Rape is part of war. EVERY war. To doubt it happens is ignoring the ENTIRE history of humankind/

[Snoutport]

I'm baffled as to how there can be doubt that women are being raped in Libya. Just a few months after what happened to the American reporter in Egypt.

Rape is one of war's most powerful tools. It subjugates the enemy. It makes them lose value in the eyes of the victor.

If you doubt it then you need to read The Rape of Nanking. That way you can see pictures of what the Japanese did to the Chinese women. You can doubt words but it is hard to ignore a photo of a dead woman on the side of the road who has been repeatedly raped and then had a gun stuck into her privates and shot.

The Rape of Nanking interviews families who watched their women dragged away and brutalized by whole squads of men. This is just 70 years ago. But it happened in Korea, it happened in Poland, it happened in Italy, it happened all over the European warfront. All nicely documented.

But if that isn't enough, then research the Greek armies, the Roman armies, the Ottoman's, the Crusades, and war after war since then. Rape is a tool of war. If you kill all the men and boys and rape all the women, the next generation is going to be half war victor/half victim and such is how the conquest of a people occurs.

Rape is a part of war. Every war I've read about. To think it isn't happening in Libya is pretty (I don't want to use a judgemental word and get blocked so I will say) ignorant.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

1. The rape of the sabines, all the way back to Roman times n/t

[Cleita]

12. Beyond that to the Iliad.

The story begins matter-of-factly about the rape of Chryseis and Briseis, Trojan women taken captive by Agamemnon and Achilles, and the quarrel over the women that ensues between the two warlords when Agamemnon is pressured to return Chryseis to her father and Agamemnon, who is the high king, demands Briseis from Achilles as compensation for losing his bed slave.

[Bucky]

16. Actually the rape of the Sabine women was one rare, if ironically named, exceptions

Well, according to the legend anyway. The truth may be more typical of how subjegators treat conquerees, but at least according to Roman tradition, the women of the Sabine tribe, after being abducted by Romulus's men, were offered the choice of marriage to the Latin men with the trade off being improved women's property rights under Roman law. The Sabine women who refused were then free to go home.

[justiceischeap]

2. Hell, just look at the number of American service men raping American service women

You shouldn't be surprised that rape happens during war because it happens all the fucking time on the streets. Plus as others have pointed out, it's considered a tool of war.

[EFerrari]

3. You're right but the truism isn't a news report.

And it isn't ignorant (which is a judgmental word) to be skeptical of news reports on Libya when even Al Jazeera, who we could count on in Egypt, it falling in line with the government narrative and reporting Libya differentially than Bahrain, is pretty quiet about Doha's own interests and action, and also pretty quiet about the raping and killing of black African migrants by the "rebels".

[Snoutport]

11. ignorance is a state that exists when you don't have knowledge

So I will agree to disagree about whether it is a judgement term.

I am a teacher for kids with severe disabilities. This year alone I have three students with conditions I had never heard of. First thing I say in the intake meeting is, "I don't know anything about this condition." And then I ask if they can suggest some good reading. And then I do my homework and then I no longer feel ignorant.

Since I do have knowledge of rape during war times I think I can say it is an ignorant position to say there isn't rape going on in Libya. I'm not saying anyone is stupid or crazy...I'm saying they are ignorant of the facts. I then offered a reading choice that opened my eyes to a really horrible side of humankind. Once you read the stories and see the pictures of the women in Nanking you would never, ever stop thinking about what happens to women when a war breaks out. Read about what happened to the women of Poland as the Nazi's killed their men and then brutalized them.

My heart goes out to the women of Libya and any war torn area. I just simply couldn't listen to doubts that the women caught up in this Libyan battle are paying a terrible, terrible price. Doubt everything you hear from the government/governments/media...that is any person's right...but don't doubt for a minute that the women of Libya are caught in a horrible position.

[EFerrari]

15. Knowing that rape happens in war is not the same as knowing

what is happening in Libya. You are conflating those two different kinds of knowledge.

And to suggest that I haven't read about women and war simply because I disagree with your premise is to assume more than you know about me.

[raccoon]

4. You got that right. Recd. nt

[notesdev]

5. Is there a point here?

Is this statement of the obvious intended to justify a particular policy?

[Snoutport]

10. It was an opposing opinion to the posts doubting that there is rape happening in Libya

[blindpig]

6. Yes, that's true, however....

to accept any pronouncement of the corporate propaganda machine unexamimed is foolish, they lie every day.

[Chorophyll]

7. K&R.

Thank you.

[femrap]

8. K and R....

Take for example, Darfur, where the women are raped as they go to fetch firewood to cook a meal.

Wouldn't it be best if the women were armed? At least they'd have a chance at survival. Did you know that the rapists in Darfur know exactly how to aim a gun into a woman's vagina so she ends up with fistula?

That's how f*cking sick these war boyz are.

I'm all for Peace....but there is something to be said for SELF DEFENSE.


edited for typo.

[Erose999]

9. I suppose its more terrible than the other aspects of war, landmines, famines, civilian casualties..

all terrible. I can't say I'm surprised to hear about the rapes in Libya but I will say I'm surprised in the way the media is reporting them... like rape has never happened in any of the other wars. I guess after 10 years of seeing the rest of war in Iraq and AFGN, focusing on the most shocking parts of the war in Libya like rape is probably the only way to get John Q. Public's attention anymore.

[Bucky]

17. Yes, that was EXACTLY the OP's main point.

:eyes:

[Forkboy]

13. Oh, I've no doubt that it happens, and is happening.

I've no doubt it's also being used to manipulate, another thing that happens in every war.

[PurityOfEssence]

14. The problem is making the leap of logic to say that it's planned and encouraged by leadership

Qaddafi has a MUCH better record on women's rights than the Islamists of Cyrenaica.

One of the unspoken realities of this war is that the Eastern revolt is partially fueled by vengeance from Islamists of the LIFG for having their kin killed at Abu Salim: a prison riot of captured Islamists who took hostages. They were in an overcrowded prison because they'd been on a rampage killing Police, Uniformed Soldiers and had botched an assassination attempt of Qaddafi. These people don't like Qaddafi's liberal policies toward women.

There has been plenty of rape from rebel troops, too, and some of it has been racially oriented: Arab on Sub-Saharan.

You obviously get the reality of what horrors are unleashed in war, and I don't think I'm at odds with you at all. The really ugly aspect of crying "rape" is the unsubstantiated leap of logic that it was sanctioned by Qaddafi as policy. This is an ongoing problem as the interventionists scrabble to justify the unjustifiable: they demand the moral high ground, even as they call for brutal military intervention into a situation that simply didn't warrant it, and ignore the greedy underpinnings of the operation.