Poetry Forum

Full Version: wars
we all know they seldom solve anything though sometimes they may. i just heard the two sudans are talking war again; which is a shame considering how young as countries they are. is there ever a time for war. this thread is good to go for anything to do with war or peace, or both.

i think in the old days, they're was a sort of one one-upmanship to be had from slaughtering an enemy with sword and bow, it was something personal; now it just seems all that stuff of heroes has gone, (on the fighting side) i know heroes were plenty in as afar as bravery go, but can heroes ever be made by using a rocket launcher, tank etc. it seems all the values of war that led to honour and all that guff has disappeared, now war is a cold climate.
i saw talk of the two sudanese countries going to war, mainly over oil resources.
everything now days is done remotely or from long distance. i can understand the american civil war, but at least they generally fought close quarters, even the cannon weren't that far away. and it seemed to be a just cause.

it just seems that there's so much conflict in the world, i guess that's always been the case but apart from the world wars, they were generally hand to hand or siege weapon to castle etc and i suppose people seldom died in their millions.
was or is innovative technology the reason? or did we get greedier somewhere along the line?
i think in this modern era we like to flex out muscles in order to show what could be done. the sad thing is, we never actually achieve anything

(great to see you posting Smile )
war was and is always fought for greed and has absolutely nothing to do with"freedom",even if the motives might be somewhat noble in the beginning ,or we are told it is,it always turns out to be greed.

innovation has made it worse,ofcourse,it always has,the reason Atilla or djengis khan were so succesful is that they were simply better horsemen then the rest,now technological advantage is the so called deciding factor,but actually causes only more dead people and doesn't get us anywhere[see afghnistan]
(04-25-2012, 04:45 PM)srijantje Wrote: [ -> ]war was and is always fought for greed and has absolutely nothing to do with"freedom"

I agree with that. Homo sapiens have always fought in increasingly creative ways for control of resources. That's the reason we're now the dominant lifeform on this planet. Like it or not, survival of the fittest is the fundamental driving force of every living thing and it has absolutely nothing to do with freedom or fair play.

(04-25-2012, 12:57 PM)Serah Wrote: [ -> ]And yes, you are right, Billy....in the days of old, men were men, even in war. They had honor back then by honoring each other....even while in battle! They were fair.

I completely disagree with that. We read histories of old battles, far far far removed from the reality; almost always written by the survivors and the victors. In contrast, we see high resolution colour footage 24x7 of modern battles, complete with reporters giving voice to civilians who have had their homes bombed literally minutes beforehand. That we're far more in tune today with what really goes on when people fight doesn't mean they fight dirtier today than ever before. If anything, the intense scrutiny is more likely to stay the hand. The soldiers and citizens of Iraq got off far more lightly than the citizens of Hiroshima, to name but one relatively recent example. Slightly further back, British soldiers executed their fellows in the first world war for the "crime" of suffering from shell shock.
when i say men were braver, i mean they often fought face to face, i understand many were just fodder but it wasn't done from a distance. i'm not on about the hiroshimas etc, more about the Culloden's, agincourt's etc. when you had to look someone in the eye when you killed them, where it was close and personal. i'm sure it was dirty and raw with more rape and sacking, i just think a man's balls were tested when he went to war then that they are now.

greed; yep i suppose greed has it's place in all wars, but are all partied fighting because of greed. is there any just war? is there any just dense against some that went to or declared war. are both sides always greedy?
yes,i think both sides are always greedy
(04-26-2012, 02:13 PM)srijantje Wrote: [ -> ]yes,i think both sides are always greedy
so if my country gets attacked and it tries to defend itself, it's greedy? how does that work? i never saw greed when germany was beginning to take over europe and the act of invading poland. we were scared shitless and a bit angry as to how they were treating jews, polish and otherwise. we didn't want to go the same way as france etc. were we as a country greedy? i can't see as we were, we had everything to lose and little to gain apart from stopping someone from making the uk a german satellite

that's different,you got attacked and tried to defend yourself and in the end you actually ended up as the big losers,economically.
anyway,you wanted to counteract hitler not because of jews and poles but it was all about influence in europe
So I guess its more fair to say that war happens because of greed, and because people just can't shake the urge of putting "might makes right" into practice.

Wars truly are something different now. Back then, most everyone pitched in (out of patriotism, being forced into it by a monarch/dictator, etc). But now we're swiftly and surely approaching a time when wars can be fought purely by technology, where governments can launch wars with the easy press of a button. Impersonal. Don't know if that will make warfare better or worse then, but there's a good chance it might be the latter Sad
yes,like unmanned drones wooshing around bombing the shit out of mainly innocent people