Footnote on the footnote:
Don't let that Dictionary push you around with what it thinks 'moral relativsim' is all about. Indoctrination, people, Beware.
Let's see if I can't be sunk by a second urge to be cute:
5.Rampant Sexism. This reminded me of a totally charming skit (picture Sheherazade) where the young man, as wholesome as apple pie, goes gladly off to war because his sweetheart, also as wholesome as apple pie (yes, ladle the whipped cream on it please), is worth fighting for.
Now you may think that this is not the note to ring with the 'rampant sexism' and it isn't. It is more.
I used to think that it was the entire song, but now I think it's the whole opera.
I know, there is all that pillaging and unspeakable (ok raping) behavior of the victor over the conquered, but it goes nowhere if the women are ugly. Or beneath your notice (aka that unspeakable behavior).
Or not the carriers of the next generation.
Just wait till we men get the technology to staple a womb under our armpit or where ever.
You'll see, things will be different.
Ok, still sunk by the urge to be cute...which is the height of pricking over the plains without a womb, no?

Harumph! There's a widespread conceit that men somehow accomplish something by going off to war for their sweetheart. I cannot for the life of me imagine what it is.

I'm actually a bit confused by the irony, however, since I am so compulsively ironic. I think you mean that the cachet of conquering glory that veterans supposedly have with their countrywomen would logically be diminished by the ugly reality of having been rapists, but (compounding the irony) this is not so because the veterans presumably have learned not to feel compassion for the foreign female victims of their cruelty.

Actuall, that's quite apt, now that I think about it. It's shameful to admit this even now, but a lot of Shahriar's early victims were quite frankly laureates of the Darwin Awards, so drawn to the archetypically violent , emotionally unavailable man, that they literally could not believe what they were up against. Or they wanted the ultimate sexual "kick," sexual consumation followed by prompt death.

At the time, the descent of the Sassanid Empire (Shashaniyah) into what I would unflinchingly call fascsim, was all too self-evident. The extreme viciousness of Shahriar was utterly beyond the restrainst of Iranian monarchial standards, and accompanied a bizarre chapter of fanatical misogyny. I recall for decades wondering when the moderate, nurturing, sensible, and pleasure-indulging Iranians I loved so much, would return to expell their barbaric imposters. And it wasn't just the men, either; the women, or rather, the absurdly young women thrust into sexual roles for which they were not suited, led to widespread admiration for cruelty as a form of strength.