still bad. She’s still torturing us." The degree to which the England images have resonated, he adds, suggests there remains a pent-up need among many Americans for still more war in order to please the "Killer Mommy."

The war in Iraq has brought these archetypes to life, emphasizing just how female the US military has become. Next to Jessica Lynch, the best-known American prisoner of war was another woman, Shoshana Johnson. Lynndie England is just one of three female suspects in the abuse-and-torture investigation. And the head of Abu Ghraib when many of these depraved acts took place was a woman, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski. Thus the reality of our ambivalent feelings about women in uniform and the symbolism we attach to female images have merged, making it difficult to see the actual person behind the psychological baggage. Conservative columnist Linda Chavez revealed perhaps more than she intended when she wondered "whether the presence of women in the unit actually encouraged more misbehavior, especially of the sexual nature that the pictures reveal."

Caryl Rivers, a journalism professor at Boston University and co-author (with Rosalind Barnett) of the forthcoming Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs (Basic Books), says, "Women get packaged as these one-dimensional figures, to package whatever we want at the moment. We wanted a hero a year ago, and now we want a villain. The media always falls for this. It just seems like a good way to make things simple."

And not just simple; satisfying, too. According to Michael Bronski, a visiting professor of women’s studies at Dartmouth College and a Phoenix contributor, beneath the revulsion over England’s behavior is a rather different emotion. "The whole exercise of the sexual humiliation — no matter who actually set it up: CIA, armed forces, private companies — is to negate the masculinity of Arab men," said Bronski in an e-mail exchange. "I think — as horrible as all this is — it is not going to ‘have legs’ in the US because on some level Americans still want to see payback for 9/11 and the sexual humiliation of Arab men (no matter what country they are from) does this. Especially if it is by a woman."

REALITY INTRUDES. Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England are not just symbols, not just archetypes. They are actual human beings. Lynch, who continues to recover from her injuries, spoke to about 150 graduating students at West Virginia University Institute of Technology on Saturday, and asked her audience to pray for the families of the Iraqi torture victims. According to the Associated Press, she would not talk about England. When I tried to interview Lynch last week, a family spokeswoman told me she had no comment.

And what do we know, really, about Lynndie England? Now being held incommunicado, she’s been portrayed as divorced-at-21 trailer trash and as an ambitious young woman who wanted to go to college and become a storm-chaser; as a tough-as-nails soldier and as someone kind enough to have adopted a cat in Iraq. Most likely she is an ordinary young woman, perhaps more callous than some, who found herself in a dehumanizing situation and let herself get caught up in the moment.

"I think people are obviously disappointed that we’re in the limelight for this reason," says Jan Alderton, managing editor of the Cumberland Times-News, the daily newspaper of England’s hometown, near Maryland’s West Virginia border. "Having said that, though, I think they realize that this is a story that’s much bigger than this local region. There’s a lot of media here right now, and I guess there’s more on the way." I asked Alderton if he thought England’s misdeeds had been exaggerated. Rather than summon up some local pride and defend her, his response was surprisingly ambivalent. "I don’t know," he told me. "It’s awfully difficult when you have something in black and white, like I’ve seen. While I want to see her have a fair trial, right now it’s not looking too good. We’ll see what if any extenuating factors were there."

Extenuating circumstances or not, the media should be cautious about treating England as a symbol rather than as a person. She’s not the only one under investigation, and she’s almost certainly not the most culpable.

"A mother beats up her kids or kills her kids, and she’s a monster, like Susan Smith. Men kill their kids all the time," says Belle Adler, a journalism professor at Northeastern University and a former producer for CNN. "I suppose the press can’t resist the element of the female being bad."

Of course, what took place at Abu Ghraib was monstrous. But Lynndie England deserves to be judged by her deeds, within the context of what her peers were doing and what the commanders expected and demanded. By herself, she is no more a symbol of a war gone bad than Jessica Lynch was of American triumphalism.

Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television, speaks of "the tyranny of the visual," adding: "Those pictures insist on being reckoned with. They will not be ignored. And people do tend to take little symbolic moments sometimes and see them as representative of much larger things."

To the extent that those images of Lynndie England humiliating Iraqi prisoners help us understand the horror of what took place at Abu Ghraib, so much the better. But if we allow her to stand in for everyone else — to become not just a symbol but the prime culprit, or perhaps even a martyr for the shame-faced pleasure we take in what she did — then we will have done justice a terrible disservice. Ultimately, it is others who must be held accountable — including ourselves, for not doing more to prevent this misbegotten war being fought in our name.

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com. Read his daily Media Log at BostonPhoenix.com.