Would you consider soldiers who are rapists heroes?

[Pisces Axxxxx]

 

I remember a while back I read in the Boxer Rebellion, the Western armies eagerly engaged in mass gang rapes of local Chinese women. It was not only allowed but condoned to the point one officer praise French soldiers as "GALLANT" for raping hundreds and hundreds of Chinese women. It got so bad American and Japanese soldiers had to point their rifles at Russian and German soldiers to get them to stop. 

In World War II,Allied officers were well aware that Moroccan soldiers were raping Italian women in the thousands and they even raped French civilians (their allies) for the hell of it. Despite this, Moroccan soldiers got honored for their battlefield performance and in later colonial wars, Western officers even were grief stricken as they witnessed these WWII Moroccan vets suffer horrific deaths in colonial wars specifically in the Algerian Revolution. There is even a war memorial in France for Moroccans who died fighting in Algeria. THE SAME SOLDIERS who ENJOYED raping French civilians and later German civilians. One officer even cried seeing his Moroccan battalion screaming from pain due to losing limbs and facing decapitation. 

WAIT WAIT WAIT these soldiers had nor remorse gangraping ten year old Italian girls and even killing their fathers. More shockingly these officers know that these Moroccans RAPED FRENCH CIVILIANS (who they sworn to protect). WHY THE HELL are they in such agony for such thug soldiers?

IMO these Moroccan soldiers don't deserve any pity. They got what they deserve when they lost their injuries for life in Dien Bien Phu or were slaughtered in Algeria (and even tortured to death). They are getting praised for fighting useless colonial wars and getting pity for suffering-BUT THESE soldiers had no remorse for murdering Italian families and gangraping the women 50 times for pleasure! Why should they be pitied and be given war monuments in France and Germany?

What do you think? Do you think soldiers who perform excellent in the battlefield should be praised as gallant if they went around raping for fun? Do you consider them gallant for gangraping hundreds of civilian women?

In fact I even openly praise their enemies for brutally torturing rapist soldiers. I cheer everytime I read Boxers skinning British soldiers (who raped Chinese women for fun) they captured alive, when Algerian soldiers slit the throats of Moroccans who are veterans of WWII, and when Soviets starved and even experimented on Nazis who raped Jewish and Russian girls to death.

 

[Onasander]

You never had to deal with a situation where guys were killed slowly, their stab wounds used as fuck holes, all dying except one before reinforcements arrive. It's a deeply disturbing situation.... not something polemicised by someone who had to live with the reality of it.

 

So.... Which way you want to go with this one, Herbert Marcuse, Bertrand Russell (Caldrail went to school with him, same class), Guy Dubord, General Smedley Butler, Diogenes, Emerson, Thoreau, ? Or some lesser known anarchist or communist writer in protest? If you want to do this fine, but like.... at least study up on the guys who did this already, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel post by post. This isn't criticism of your views, but like..... I really don't want to walk you through the most elementary aspects of Just War Theory and the Anti-War movement. Most decent soldiers have a respect for it, and as a philosopher I'm expected to know both sides. There is a reason why wars continue to exist despite kids rising their fists in the air dressed in black tossing out punk phrases recycled from French Detournement from the 68 riots in France. It's ironically is a part OF the spectacle of war culture. You say "Why" but I can just as easily point right back and say "How would you know, and are you not just reacting to a inherited ideological scheme yourself emotionally, garnished from feasible sources in media and literature?"

 

The Anti-War movement exists now a days more or less to excuse war..... gives segments of society a controlled way to op out, and recycle feedback into the ethics of how future wars will be waged. 

 

It's the truth. It's all a rather silly game of the left and the right symbolically generating new wars over the centuries.... always a anti war faction.... and they always inevitably reform war.... and people still die in the next one.

[Onasander]

While you learn some of the background arguments of Anti-War Philosophers before your time (so you may understand their arguments and much better augment yours) I googled a case.... such cases are rare in modern NATO armies, so Ill list this one and pick it apart from the apparent details:

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/crime/soldier-convicted-raping-killing-iraqi-girl-commits-suicide-prison-article-1.1619054

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_killings

[Onasander]

Basically, I know the name of the town mentioned, but not quite certain why.... they keep claiming its 20 miles south of Bahgdad, on the edge of the triangle of death, but I was sent to Iraq a few months later to the Triangle of Death, which was to the West-Southwest of Baghdad. I think they are actually closer to the Polish area here.

 

Anyway..... some things should jump out:

 

1) A Group of soldiers, everyone enlisted of lower rank, manning a checkpoint, over a long period of time..... to the point of building negative rapport with the locals.

 

The nature of these checkpoints were like miniforts..... walls of concrete and metal-cloth dirt barriers, with a 50 cal or at least a heavy rifle like a 240 on it, a vehicle or two, radio, guard tower, and likely a rotating stopsign and traffic arm to lower and raise. Nothing is every quite standardized, its not designed to survive a tank or determined mortar attack, relying on other fixed positions and aerial assets for support.

 

2) The main guy charged was mentally unstable, and the highest ranking guy was a very low, almost certainly inexperienced NCO not too recently promoted. Im willing to bet he infact stayed in the same team as a NCO that he was in when he got promoted, leading to no real difference to the leadership he provided as a team leader when he wass a specialist. Not positive, but I got that gut feeling, given what happened).

 

3) Such checkpoints were primarily manned by Iraqi Police. They learned alongside of Americans. Mixed forces, or at least side by side.

 

4) The victims family understood the local fort was accountable to higher command, and went to another cgeckpoint to report. This checkpoint had to physically send guys down instead of just radioing in a WTF is going on request. A investigation occured, soldiers coverstory was assumed legit.

 

5) A platoon of 4-5 humvees would of rode out, each one taking a checkpoint, with a NCO, with a few grades of NCO spread between each one, ultimately under a Platoon Sargent or Lt. to Capt.... who would of done checks on each point on occasion.

 

6) The guy was discharged eventually after returning, but whole squad got busted in end.... evidence collected and Im guessing a confession or rumor mill brought the squad down.

 

A NCO should of put a immediate stop to this private's comments early on, instead of letting it fester, day after day. Furthermore, they should of rotated out with other checkpoints in the sector. The mere fact that the Iraqis understood this checkpoint was bad, but they could approach another neighboring checkpoint is evidence that they could tell the difference between good and bad soldiers, with a expectation of justice.... which they EVENTUALLY got.

 

Had they rotated this ground out more frequently, and switch the NCO out to another squad or platoon, or even company after promotion, and had the Staff Level and above NCOs done their job on checking up on the NCO and his group, instead of letting this lone ranger mentality develop, tgis would never of developed beyond a comment or two.

 

I'm pretty damn certain I would of shot the crazy guy had I recently been moved to that team and such a rape unfolded.... no way I would of just pulled watch.... that can only happen in a NATO level unit via extreme isolation where the demented outlooks of a single individual could override the outlook of a entire team. They had plenty of institutional variables that could of been put into effect to avoid this.

 

Therefor, chief responsibility falls on the Battalion CSM and Lt. Colonel for getting lazy and not having these obvious rotations to prevent criminal insulated cultures from arising in the first place. Yes, this team did the crime, but command failed them by not stopping it from happening prior to the deployment.

[Pisces Axxxxx]

OK first of all soldiers are not the only ones who "FACED THROUGH HELL".

 

 

 

You never had to deal with a situation where guys were killed slowly, their stab wounds used as fuck holes, all dying except one before reinforcements arrive. It's a deeply disturbing situation.... not something polemicised by someone who had to live with the reality of it.

 

 

How about policemen who get fired upon while waiting in a barricade for hours, days, weeks, or in some extreme cases months? Certainly in North America most such cases would not be as brutal as defending a trench  for months, but a layman's study of police and the most brutal riots and so forte shows its just as terrifying and exhausting as defending a building from German paratroopers or assaulting a Japanese bunker.

 

Or how about being captured alive and sent to a torture facility where you seen some acquaintances in town being tortured brutally to death as frequently happens in South America (especially juntas)? And none of you are even personally involved with Castro's politics or so forte. Thats even more brutal to watch than seeing a soldier lose his foot from a mine (tenfold if you happened to survive out of a miracle from the torture chambers).

 

I'm not trying to be rude but I seen my share of war vets acting all high and mighty about those who "never served" as being sheltered wen they call veterans who died for their countries as utter scumbags and losers and should not be honored because if they didn't die in war, they would be scumbags who continue swindling honest descent people or molesting their daughters,etc.

 

Civilians can FACE and often do face just as much brutal hardships, if not more than soldiers do. I mean some of these "civilians" have even witnessed more combat than war vets from Iraq such as the child soldiers of Africa. Especially in war zones.

 

 

 

You say "Why" but I can just as easily point right back and say "How would you know, and are you not just reacting to a inherited ideological scheme yourself emotionally, garnished from feasible sources in media and literature?"

 

I am currently reading A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne. This is where the topic came out. French soldiers were torturing random Algerian civilians with rapist-style methods in their arsenal. 

 

One incident that came to mind is a former French paratrooper  TORTURES his children for fun and when asked, his response was that he got so used to torturing people back in the war its an ingrained hobbit.

 

WHICH I CALL UTTER BS.

 

Thats what I meant about raping in war. Even moreso when the victims are supposed to be your FUCKING ALLIES or are even CITIZENS of your own COUNTRY!

 

For starters sake, what does torturing your family has to do with your past war experiences?  Moreso, I cannot comprehend specifically why Moroccan soldiers went raping FRENCH CIVILIANS. Italians because they were enemies is understandable to an extent but raping the very people you swore to defend? And they are getting honored?

 

I am even more at a lost of words how Japanese soldiers in World War 2 PAID brothels to rape PURE BLOODED Japanese women dragged from their homes and forced to work as prostitutes! And moreso how the Japanese military, who claim to be fighting for Japan's freedom, not only condoned it but they even profited from it as they earn a large percentage of the money Japanese soldiers paid to rape their own COUNTRYWOMEN!

 

Rape as revenge towards your enemy (already vile in my opinion) is one thing (especially if they ravaged your hometown and tortured your whole family cruelly before they cut their genitals out and burned your homedown). BUT RAPE against your ALLIES and more importantly the people of your hometown? I read of cases of Turkish soldiers (who came from their specific Ottoman colonies) going around raping (and even enjoying it) the very people they grew up in not just in World War 1 but in the history of the Ottoman Empire! 

 

I am even more flabbagastered how Hirohito or the Ottoman sultans can consider such worthless losers as glorious heroes considering its their own CITIZENS-100% PURE BLOODED Japanese or Turks,etc sharing the exact same religion, and so forte, who were BRUTALIZED!

 

Enemies are one thing but your own allies, countrymen, or even your directly related kin?

 

Therefor, chief responsibility falls on the Battalion CSM and Lt. Colonel for getting lazy and not having these obvious rotations to prevent criminal insulated cultures from arising in the first place. Yes, this team did the crime, but command failed them by not stopping it from happening prior to the deployment.

 

 

I disagree the chief responsibility goes on the head of the teams (though they still cannot deny their neglect of the situation). It falls upon the individuals in the teams. I mean where is the responsibility of the sergeants in the first place for preventing this? And assuming there were criminal elements in every unit, I am at a lose of words how one privates beliefs can spread through the whole group like wildfire. He is practically as my father (in the army) is "WORTHLESS" and is just expendable. Why the hell would SGTs and such be so damn influenced easily? Your description makes me think as though in the first place  the people who are being recruited and sent to such violent teams SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED into the military. It sounds like a bunch of frail minded individuals in that incident.

Edited May 18, 2014 by Pisces Adonis

[Onasander]

No, they should not of been accepted in the first place.... exactly. The vast majority of the population is unfit mentally and physically, and as warfare becomes more remote and technological, emphasis on mental fitness increasingly will take emphasis. However.... you will still need some deeply twisted pure fucking killers for Delta Force/Kombat Action Brigade like in the documentry " Killing Pablo ", for exactly what they pulled off in Columbia against the Cartel Leader Pablo..... he launched a armor assault on his countries own supreme court and was mass killing.

 

Noting the need to occasionally counter such extremes with our own extreme, on a level of strategic elegance and finesse that keeps collateral damage to a bare minimum and stays within the scope of the just war principle 'You Don't Need a Sledge Hammer to Crack a Walnut'..... we have to look at the historic concept used in the analysis of the history of warfare, 'The Tactical Synthesis'....

 

The Tactical Synthesis is a matrix of interrelated strengths and weaknesses of any kind of unit in a army in opposition to any other, hoe they are expected to perform.

 

In order to have a unit, you have to recruit them, which costs human manpower (18 years raising them and taking them out of the workforce) and financial pay l, maintenance, incentives, and other frictional costs to the government, before you even consider arming and training them. 

 

Arming them is now easier for countries like the US than training them. Finding trainers to train the trainees comes from within, preferably promoted on a merit based system. To gain merit, you either fight in war, or spend your peacetime career getting rank via.... training.

 

In order to coordinate peacetime training, and maintain sane promotion of wartime trainers, you need a aristocracy of sorts, a war college and beauracracy..... Which never get along that well, as they tend to promote differing values.....

 

List goes on and on.... I'll finish this after work tonight.

[Onasander]

Okay, back....

 

So you have this finite resource pool to recruit manpower from, train and maintain a force. It costs millions of dollars in fuel costs for example for a airborne infantry unit in fuel costs and supplies, and maintaining more complicated than necessary communications with higher echelon (means above, in this case above brigade, which is usually the local base..... guys in division and corps and in the pentagon need training watching and pretending to coordinate the little units everywhere).....

 

This is..... all to train for circumstances NOT of the military's choosing; our war colleges run a million simulations, and our intelligence services are very very active..... and some is common sense, but there are always those random, unexpected wars no general expects.... so they just prepare for everything. Countries who do this survive, countries who dont collapse or are defeated.... the paradox is simple, the old world considers the US a very new country, but our government is technically one of the oldest continuously independent nations.... we are still in our first republic, France is in its Fifth, likely Sixth here soon. Ancient Persia..... Iran, 1979.... Russian Federation, early 90s, China..... 1949, or the birth of the CCP a few decades earlier.... the US keeps its head above the water. England does too. These considerations are part of the reason why.

 

Now..... given such a military responds to such circumstance, known and unknown..... Obama can literally toss a bunch of troops into a UN Peacekeeping mission tomorrow for any reason.... you end up with a quality vs quantity issue, coupled with technological sophistication and technological diversity, gardening techniques.... and everyone has to be very young, physically fit.....

 

Imagine the insanity of recruiting for that. Military can very rarely recruit enough in peacetime, hard sell when people are shooting and blowing up soldiers.

 

You end up plying very ancient, dishonest yet time tested recruiting efforts.... where every recruiter is as honest as a door to door vacuum salesman, desperate to get enough in to get the guys in charge of him, crazed flying monkies, off his back. He knows several wont make it, but there is a weeding process.

 

In basic, Drill Sargents just.... grimace seeing half the confused as fuck weaklings bumble around. A chunk gets weeded out, rest sent to units. Units see a bunch of still confused guys stumble into their barracks, continue to weed them out.

 

Bad apples get weeded out, but some bad apples rot, and their seeds take root.... not because its the military society, but a human one... dominated by the irrational impulses of young men. Just like in colleges, cliques of alcoholism and drug use pop up.... just easier to track, as it tends to keep to similar ranks within the same units. In society in general, not so obvious to track this.

 

Many get treated, move on. Some get kicked out, a few military prison, but the sense of loyalty and willingness to overlook a battle buddies minor vices allows this to take root in a unit, and some bad guys get promoted. They have a good enough record compared to others.... and its not like a bunch of special forces and rangers are going to leave their units voluntarily and show up to a so-so unit, and spruce it up. So... alot of NCOs, especially the lower grades, get ranks because they are the lesser of evils from a unimpressive force, and hopefully can be made into something awesome.... sometimes just that happens. Hence the system of merit. But a good old boy system coexists alongside of it. Has its advantages and disadvantages. Most higher NCOs from E-7 to E-8 come from the good old boy system.... never left the military, kinda got lucky, laided liw, had a few friends above, and screwed just enough people over to sneak up the ladder. They believe they know enough, and oftentimes can infact demonstrate objectively they do in a array of circumstance. They have a Libertine sense of justice, so Jag is always on their ass if they dont check with Ethics before 'Disciplining' the troops they have charge of.

 

I dont expect genius or deep insight from such men.... and neither do they. They expect it from a officer, oftentimes a Lt. just out of college, majored in English in college, ran track.... and is fucking clueless. He is like, 22-24 years old, been in the army 5 minutes.... played alot of vudeogames and lost his virginity a rad bit late to someone he would rather forget.

 

Those people.... they are capable of making..... very average, very inexperienced value judgments, reflecting the general values of the society they come from. Most are as general good or bad as their society. But its not a democracy. Its a hierarchy. Designed for quick and determined actions under hostile, lethal circumstances. A bad guy gets rank, bad apples below flourish. A guy who is neither good or bad gets rank, bad apples lay low, but dont get weeded. A good guy gets rank, he hits severe institutional friction from what is bad yet has rank/numbers. You cant just fire 400 guys from a unit of 700 because you suspect some used drugs on occasion but cant prove it, had been a shitty team leader, doesnt care, etc.... they exist not to give a liberal listening to music a good feeling about the Ethics and Moral disposition of the military, but to close in with the enemy, and kill. You need a boatload of guys for that.

 

So our war colleges use every known trick to pull this off. The rotations I spoke of keeps bad cultures from taking root, but it also lessens the tightness of esprite de corps on a team, squad and platoon level, and even company and battalion level..... a company doesnt like to swap out platoons with other units for a bunch of alien guys you barely know from another unit.

 

But this does reset to bad apples to a extent. But there are more ways to skin a cat, and this is just merely one component to the calculas.

 

A point Caldrail can likely dominate me on, the transformation of the British Army under Wellington during the Peninsula War.... he recruited a bunch of worthless beggars, thieves, and rapists..... the very cream of British society at the time.... so all he had to recruit from population wise, and used them to liberate a Portuguese and Spanish population that had been raped and pillaged by the French..... you can grasp the paradox, now can't you...

 

He used a variety of tricks, including hanging his own men if they were seen having sex with the locals, or not buying their supplies instead of taking them by force.

 

The TV show 'Sharpe's ...... ' chronicals the evolution of the British Infantry from rude and backwards to rude and backward rapists, yet fiscally sound and rarely raping liberators. It was quite a task.

 

They are still working on the rude and backwards to this day, but I think they will get it before the robots take over.

[caldrail]

 

 

A point Caldrail can likely dominate me on, the transformation of the British Army under Wellington during the Peninsula War.... he recruited a bunch of worthless beggars, thieves, and rapists.....

British soldiers over the course of the Napoleonic Wars transformed from the laughing stock of society to worthy heroes against a french Corporal who ought to have learbned his place. Rape never came into it. People either do that or don't. Being soldiers at the same tiime merely presents opportunity or excuses.

[Onasander]

It

 

It is a opprotunity and a excuse, hence why such guys got hanged..... but there is a obvious peer pressure component that only a rare personality type can resist when literally everyone is doing it in a society where conformity is encouraged.

 

The Dionysian mentality (classical I mean, the Nietzschean version is not immune to this, but is more individualistic) conforms quite well to small group bonding, especially if its a military unit of strong social stresses and emotional friction. Alexander the Great died in a dionysian drinking bout..... you intentionally do stupid wild shit, loosing a sense of yourself, at least your responsibility in regards to your inhibitions...... they would tear live animals apart and eat their quivering flesh..... as a group.

 

When you look at group behavior, especially in military units, you have to consider this Dionysian impulse. A mere rational explanation they did it because they wanted to doesnt come close to properly diagnosis the extent of cruelty and absurd lengths of inhumanity otherwise normal people would go through, united around the twisted ideas of one or two..... people not necessarily even in official charge. My Lai is a good example..... in Vietnam when guys started cutting ears off people and making necklaces out of them.

 

Now clearly..... most guys didnt do that. Yeah..... insanity happens any class, creed, nationality, military or whatnot.... you draft a bunch of guys with little screening, a wack job is going to.get through..... but others played along.... others did it too. The balance of introverted inhibition and self responsibility collapsed, and the insanity of a deranged man on a extroverted level came through.

 

After time, on a sane reflective level, such practices, if not punished and suppressed, can become the norm. Its why raping and pillaging was the norm for a long while.

 

The earliest concepts we have of western military cults that tried to rationalize this phenomena are hunter cults from Persia.... hunting wild boar and so on. Its not something incompatable with village life, but has issues with say..... a city state with more solid fortifications and a clearer diffraction in regards to what autonomous group behaviors are acceptable in defense of the walls, and what can be done outside of them in no mans land, or that of the enemy. Not every behavioral impulse could be indulged in in any given place..... and friction, misunderstanding, and outright rebellions in regard to this occurs to this day.

 

The right hemisphere controls geographical facts and tests data for its correctness..... but isnt the intellect. It doesnt like it together..... doesnt linguistically describe it logically a priori, doesnt know who is bad or wonderful.

 

At a very stupid core, in every human, especially men, even more so armed men, left and right hemisphere concepts link up in patterns not acceptible to sedentary life.... more fit for nomadic life..... to borrow the historian Ibn Khaldun's dichotomy. It gains a functional logic of its own, and most men..... most sane and rational men, pursuers of a refined and most rarified eudomonia..... will eventually succumb to.

 

A few personality types are known to be more resistant to such pressures. Your INTJ for example..... the Supplementary Mortar Areas appear to fall under their direct conscious thinking style, and its the part of the brain that puts a slam on the brakes in regards to Dopamine flow. They are much less prone to extroverted pressures. I am one..... I was out of a battalion of over 600 of only a handful of guys who didnt drink, or take up smoking, or use drugs. The impulse of accepting peer pressure over my better judgment was creepy to me, I could never accept loosing control over a catch phrase or group enthusiasm. But I always thought 'I am here to be a good soldier, and good soldiers do the stupid stuff they are asked to do by commanders, and you need to maintain high morale in others' so went along with..... some of it. But half the time I was a kill joy, never got in trouble for stuff other guys do (got introuble for being injured without permission to be injured apparently towards the end).

 

Thats one of the few personality types, a almost idiot savant, that can snap out of it because he never really was in it in the first place. But such guys are encouraged to be officers, not enlisted..... as every enlisted soldier will point out to them.

 

None the less, they are around in small numbers in every battalion. I recommend a psychologically balanced and interdependent team of check and balances per squad. Your not going to pull that off using Kiersey Typological Assessments like the army now teaches however.... you need something a bit more elegant and targeted, so you average platoon sargent can pull off analysis and rebalance his men. Unfortunately, specialization and rank wont always allow a proper balance.

 

But merely writting off the Dionysian impulse underlying all men as not the primary factor is incorrect..... it blinds us to the nature of crime in a military unit, the necessity to search out its gravitas and reverse engineer how it got its tentacles slowly wrapped around what should of been a good unit, so you can understand it, and spot it in other units..... your own, and that of the enemy.

 

A Dionysian enemy unit behaves differently than a clearer thinking, more orthodox unit. They can have very strong ties to the mafia, relative independence and lack loyalty to a central command like the rest of the military units do, relate to the local population much differently than is the norm via intimidation, extortion, and appealing to a sense of cultural machoism that many will find appealing, independently funded from the black market or drug use..... exist as a cancer on society..... you cant get such a unit to successfully stand down and surrender, and rolling in tanks is going to do little to stop them..... they bleed into the population.....

 

But such units are a concern to military commanders. Easiest way to learn to come to terms with them, is to learn about similar impulses in out own military.

 

As it is largely a blindspot, we have little power to stop your average paramilitary kingpin who has rank in both the military and local cartels. They ironically were the winners of the cold war era, and internationally cause the most violence and destabilization.

[Onasander]

He pledged the army would take action against those using weapons or harming civilians, but added: "Don't worry. Everything will still go on normally. We will try not to violate human rights too much.

 

 

http://m.bbc.com/news/world-asia-27490670

[caldrail]

 

 

It is a opprotunity and a excuse, hence why such guys got hanged..... but there is a obvious peer pressure component that only a rare personality type can resist when literally everyone is doing it in a society where conformity is encouraged.

Countered by discipline, cultural expectation, legal restriction and penalties, and moral leadership.

[Viggen]

...never mind raping the enemy

 

[Onasander]

Okay.... what exactly do you think discipline is? Like, describe it to me..... I take the Roman Republican version of it from The Rape of Lucretia, put its never quite synonymous with what I perceive to be military discipline, and in the ranks this concept can mean many things, and contradict other martial as well as humane values.

 

What exactly is this thing discipline you speak of. People keep stating it on this forum, but just what on earth is it, where do you find it, how do you make it grow, and stand out as a dominate psychological and behavioral trait, its advantages and pitfalls.

 

Your just whipping out words it seems without a depth of its murky complications and inefficiencies. Some things are great to say, but just dont stick to reality for whatever odd reason. Discipline doesnt always stick.

[Aurelia]

It is a sad fact that rape has been used as a weapon of war for thousands of years. I agree with the OP that a rapist should NEVER be regarded as a hero, irrespective of any acts of bravery. Condoning rape during times of war is implicitly saying that it's ok under certain circumstances. It should never be ok, whether in times of war or peace. It is mildly comforting to know that there are international resolutions and statutes in place that condemn rape and other atrocities and quite clearly label them as crimes against humanity. I say "mildly" because sadly, more often than not, international law is simply ignored. 

 

 

[caldrail]

Discipline is "Organised Good Manners" in a modern context. The Romans might not have put it like that, preferring something along the lines of "Obedience and Sufferance".

 

The Rape of Lucretia was the excessive behaviour of one man, Tarquin The Proud, not Roman soldiers en masse. As it happens, the event spurred the revolt against the Roman monarchy and Tarquin was out on his backside. However, as Aurelia says, people who decide to commit such acts generally aren;t too worried about laws if they believe the law can't catch them.