Women's groups protest rape as a weapon of war in Darfur - 11-Dec-06 - Generational Dynamics

As the civil war in Darfur continues to grow more violent, and even spreads to neighboring countries Chad and Central African Republic, worldwide demonstrations were held on Sunday to protest violence against women in Darfur.

One woman, protesting outside of Downing Street in London, said: "Rape is not an inevitable part of war. It can be stopped if military leaders, governments and the international community make clear that it will be punished as severely as any other war crime."

This is silly. Military leaders no more worry about vague future threats of war crime trials than ordinary consumers worry about future bills when they overspend on their credit cards.

Rape IS an inevitable part of war -- at least of generational crisis wars. "To the victor go the spoils," is the old saying, and when you're winning a war you get to kill the men and rape the women.

Actually, women aren't the only sexual violence victims. In her book, World on Fire, here's how author Amy Chua describes the Bosnian war: "In the Serbian concentration camps of the early 1990s, the women prisoners were raped over and over, many times a day, often with broken bottles, often together with their daughters. The men, if they were lucky, were beaten to death as their Serbian guards sang national anthems; if they were not so fortunate, they were castrated or, at gunpoint, forced to castrate their fellow prisoners, sometimes with their own teeth. In all, thousands were tortured and executed." So women aren't unique when it comes to genocidal sexual torture.

The Darfur problem first began to get worldwide attention in 2004, shortly after the 10-year commemoration of the 1994 Rwanda genocide. At that time there were big get-togethers of high-level officials from the U.N. and from various countries, making official pronouncements that the violence must stop. At the commemoration, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan promised "Never again." I wrote at the time that the U.N. is completely irrelevant to the Darfur genocide, and that it would not be stopped until it's run its course.

My prediction that the U.N. would be able to do nothing to stop the Darfur genocide has been shown to be completely true, one of the many predictions on this web site that have been shown to be true.

And this was not a guess; it was based on solid generational principles. A non-crisis war can be stopped -- by the use of peacekeepers, or by negotiations with politicians. That's because non-crisis wars come from the politicians, not from the people.

But generational crisis wars come from the people, from whole generations of people, from masses of people, and masses of people cannot be stopped. Negotiating with a political leader to stop a crisis war won't do any good for more than a short while because the political leader is not in control of the situation.

In Leo Tolstoy's monumental work War and Peace, which describes Napoleon's invasion of Russia, I love Tolstoy's response to historians who claim that the battle of Borodino was lost because Napoleon had a cold:

"The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of Borodino, not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition. The whole army - French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch - hungry, ragged, and weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army blocking their road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because it was inevitable. ...

And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for none of his orders was executed and during the battle, he did not know what was going on before him. So the way in which these people killed one another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than the cold of the least of the transport soldiers."

Tolstoy's point that the battle of Borodino could not be stopped by Napoleon because it was "the will of hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the common action" is relevant today in discussing Darfur because the Darfur genocide -- including the rapes, mutilation and torture -- is the will of millions of people who are taking part in the common action. That's why I said in 2004 that it would not be stopped until it's run its course, and that's why I say the same thing today.

I often get the feeling that Americans (and other Westerners) have a certain prejudice that comes over them when talking about things like the Darfur genocide.

I get this feeling when people talk about the civil war in Darfur, or other massive African wars, that they believe that this kind of wanton slaughter is the ordinary way of life of those "uncivilized" black tribes doing what they do naturally -- killing each other all the time.

I get the same feeling when I hear people talking about those "AY-rabs," that wanton slaughter of each other is their way of life, and that it's therefore to be expected in Iraq and elsewhere in the Mideast.

And yet, Americans and Westerners don't look at WW II in the same way. Americans consider WW II to be some sort of anomaly, a unique situation created by one madman that can't and won't be repeated. Once again this is a prejudice, the mirror image of the prejudice about Arabs and Africans that I just described.

Of course none of that can be supported. The Western world is just as "uncivilized" as the Arabs and Africans are, and they're just as prone to "wanton slaughter" as the other two groups. But the reason for the widespread prejudices is just a matter of timing: Lebanon and Iraq had their genocidal crisis wars in the 1980s, at a time when the West was relatively at peace, so it only SEEMS that we're more civilized than they are. Similarly, the Rwanda and Darfur crisis wars have come in the last 15 years, once again at a time of peace in the West. (The prejudice also ignores the the Bosnian crisis war, which took place in Europe, but that's another prejudice.)

Once we get past these prejudices, and realize that we're all uncivilized people who wantonly slaughter each other, then it's easier to see the generational patterns in history.

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 11-Dec-06
Women's groups protest rape as a weapon of war in Darfur

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 11-Dec-06 Women's groups protest rape as a weapon of war in Darfur

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 11-Dec-06
Women's groups protest rape as a weapon of war in Darfur