WAR

[sly]

What is it good for?

[Contestant #3]

Isn't that a Tolstoy line?...hahahahaha...remember the Seinfeld episode about that?

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Contestant #3

[LongHrn99]

Apparently it's good for keeping a non-sexual, inapproprtiate relationship off the front page of the morning newspaper.

[GLWasteful]

Oh, come off it, LongHrn. That's bullshit, and if you'd think about it for a moment, you would be capable of realizing it.

Waste
Flick Lives!

[According to Pliny]

Can I intrude with a serious answer?

I doubt if our society would be anywhere close to its current level of technology if it wasn't for war. Communications, medicine, aeronautics, food storage, etc. all owe a lot to advancements made during wartime.

[manhattan]

Not to mention eliminating the occasional group of Europe-occupying, genocidal maniacs.

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Livin' on Tums, Vitamin E and Rogaine

[StrTrkr777]

It was necessary for us to intervene in a several hundred year old civil war? We helped him complete his ethinic cleansing and we did a good thing?

Maybe we should help more people, I am sure the IRA would like our help.

Hey Bill got anything else you want to get out of the papers?

Jeffery

[manhattan]

Uh, I was actually thinking about a slightly earlier group of Europe-occupying, genocidal maniacs. You know, the ones who actually declared war on us. You may have seen a movie or two about those guys.
I’ll agree that we botched up badly our handling of the latest set of Europe-occupying, genocidal maniacs.

[LongHrn99]

Gl, I don't trust my government. So I am entitled to my opinions, not that it matters, I was making a joke. I'm not going to put up with shit from you for making a joke. Get off my ass. If you believe that Clinton's motives were pure, that's your own delusional reality. But I'm not going to get into that, it has nothing to do with the OP. Once again, so as not to incur the wrath of the humor impaired, [b]I was making a joke.[b\]

[GLWasteful]

LongHrn: Fair enough, you don't trust your government, and fair enough, it's your opinion. It's also nonsense.

And I'm not on your ass. Simply pointing out that you are wrong. And I doubt that Smilin' Bill's motives were entirely pure, but to accuse him of going to war simply to keep his hummer out of the limelight is ludicrous.

Waste
Flick Lives!

[VegForLife]

[[The Crimson Hipster Dufuz]]

George? Is that you??

Rich

[Akatsukami]

It can be a Hell of a good -- or at least final -- way of settling a dispute.


BTW, was, "Violence never settles anything" the motto of the city of Carthage, or of Timur-i-lenk?

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"Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away."

[hansel]

Gwynn Dyer, a Canadian journalist, made a documentary series called "War" about twenty years ago, in which he examined the process from training for it through to postwar settlements.

One of the themes was that wars, for good are bad, are inevitably reoccurring things that serve as a kind of social/geopolitical enema that relieves tension that's constantly building up. They're a forcible reorganization of the relationships between nations that get out of whack in peacetime as once-powerful nations decline and young nations grow.


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"Existence defies essence." - John Barth?

[sly]

I doubt if our society would be anywhere close to its current level of technology if it wasn't for war.

Good point, but I would trade CNN for a grandfather, two uncles and a handful of cousins any day.

I was hoping this thread would take a different direction, so let me interject.

WWI: 8,500,000
WWII: 45,000,000
Korea: 3,000,000
Vietnam: 2,500,000
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59,000,000

In this century alone, in two great wars and two conflicts: 59,000,000 lives.

What is it good for?

[Bluepony]

45 million dead in WWII? Worth it? Would you rather see the Nazi swastika flying over Washington DC? Maybe war is just part of the human existence.

Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.

Coriolanus , Act !V, Scene V
Shakespeare

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"...send lawyers, guns, and money..."

Warren Zevon

[The Crimson Hipster Dufuz]

It kept Eric Burden off the streets...

[Doctor Jackson]

Absolutely Nuttin', say it again! Huuuuh!

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The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. -- E. Grebenik

[Bluepony]

Hey, don't knock it. Kept me gainfully employed for twenty years. Like Joker said in Full Metal Jacket , I got a chance to visit interesting places, learn fascinating cultures, interact with the native peoples of faraway places....and kill them.

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"...send lawyers, guns, and money..."

Warren Zevon

I stand by the Augustinian definition of a just war. If a war prevents more suffering than it causes, then it is a just war and should be fought.

[GLWasteful]

hansel: Is that documentary available on video by any chance?

Waste
Flick Lives!

[nhaerens]

It seems ironic to me that the fifties are often portrayed as a naive and goody-goody time in American history. It was right after a fierce World-War. Compare the fifties to the twenties and thirties. It seems that war is indeed a way to rid the human psyche of negativity and darkness. Wars are often followed by a lighter period, a renewal. War has been so much a part of history, we can't just gloss over it as not having a very profound role. War gives men a purpose, we have lost all of the initiation rites that were considered important to make boys into men. Today, and I include myself in this category, adolescence just prolongs itself, and we are never quite sure when we are finally adults. It would be nice to find ways to give a higher purpose to our youth today, without resorting to war. The media shows us what happens when all this built-up energy and anger is bottled-up : movies which get progressively more and more violent. The movies from the fifties are not graphically violent, and yet the war in the forties was brutal.
By the way, I come from Belgium, and I am forever grateful to the intervention of the Allies and really enjoyed all those great war movies in the sixties!

[David B]

Sly noted:

WWII: 45,000,000

What does this include, Sly? All the victims of the Holocaust? If so, then I guess my question to you would be: What's your point? I mean, obviously Hitler's war was not a good thing (I'm goin' for the "understatement of the year" award). But it's not like we had any control over him. So we went to war to help stop him.

[nhaerens]

The Germans were convinced they were fighting a just war. I think it is very hard to understand what happens to a people's collective mind during a war. Jung talks about psychic epidemics. The Germans really saw the Jews and the growth of Communism as threats (concerning the Jews, they were deninitely wrong, but it turns out that they may have been right about communism, since half of Europe was occupied by the Soviet Union after it). Haven't the Americans adopted the same attitude during most of the Cold War, intervening in many places where Communism might get the upper hand?

Quote from a Jew: Conspiracy? What conspiracy? Two Jews can't even agree when they get together...

[ellis555]

regarding the OP:

war is a just another branch of diplomacy. it gets what you want. a simple example already noted is WWII. hitler wanted to take over the world. we didn't want him to. other branches of diplomacy failed (sure, have the sutedenland. sure, have poland. he'll stop soon...). so we went to war with him, and won (albeit at great cost). still, it's better than the alternative.

ellis

sly...what are your own thoughts on this? i'm getting the impression that you think it's good for nothing, which i completely disagree with.

[sly]

I'm not asking why do we fight. I'm asking what good comes from it. On the surface war is inevitable. We are a quarrelsome lot. Two kids in a sandbox will fight over a toy the same way that two parents in a toy store on christmas eve will fight over the last tickle-me-elmo.

Hitler wanted to control Europe and the Mediterranean. He wanted to exterminate Jews. Why? Was he crazy? Was he not questioned by his Admirals and Generals? Or were they crazy, too? Surely someone should have known he would be defeated.

"East Asia for Japan" proved to be similarly fatal: Allied (American) occupation, the military demobilized, the empire disbanded and prime minister Tojo convicted and hanged.

At a cost of 45,000,000 lives. What is it good for?

[According to Pliny]

Allied (American) occupation, the military demobilized, the empire disbanded and prime minister Tojo convicted and hanged.

I'm not trying to nitpick, Sly, but, IMO all of the above were good things that came out of the war; for Japan and the rest of the World. Japan was definitely a better place 10 years after the war than it was 10 years before the war.

Perhaps the question you wish to ask is: "Is it worth it?"

[sunbear]

In this century alone, in two great wars and two conflicts: 59,000,000 lives.

Without wars, there would be more than 6 billion of us. I don't mind if folks in distant lands go tribal once in a while.Some of them seem to need this hatred of a neighbor for their identity.

misanthropic maybe

[bantmof]

Was he not questioned by his Admirals and Generals? Or were they crazy, too? Surely someone should have known he would be defeated.

Oh, I bet a lot of his top military brass knew they would eventually lose.

Perhaps it wasn't in their best interests to say this to Hitler however.

Same for Japan - many of the generals definately knew that attacking the US was a real big mistake in the long term.

What is it good for?

Why does it have to be good for something? It's just one of those things that happens due to the nature of man. It's not like all of humanity is a single mind sitting around collectively agreeing to optimize its lot in the world. People have different agendas, different beliefs, they sometimes want what other people have, and sometimes they come to blows over it.
--
peas on earth

[pldennison]

sunbear, I have real bad news for you: as of Oct. 12, 1999, there will be over 6 billion of us.

[hansel]

hansel: Is that documentary available on video by any chance?

I'm certain that it is: I remember seeing it in video stores. It was produced by the National Film Board of Canada, and a synopsis is available here. You can order copies if you like, but I read the book published later that's a narrative of the whole series (titled "War"). Actually, look around the NFB site: they're planning an online jukebox, and you might be able to see streaming versions of the series.

My mistake, BTW: Gwynn Dyer is an historian.

[kknick34]

To quote Bart Simpson, all wars are bad with the following exceptions:

WW2
The American Revolution
THe Star Wars Trilogy

[Ike Witt]

A question that has bugged me for a rather long time is the number of dead from WWII. I've seen numbers ranging from 20 million up to 60 million. While I'm sure that the exact total will never be known, is there an "offical" breakdown of casualties of combatants and non-combatants? Also, it is kind of scary but ask people you know how many people died during WWII, you will probably get some frighteningly ignorant responses.

[According to Pliny]

Military Deaths for WWII:
Allies: 8,799,041
Axis: 6,069,723

Estamates for civilian deaths usually come in at about 30,000,000; double that of the total military deaths.