Rape repeats itself like History

Rape has been a key component in the art of war since the beginning of time. The act of rape and other sexual assaults during a time of conflict is always a possible when there is a struggle for power and dominance. When we look back at previous Wars we can see that rape is a necessary for the winner to maintain the status quo, the aggressor needs to be dehumanized and broken in order for victory. An example of such an atrocity would be the Rape of Nanking. It started off as a military conquest of the Japanese to overtake the Chinese forces. In doing so they moved on to the raping of the woman and children of Nanking. Japanese soldiers had no remorse; they sexually assaulted old lady’s over seventy years old and girl as young as eight. The extreme acts of violence did not just stop here; there were many accounts of soldiers forcing family members to rape one another. Father’s were forced to rape their daughters, sons had to rape their mothers, and brothers had to rape their own sisters.  No one was spared in this cruel act, even pregnant woman were raped and sometimes had their stomachs ripped open and their fetus’s cut from their own bodies. It was a true massacre for the people of Nanking, but in war there are no rules and rape is a very useful tactic to intimidate another race/people. The rest of this story can be found on the link http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/nanking.htm. This story goes along well with the way that rape was used in the late 1980’s early 90’s, during the war with the Serbians and the Croatian people. The Serbian forces used rape as a tactic to try and intimidate the Croates and keep them from succeeding in their goals of obtaining independence from Yugoslavia. However it is not as extreme as what had happened in China it is still important because in all cases of war rape is still used as a tool of intimidation. Even in the twentieth century were people should be a lot more civilized than that, rape is still used as a way to dehumanize a certain group of people. We see things like rape, and destruction of entire cities and civilizations throughout time. From the time of the Vikings and how they raped and pillaged towns, to the crusades in the Middle East, we see rape as a key to the success of military conquest. Forcing woman and children to undergo such painful and agonizing forms of torture is indeed a smart and at the same time stupid war tactic. The psychological side affects must only be as frightening as the act itself. Especially for children who see and are involved in these crimes against humanity, the nightmares that they have to carry with them for the rest of their lives cannot even be imagined.  Rape is the worse form of military tactic that anyone could possibly go through, and having the mental and physical scars of rape is indeed the ultimate form of being dehumanized.