Caryolyn: Hmmmmmm......well....that persons definition of War certain seems to reflect the 'ol Ivory Tower perspective. As a person who grew up in the military I tend to take a 2001 (the movie) perspective on War.
That is; I view it from the perspective of opposing tribes of barely sentient monkeys, each of which are fighting over territorial expansion and precious, and limited, natural resources. It's this, combined with the very human tendency to categories groups of individuals as either US, or THEM, that reflects War at its essence. I can think of very few Wars that were fought, or participants entered into, for reasons other than this. Perhaps the U.S. during World War II could be considered an example. The U.S. entered the war with a desire to stop an enemy force it couldn't see mitigating any other way, and not because of some desire for additional power or territory. IMHO, of course.
Still, War as popularly expressed these past 50K years could be deemed the natural consequence of pressures associated with the growth and development of an intelligent, aggressive animal with natural tendencies towards my aforementioned US vs THEM methodologies. The worry I have is the animal hasn't changed. To paraphrase an old Bob Dylan song, we're all just a bunch of high-tech primitives floating around on this life raft Earth. And now our militaries have all the accoutrements of a modern scientific society with warfare systems so powerful as to rank us as Gods by any prior civilizations standards.
All I can hope is that we've grown up a little during this process; because there's nowhere left to grow and expand. We finally must turn and face down all those demons and imps of War and mayhem. Ourselves. And this just might be the biggest War of all.
John~ |
