Methods for humiliating the enemy in war

- using insults and other abusive language
- abductions of women and girls, forced marriages
- torture like in Abu Ghraib
- undercover agents go deep into enemy's ranks
- not stopping the war when the objectives have been achieved (this is against Islam)
- cartoons presenting the enemy as weak and comical
- find a big brother and direct him against your enemy

<<“Hezbollah is fighting for honor, to humiliate the enemy, not for any particular objective,” Bowman says>>
<<For example Yamamoto commented that, if the United States was ever to surrender it would only be after they had been pushed all the way back to the their capital, and were forced to sign a treaty on the steps of the White House. However, the press took those words and warped them from a warning to a boasting threat that Yamamoto would humiliate the enemy and force them to sign a treaty on the White House steps. >>http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/bios/b3yamamoto.htm
<<Using women is viewed as a way to humiliate the enemy. That is, if the enemy is killed by a woman, it is seen as more damaging to the morale of the enemy. After all, what kind of man falls at the feet of a female warrior? >>(Colombia)
- "comfort women", brothels
<<a rapid victory will humiliate the enemy and exacerbate the backlash!>> (in Iraq)
<<ceremonial theaters to glorify legendary and national heroes and humiliate the enemy>> (in ancient Iran)

Michael Ignatieff, in the article The Terrorist as Auteur, defines the video camera as
a new weapon The terrorist is now film director, giving careful consideration to
the appearance of the videos, where the hostages are seated in relation to their
captors, in which direction do the guns point, what is worn, and finally providing
a script that the hostage reads aloud. “Modern terrorists have always exploited
the power of images.”
The videos are used as weapons to humiliate the enemy. They set a standard for
barbarous acts and are distributed to recruit, to enrage and to scare. Driving the
terrorist is the desire that we lose all moral high-ground and sink to their level.http://www.racheleriley.com/images/writing/riley_revolting_auteur.pdf
The theft of art, or cultural looting, has almost always been one of the staple by-products of genocide and genocidal regimes. From ancient times to modern conflicts (e.g., the war in the former Yugoslavia), the plunder of artworks and the willful destruction of a cultural heritage have been used by the victor as a supplementary means to conquer, annihilate, and humiliate the enemy. Not only do conquerors try to obliterate their enemies physically, but they also try to take possession of their victims' precious art objects, including those that express their identity thereby simultaneously stealing the soul, meaning, and cultural values of a people.http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/art-stolen
He promised to send suicide bombers to kill Israelis, in attacks which would "humiliate the enemy to ashes." (Gaza)

You may know that it was a part of war for men to rape the men of the loosing side. It was another way to humiliate the "enemy." It was not about sex and it certainly was not about love.http://www.uccsunnyvale.org/inquiring-christians.html
- labor camps
In litigation, perhaps, to humiliate the enemy in battle might jeopardize ultimate success in the war.http://www.murraystable.com/article/100/commentary-on-bae-decision-in
His ability to rapidly attack, disrupt, destroy, and humiliate the enemy and its supply lines earned him the title of the "Grey Ghost."http://www.powhatanva.com/civilwar/singleton.htm
"the inherent tendency of war to dehumanize and humiliate the enemy"
"Then the hostage situation happened. His inability to free the hostages turned America against him."
a Scottish player, in full view of his erstwhile opponents, began shredding the England jersey he had swapped for his own at the end of the match. It was a demeaning act of vandalism, intended as a show of triumphalism and designed to humiliate the enemy, but it was in fact a sad betrayal of the individual's deep-rooted sense of inferiority which received the contempt of those he wished to mock.http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n14140365

Cannibalism was like adding insult to injury, in the sense that after the prized head was cut from the body, the body was then cut into pieces and cooked to further humiliate the enemy.http://www.csudh.edu/bdeluca/StudentWriting/Maskpapers/AnthropologicDetective.htm

Coulter on the Democrats, Terrorists, and Non-Sequiturs

"Instead of longing to crush and humiliate the enemy, they believe true patriotism consists of redoubled efforts to expand the welfare state." (6/7/02)

One of the raiders found a sentry sleeping at the base of a ledge near the edge of camp. The warrior pissed on the sentry from the ledge, then stole off into the darkness. This feat was talked about in the Blackfeet camps for years to come. The Blackfeet got off with the horses, and the drenched sentry had to explain to his chiefs what happened. It was almost better than counting coup. It gave the whole tribe a chuckle.http://www.bluecorncomics.com/scalping.htm

Situation control exploiting contact. Long-range weapons, even the most ef-cient or precise, are unable to provide for sufcient control of the mobile and often well-hidden enemy. To humiliate the enemy, it is an imperative to locate, identify, restrict,detain, disarm or kill, as necessary.http://www.army.cz/mo/obrana_a_strategie/2-2003eng/krasny.pdf

They were made of woven papyrus stalks and leaves as well as leather. Often they were lined with cotton cloth. A figure of the enemy was often painted on the cotton lining or on the soles, to humiliate the enemy. This explains the saying “you have trodden the impure gentiles under your powerful feet” referring to the military success of the Pharaoh” ( Wilkinson, 1988:333).
(Ancient Egypt)

"The Indian custom of counting coup " a gesture performed to humiliate the enemy without actually killing them " was represented by coup marks or slashes."

"dark days of early 1942, when Jimmy Doolittle's raiders swept over Japan to humiliate the enemy."

I’ve heard it said that there are three rules of History, and one of them is “never humiliate the enemy” no matter what else you do, because “as sure as God made little green apples” it will come back to bite you, hard.http://www.redstate.com/erick/2009/01/11/screw-obama-pardon-everybody/

The idea of warfare has had an eerie and intimate relationship with religion. History has been studded with overtly religious conflicts such as the Crusades, the Muslim conquests, and the Wars of Religion that dominated the politics of France in the sixteenth century. Although these have usually been characterized as wars in the name of religion, rather than wars conducted in a religious way, a historian, Natalie Zemon Davis, has uncovered what she calls "rites of violence" in her study of religious riots in sixteenth century France. These constituted "a repertory of actions, derived from the Bible, from the liturgy, from the action of political authority, or from the traditions of popular folk practices, intended to purify the religious community and humiliate the enemy and thus make him less harmful." Davis observed that the violence was "aimed at defined targets and selected from a repertory of traditional punishments and forms of destruction."8 According to Davis, "even the extreme ways of defiling corpses--dragging bodies through the streets and throwing them to the dogs, dismembering genitalia and selling them in mock commerce--and desecrating religious objects," had what she called "perverse connections" with religious concepts of pollution and purification, heresy and blasphemy.9

An anthropologist, Stanley Tambiah, showed how the same "rites of violence" were present in the religious riots of South Asia.10 In some instances innocent bystanders would be snatched up by a crowd and burned alive. According to Tambiah, these horrifying murders of defenseless and terrified victims were done in a ritual manner, in "mock imitation of both the self-immolation of conscientious objectors and the terminal rite of cremation."11 In a macabre way, the riotous battles described by Davis and Tambiah were religious events. But given the prominence of the rhetoric of warfare in religious vocabulary, both traditional and modern, one could also turn this point around and say that religious events often involve the invocation of violence. One could argue that the task of creating a vicarious experience of warfare--albeit one usually imagined as residing on a spiritual plane--is one of the main businesses of religion. http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/juergensmeyer.DOC

- Amerindian Trophy Taking

Women are raped because they symbolize their communities and the men of the
community are targeted through women’s bodies.http://www.glow-boell.de/media/de/txt_rubrik_2/Ndeye_Sow_FGmai06.pdf

to humiliate the enemy " especially the male enemies by showing them that. they are not able to protect their female members. Sexual abuse is calculated
csi.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/53/4/607.pdf

The
systematic raping of women and girls, sometimes called genocidal rape, has been used in
war to humiliate the enemy and undermine its strength as a nation through impregnating
its women and thus reducing the purity of the race (Peterson and Runyan, 1999).http://burmalibrary.org/docs3/Lisa_Brooten_dissertation-ocr.pdf

UN and international organizations say that rebels use rape as 'a weapon of war,' and the purpose of it is to discourage and humiliate the enemy, and ultimately harm the women so that women become infertile. Some say this form of violence as "another form of genocide." http://gphoto.exblog.jp/8297615/

To sum up: Rape is definitely No. 1 on this list
Then scalping, cannibalism, hostage-taking. Ridiculing.
Killing is not enough, and these forms of humiliation are like religious rites.

OK, I'm done.

really, cause i'd say you're half-baked

Whew! I was afraid literarypoland was going to have to carry on the, uh, discussion all alone.

I doubt Americans and Australians were "too civilised for that".

eg:
My mother (Australian) had an American army date try to run over and kill her when she refused to have sex with him during WW II.

A friend of mine is the child of a Palestinian woman, raped by an Australian soldier during WW II. Another Australian soldier was so outraged by this, that he said he would marry her, sponsor her to Oz, and leave it to her as to whether the marriage was consummated or not. It was.

Any country thinking some/many of its soldiers do not rape during war is a naive and deluded country.

Maybe that was all it was fishing for.