WAR

An act of supreme conflict and stupidity

Kanook – Oct, 2009

Despite the outcome of war, there really is no winner, whereas both

sides suffer devastating consequences involving human life and destruction of
the land on which it occurs. History points out with such clarity the rewards of
war, where no matter who begins the conflict the end is a setback for
humanity, and for far into the future.
Wars have been fought for a myriad of reasons that include religion,
which in my opinion is the number one reason in our short history on this Blue
Ball, and then land, wealth and natural resources that someone desires.
Another simple definition would be a battle of a “class of wills”, in most cases
assigned to a non-military conflict between two ideologies that runs rampant
across nations.
Throughout our history, because of various religions, we have spent
99% of time classifying “evil” and doing are best to wipe out the influence of
Devil, who like God remains invisible but though the actions of man when he
erupts with a desire, the other side classifies him evil and chases the evil man
around expending equal amounts of energy attempting to destroy him or his
tribe.
Religion uses some pretty strong circumstantial evidence in identifying
evil with Satan, who according to text going back into the ages tells us Satan
rules the fallen world and God is struggling to divide good from evil, and that
as result most of human history is composed of the struggles between “good”
and “evil”, a conservative statement at best. You might be a little young to
remember but Flip Wilson had a “cute” phrase when he remarked from time to
time, “The Devil made me do it!” His humor did more for established religion
than most of the religious wars fought by mankind. The history as presented
in the Old Testament of the Bible tell us that since Cain’s murder of his brother
Abel an act that was the first conflict among brothers in human history, or in
the Old Testament mankind’s first murder. I’m a little skeptical of that, since
man has been stumbling around on this planet for over 2 million years and my
limited study of mankind shows man’s struggles were not always with weather
conditions, albeit the reference in the Bible is most all of ours first exposure to
killing each other, has twisted me so that I find that hard to believe. Before
the dawn of civilization, war likely consisted of small-scale raiding. One half of
the people found in a Nubian cemetery dating to as early as 12,000 years ago
had died of violence. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military
activity has occurred over much of the globe.
Man by nature is strange, what he doesn’t have he wants, and what he
does have he just wants more, until he reaches a point where his garage runs
empty and he has to go next door and get some more – sorry, but it’s his
nature. And hell hath no fury than that of a man who meets another man who
has a different way of worshipping God, the biggest wars in history have
started and ended with no clear result over this position, which basically says,
“My way or the Highway!”
I’m not saying that the act of defending one’s self is an act of war, albeit
a party that sometimes ends up in a position of defending its self from
aggression, fails to follow through on results that might have been the result of
mediated political negotiations and causes the attack from the other party – on
the party who didn’t follow through, they then proclaim they are only
defending their rights or land. Or take the case of Iraq and Saddam Hussein,
who the U.S. assisted along his way in becoming a loud mouth cruel ruler,
whose loud rhetoric claiming that he had massive amounts of Weapons of
Mass Destruction permitted the Executive Branch of the United States to
attack him after the hijacked planes took out the World Trade Center in New
York City and caused some pretty considerable damage to the Pentagon in the
capital of the United States. The U.S. found no WMDs in any stock pile! Me, if I
didn’t like his methods, would have sent in a couple of guys took him out and
brought them back home.
If you’re a student of history, which I seriously doubt, you would really
understand the atrocities’ that are committed under the blanket of war,
whereas modern man labels them collateral damage, a catch all phrase that
the “winners” use, while the “losers” are punished under International Law as
war criminals for the victims of innocent death or disabilities, just for having
the misfortune of being in the wrong places at the wrong time.
Over time when you peer back into our history you’ll notice that no one
nation is really innocent when it comes to the act of war, whereas at one time
or another over 95% of all nations in the world has actively leveled his
superiority over his neighbor.
Over time our weapons have progressed from clubs and rocks to
weapons that fly high-above the earth and release their guided destruction
from thousands of miles away, we have vehicles that fly over the ground at
plus 60 mph while firing a large caliber gun with accuracy unheard of even 20-
years-ago. Ships at sea, above the water and below carry weapons that can
be launched from great distances and pin-point a target they never see and
our super-sonic aircraft hide from detection, visual or from radar, flying over
our heads so high they cannot see the ground with weapons delivering their
death and destruction, and then going back to the base, having a full meal and
good night’s sleep in preparation for the next day. We have depersonalized
war, to a point that most of our war-fighters are merely an extension of the
technology we’ve invented.
Albeit there is no glory in any war, there have been periods in our
history when the returning warrior marched down broad avenues and the
people threw roses in their paths and cheered, as the winning force paraded
into town with their prisoners shackled in chains behind them. Their banners
flying in the win and their mighty steeds prancing their way they smiled and
bowed to the throngs of people, but, as today when they finally fell asleep I
imagine their dreams were not too far from the battle weary soldiers of today.
War was never meant to be pretty, nor was it meant to be a spectator
sport, but with today’s media some of the battles and conflicts are splashed
across our TV screens, 24/7 if you choose to watch, on news channels across
the world. As we watch, we shake our heads as the cameras’ make their way
down those same battle marked streets that the day before had shoppers
looking for their daily bread. We watch the mercy wagons picking up the
wounded and the dead, and maybe watch the airplanes land and flag draped
coffins surrounded by an honor guard being unloaded. Ten minutes later a
comedy show comes on followed by Jay Leno, and the world is alright once
again. Like I said, we’re a strange animal – elephants have a longer attention
span than most of us do, and our memory, forget it! Our memory is a 5 giga-
btye chip we plug into our portable mobile device or on our laptop, and
besides who really wants to remember something that upsets us.
In my opinion the human race is doomed to have wars, and will do battle
with each other until time runs out, or if an external force from outside of our
sphere decides they like our bananas better than their own. The other option
is if we can develop our extraterrestrial travel enough to take our battle into
space, where we either fight amongst ourselves for a metallic oil filled asteroid
or find another habitable planet where we want to plant our carrots.
And we sit here wondering why no one wants to visit us our send us a
message, duhhhh!