Letters to the Editor
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Is this something we don't know?
I actually don't find the question of why these men rape compelling. It is pure violence in the context of war. It is simple to understand how raping all the women in an enemy village effectively demoralizes and thus weakens the enemy. That is not a groundbreaking discovery- it's been happening since time immemorial. The "magic potion" reason, which on the surface sounds like odd superstition to Western ears is merely euphemistic for something akin to warrior mojo, a systematic desensitization toward harrowing acts of violence. That fact that we might even wonder that there is another reason stretches the boundaries of common sense. Do we really think that the current warfare in the Congo is so vastly different from the manner in which other wars have been waged and that these men have unique or obscure reasons for violently raping woman after woman?