World Affairs

[morriswalters 16]

DocRorlach

I would expect that the military could care less about the poppy fields other than it is used by the Taliban to fund their operation.  I would personally wage a price war with the Taliban and buy it ourselves, it would be cheaper than war.    It would serve three purposes, deny funding to the Taliban, help the farmers, and keep it off the European and American Heroin markets.  I suspect the Taliban would respond by killing farmers who sold for the better price.  You seem to see the US as the bad guy, I won't waste my time arguing about it.  In point of fact this entire exercise is pointless since we are there no matter  what I think, although I do support it.  As for Iran I certainly don't like them but I doubt we'll go to war.  The same economy you say will collapse if we bring the troops home, will almost certainly collapse if we invade Iran.  I'm all for marking say 50 or so of our remaining ICBM's  for them and telling them so.  I like to bring the troops home because they've been away too long and need to stand down ands heal.  This is our longest war since the country was founded.

Lexus

Most of the civilians who have died in the war were killed because the Taliban have mixed with them to hide.  They are gorillas, this is what they do.  They use exactly the tactics I was espousing.  The hit and run.  The make it impossible to govern.  The people don't surrender, they complain to the government, and then as the situation doesn't improve support for the government falls away. Which is why I suggested this stategy as an alternative to what we did.  And Sherman didn't say that making war on civilians would make them surrender, what he said was the army couldn't fight without the support of the people.  If the people couldn't grow crops they couldn't feed the army.  They give the army the means to fight.

In terms of the bombing of cities during the war it may have had a bigger impact than you believe.  For the German people , the economy was so efficient that we couldn't do enough damage to matter.  However the war ended and memories remain to this day, however we have managed to have good relations with Germany since then.  Which may have been more about helping them up after we knocked them down.  The Japanese war machine ground to a halt on the other hand.  There are indications that the Japanese may have been looking for a way out before the nukes were used.  The nukes made the negotiations simple.  Again it says something that they have been allies since the war, again because we helped them up.

To both of you I say,we will have to agree to disagree.  See you somewhere else.

[Duke87 1,070]

First off, I gotta point something out here:

A gorilla is a primate that lives in the jungle. Using pot-shot hit-and-run fighting tactics is guerilla warfare. Generally pronounced the same, but spelled differently (it's Spanish for "little war").

Now then... this idea of using guerilla tactics in places like Afghanistan is intriguing. It just might be crazy enough to work.

Although, it still won't change anyone's mind. Nothing we really can do will. True, we make them hate us by fighting them... but they won't stop hating us if we stop fighting, they'll just go on the offensive again.

We can't win them over, and we can't defeat them. The best we can hope for is to keep them under control. As for what the most effective way to do that is, well, open debate.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

The term gorilla has been used as a word meaning gangster, usually of a large and menacing build.

[morriswalters 16]

Thats what happens when I get lazy.

[DocRorlach 25]

Guerilla tactics emerged only in the 19th and 20th century, and were initially largely confined to Latin and South America. The term travelled quickly to the West in post-WWII times (prior to that it was La Resistance). In all cases it meant small forces harrassing and even defeating larger, often better armed - and established - miltary forces aligned to the status quo.

The only way this could be applied to either Iraq or Afghanistan would as a description of the Taliban and the local warlords. Any military machine depending on too many words from the top will be incapable of using such tactics. The US & Nato would have to create units that operated utterly outside the standard chain of command. Not totally unthinkable, now that the FBI & CIA are attempting to recapture the Cold War, but and large feasible only in B-movies and computer games. Too many politicians whose existence depends on armament contracts and the like would object to such a down-sizing. Moreover, such units would - literally - live and die by their success or failure, and thus be branded terrorists in no time at all.

As for "Gorrilla Tactics" - I thought that is what Nato is employing since Kosovo?

[-Lexus- 2]

Originally posted by: morriswalters

Lexus

Most of the civilians who have died in the war were killed because the Taliban have mixed with them to hide.  They are gorillas, this is what they do.  They use exactly the tactics I was espousing.  The hit and run.  The make it impossible to govern.  The people don't surrender, they complain to the government, and then as the situation doesn't improve support for the government falls away. Which is why I suggested this stategy as an alternative to what we did.  And Sherman didn't say that making war on civilians would make them surrender, what he said was the army couldn't fight without the support of the people.  If the people couldn't grow crops they couldn't feed the army.  They give the army the means to fight.

In terms of the bombing of cities during the war it may have had a bigger impact than you believe.  For the German people , the economy was so efficient that we couldn't do enough damage to matter.  However the war ended and memories remain to this day, however we have managed to have good relations with Germany since then.  Which may have been more about helping them up after we knocked them down.  The Japanese war machine ground to a halt on the other hand.  There are indications that the Japanese may have been looking for a way out before the nukes were used.  The nukes made the negotiations simple.  Again it says something that they have been allies since the war, again because we helped them up.

To both of you I say,we will have to agree to disagree.  See you somewhere else.

quote>

You cannot combat that with the same tactics. If both would hide in a crowd, the only way to kill the terrorists is by gunning down the entire crowd. Guerrilla tactics only work against clear large conventional armies. Since the taliban is not a conventional army it wont work. Making it impossible for them to rule is also quite pointless. They either use brute force or a sense of faith to bind people to them. Disrupting their infrastructure is pointless and only makes you look like a big bully. 

Germans dont hate America because of a deep sense of shame and the idea that they where the aggressors. I think most germans believe they deserved those firebombs as a form of punishment. Besides that, the second world war was fought otherwise pretty nicely by the western allies. After the war was over, the war was over. No reprisals against civilians, the Americans helped rebuild the nation, prosecuted the top nazis and made sure they left something stable and acceptable when most of their forces withdrew. Besides that, Germany is a western nation, and a advanced western nation. It doesnt consist of a bunch of tribes and isnt ruled by a bunch of warlords. 

All the major cities of Japan have been bombed to bombed to hell and yet the Japanese where willing to fight for each meter. They would have done so Im sure if the emperor hadnt told them to surrender. The Japanese where fanatics. 

Before they dropped the nukes the Japanese where willing to surrender on their terms which where unacceptable for the allies. After they nuked Japan the emperor saw further resistance was futile so they stopped. 

In any case, in both examples it was not the civilian population that surrendered or forced their government to surrender. Surrender came from above and was forced on the population, not the other way around. If the Japanese emperor was crazy enough he could have continued the war until every city in Japan had been nuked. And no Japanese would have stopped him. 

[DocRorlach 25]

Lexus,

As a German (with a biological US Military father) who grew up among the rubble that was Frankfurt shortly after the war, I can tell you for certain that the Germans - what was left of them - had absolutely no love for the US forces station throughout central and southern Germany. They hated their guts and wanted them gone all the way until most of the bases were closed in the 70ties and 80ties. None of the Germans ever thought they deserved the carpet bombing. Dresden, Frankfurt, and other cities reduced to dust did not even have much in terms of military targets. These were pure revenge targets with no greater strategic value.

While nowadays, being comfortable, well-fed, and for most part the leading nation in the EU, that hatred has mellowed and largely disappeared, at least for my generation. But the undercurrent remains, and is by no means gone. And you will find similar currents in France and Italy, even Spain. Perhaps only Skandinavians and Belgians view the US and its citizens with bemusement. And the wars that followed WWII did nothing to change that view. Nor would I count on universal love and acceptance among the Japanese. Ask any Okinawan.

Military might, regadless of its morality, will always be seen as negative, especially by those at the losing end of it - even when it was used to liberate them. WWII cost 20 million lives - and that is not counting the 6 or 7 million Jewish people the Germans exterminated. Nobody can cheer for long when faced with such stagering results. Yes, WWII was justified, and with the exception of the H-bombs, had the moral high ground. But it was still a war, and at the end of the day, that is mankind's stupidest invention.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Considering the length of time that has passed since WW II (two generations +), you would think that old resentments would have died down, and, maybe, for the current group of youngsters, it has on the face of things.  However, no conflict between peoples seems to ever really go away.  A good example can be found here at home:  the Francophone community in Quebec still think of themselves as a conquered people.  That conflict was in the 1750's, but still they cry "Je me souviens".  And there is an active separatist movement in the province, including a sizable representation in Parliament by the Bloc Quebecois.  At one time, these MPs were Conservatives, but things were not going well for Quebec in the 1970's, and there they are.  It didn't help, just then, that an active insurrectionist group, the Front de Liberation du Quebec (FLQ) started blowing up mailboxes and kidnapping people.  This fiasco ended in the murder of one of the so-called hostages, and the then prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau (sometimes referred to by Anglophones, even today, as Peter E. Waterhole) invoked the War Measures Act that placed Quebec under military law.  Think about it.  After 200 years of sort-of assimilation into the main stream, the Quebecois still felt alienated enough so that there was an "apprehended insurrection" in the streets of Quebec City and Montreal.  Who'd of thunk it?  Well, here we are 40+ years (one generation at least) after that and there is still a separatist movement in Quebec, and Quebec has not signed the constitution act, but we're working on it.

Now, European conflicts are fresh by comparison, as are out own, in this continent.  When I was a kid, we sort-of tolerated Americans, but the echoes of the War of 1812 and the Fenian raids were just like yesterday to me as I was growing up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, essentially on the old battlefields.  There is now a confectionery company named after one of the great heroines of that time, Laura Secord.  There is also a big monument on her grave and one at Queenston to Sir Isaac Brock, who was killed in the Battle of Queenston Heights when the Yanks attacked us across the Niagara estuary.  The most interesting thing about the 1812 kerfuffle, considering its current distance, is that it was 200 years ago, part of defeating Napoleon, and I still remember it like it was yesterday thanks to parents, grandparents, and other generations who remembered all the details when I was growing up.  Interestingly enough, one of my great uncles was a United States Marine during the war to end all wars.  There were, of course, echoes of the Spanish-American war floating around then, "Remember the Maine", so this is yet another personal illustration that old conflicts just don't seem to die out.  Maybe they are remembered with nostalgia, and often real regret, but they are there.

One of our great failings is the drive to plant "War Memorials" all over various parts of our joint ecology.  The world is littered with War Memorial Stadiums, War Memorial Arenas, and War Memorial Auditoriums.  The world is also littered with cenotaphs and military cemeteries.  Up to somewhere in the 1950's or so, it was customary to bury the fallen where they fell.  There were public health reasons as well as logistics reasons for doing so.  Today, we import the honored cutlets and inter them at home, either privately or in massive military cemeteries like the one at Ottawa or the one at Arlington.  Whether there is closure in that folded flag you receive is moot.

So here we are, in the high summer of the 21st century thinking about all the stinking, horrible battlefields of the past, and we have at least one member among us, who wants to do it again.  Wake up.  War is the ultimate cluster f....  No matter what the outcome, nobody wins.

[DocRorlach 25]

Could not agree more, Moose. But even the Canadian debcale is young when compared to what happend not so long ago in the Kosovo region and was based on a war that happend around 1630-something. Similarily, the Shiite-Sunny friction is based on a shissim that started not long after Mohammed's death. And the English and the Scots have been at each other's throat since around 1100, and would quite willingly go at it again if there was any currency in it. Violence begets violence regardless under which banner it starts.

The first act of a victor should be to abolish all rememberance days, all monuments to commiserate the just ended conflict, and the dissolution of the current crop of military leaders. Maybe then some distant day, Lennon's words might actually come true: what if they gave a war and nobody showed up (or ome such).

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[DocRorlach 25]

Yes, that is the common fault line of most arguments when the German war casulties are brought up. It's a line of arguing that can be applied to almost anyone: it clears the "liberator" of any further moral obligations. At the same time it is faulty because when we look back from todays vantage point we can no longer image a general population such as the "Biedermeier" attitude of the 1930s and 1940s that allowed the monstrosity of the Third Reich to rise. It was an attitude of massive civil obidience, no matter who happened to be in power, twinned with an absence of information today's generations cannot possibly imagine.

That line of reason is of course now applied in almost any conflict: the losers get what they deserve. Israel applies it to the Palestinians; Turkey applies it to the Kurds, Kosovo Albanians apply it to any foolish Serbs they can find. It is an argument of retribution. Arizona is now applying it to the silly Mexicans crossing its borders illegally. And one fine day, someone will apply it to Americans, although, according to some Middle Eastern and Pakistani sources at the time, that doctrine was already applied on September 11, 2001.

It simply propagates every conflict ad infinitum. Good thing then, that mankind is just a temporary plague on this planet.

[morriswalters 16]

I neither advocate peace or war.  I could say that peace is a thing that we infer from the quiet periods between wars, that's not my quote but it's true none the less.  If you have a plan to change that I'll follow you.  In terms of the European wars I would remind all that America got to those conflict late.  Our help wasn't needed to start them.  If you want to speculate, think about what would have happened if we had just stopped at the German border and left the Russians to it.  Japan was a similar situation.  They had already invaded China and Indo China, and were at war with the Russians.  War is not rational and history is written by the winners, thats not my fault it's simply a fact.  My point on Afghanistan was that we could have accomplished the goals that we stated with fewer casualties of all types, without invading.

And the point about the modern world and the protagonists of the last war is that if we don't all love each other, at least we don't actively hate each other, and I can settle for that.  Now I'm going to quit posting a while because people seem to misunderstand my sig and they seem to think I hate this place.  I don't, in fact. I Have Truely Found Paradise,  except on my black days.  Good luck on peace in our time.

Reese

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Morriswalters:  I don't think you should sign off quoting Neville Chamberlain.

I, too, however, would like to call closure on the world war 2 debate, at least for a time.  70 years of gum beating on the subject is probably enough.

[Barbarossa 51]

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  Edited September 8, 2012 by Barbarossa  

[-Lexus- 2]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

So here we are, in the high summer of the 21st century thinking about all the stinking, horrible battlefields of the past, and we have at least one member among us, who wants to do it again.  Wake up.  War is the ultimate cluster f....  No matter what the outcome, nobody wins.

quote>

I assume thats me. 

Yes, sure, its a cluster ***** and nobody wins. Its irrelevant. The results are what matter. Not who actually wins but if people learn from it. If they can progress from where they came from. Progress demands sacrifice, and that means wars are essential. In the end, humanity needs war, and profits from war. There is no way around that fact. We just need to be very careful with it, so it doesnt destroy us. 

Besides, its all nice being the pacifist now. Just wait till some terrorist sets of a nuke or pulls another 9/11. See how many of the people here who oppose war so much will be screaming for the utter destruction of the entire middle east. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

When one displays a general garment, it is interesting to see who wants to put it on, eh?

I believe in what Teddy Roosevelt said, "Walk softly, but carry a big stick".

One doesn't have to engage in armed conflict to resolve matters if one assures everyone that the result of an attack will be a swift and drastic retailiation.  The problem these days is that there are a lot of weak knees in high places and many of the real decision makers are being mushroom managed by people around them with private agendas.

There is too much advice and not enough guts to take the necessary steps in a lot of cases.  The other problem is that all the terrorists have learned from us how to be terrorists.  Our society is so open, ,you can find out how to do nearly anythng on the Internet.  The various security authorities haven't got a chance to redact even one per cent of the dangerous stuff that is out there.  We have met the enemy, and he is us (Walt Kelly).  Our own society has enabled anyone who has the urge to destroy us, our institutions, and our countries with very little effort.

[DocRorlach 25]

While I usually tend to agree with the estimable Moose (having driven a motorcycle through northern Maine, I learned not to argue with animals larger than myself), I disagree on one point. I don't think it is just the weak knee jerking that prevents solutions to Afghanistan & Iraq. Methinks it is the money involved. Too many parties profit from the continuation of both conflicts.

As long as the profit motive remains, action will not be taken. The recent G8/G20 meetings and the failure to regulate the banks is an example of that. With both wars, the revenues from arms supplies & logistics are just too damn big to allow politics to stop the cashflow.

Sorry I digressed on WWII - I am a sucker for bait..

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Doc, you have a very good point.  As long as the military/industrial cartel can make money off waging war, they will arrange to manipulate (mushroom manage) the pols into producing a nice, profitable, hopefully-little war for them to suck out the bucks.  So, how to fix this vexing socio-capitalist problem?  Lets do something drastic.

Each and every member of the executive committee and the board of directors of each and every arms and military equipment supplier should be conscripted as a private soldier, taken through basic training, and thrust forthwith into the hottest part of the hottest war going on at the moment, preferrably as a point man for a scouting party.  No age or infirmity objections should be allowed, nor any exemption for other upstanding qualities like large charitable donations neither.

How do you suppose people like Billy Gates would look in a set of battle fatigues and a tin pot?

[DocRorlach 25]

Let's go for it, but let's omit the basic traning bit: wars would end a lot faster that way. And yes, let's also include evey member of the senate/house or whatever equivalent each country has, who voted for the war in question.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Very bloody minded.  Now, about the draft legislation ...

[-Lexus- 2]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Doc, you have a very good point.  As long as the military/industrial cartel can make money off waging war, they will arrange to manipulate (mushroom manage) the pols into producing a nice, profitable, hopefully-little war for them to suck out the bucks.  So, how to fix this vexing socio-capitalist problem?  Lets do something drastic.

Each and every member of the executive committee and the board of directors of each and every arms and military equipment supplier should be conscripted as a private soldier, taken through basic training, and thrust forthwith into the hottest part of the hottest war going on at the moment, preferrably as a point man for a scouting party.  No age or infirmity objections should be allowed, nor any exemption for other upstanding qualities like large charitable donations neither.

How do you suppose people like Billy Gates would look in a set of battle fatigues and a tin pot?

quote>

uhuh, right. It where the arms dealers and PMC's that where actually behind 9/11. Sure they might profit from it, but they dont need a war to cash in. They will get their contracts for newer and better guns regardless of any raging conflict. Its pointless to try and blame someone as the sole cause for any war. There are no sole causes for war, its a multitude of factors and it can only be manipulated on a very small and insignificant way. Wars are much more like volcanic eruptions and earthquakes then they are the cause of a few a persons in nice suits. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Thanks.  You have just added a few people to the conscription list.

Uh, I don't suppose you would consider charging arms dealers with Crimes Against Humanity and if convicted, executing them by coating them with honey and burying them up to the neck in an ant hill?

[-Lexus- 2]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Thanks.  You have just added a few people to the conscription list.

Uh, I don't suppose you would consider charging arms dealers with Crimes Against Humanity and if convicted, executing them by coating them with honey and burying them up to the neck in an ant hill?

quote>

They provide a service. Do you think war stops when you lock away arms dealers? That the killings will stop? Of course not, if people cant find a gun they will either invent one themselves or find a baseball bat or a kitchen knife and continue killing each other. Face it, violence will always exist and war will always exist, with or without your local arms dealer. And its just stupid to blame a few individuals for all the death and destruction in this world. 

Guns dont kill people, people kill people. 

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: -Lexus-

Guns dont kill people, people kill people. 

quote>

Naturally.  I just would like to limit the means.  Guns make it too easy.  If you are going to kill someone, it should be up close and personal.  Killing at a distance makes it easier because you miss all the blood, guts, stink, noise, and seeing the light of life fade from the guy you killed.  If it were possible, I would like to disinvent the powder weapon.  At least with a bow and arrow you have to be closer than a couple of kilometers.

Without powder weapons, we'd be back to knives, bows, slings, and catapults.  No cannons, no rifles, and especially no hand guns.  If we make killing a personal event, there will be less of it.  It is too easy to fire a distance weapon and not worry about whether you hit anything or not.  With no powder weapons, the arial guys would be down to nukes.  Somehow, I don't think that would fly.  In fact, the air force would become the observer corps.

[-Lexus- 2]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Naturally.  I just would like to limit the means.  Guns make it too easy.  If you are going to kill someone, it should be up close and personal.  Killing at a distance makes it easier because you miss all the blood, guts, stink, noise, and seeing the light of life fade from the guy you killed.  If it were possible, I would like to disinvent the powder weapon.  At least with a bow and arrow you have to be closer than a couple of kilometers.

Without powder weapons, we'd be back to knives, bows, slings, and catapults.  No cannons, no rifles, and especially no hand guns.  If we make killing a personal event, there will be less of it.  It is too easy to fire a distance weapon and not worry about whether you hit anything or not.  With no powder weapons, the arial guys would be down to nukes.  Somehow, I don't think that would fly.  In fact, the air force would become the observer corps.

quote>

Right, that would mean youd have to disinvent rockets and cars as well. And railguns, coilguns, gauss based artillery, pressurized gas and at some point lasers. 

And for what? The killing wouldnt decrease, it would only make it harder for everyone (like that ever stopped a human being before) and more disgusting and brutal. But not any less. 

And easier? Haha, right. Because its easy when youre unit is under fire from some sniper you cant see and your mates head just got blown to tiny bits and pieces and you got some buddy brain matter on your suit. Because its easy when you have to move up while tracer rounds fly over your head and artillery grenades fall around you, with ear deafening explosions. And behind you a 50 cal opens up on the enemy. Thats not noisy at all. Artillery impacts arent noisy at all. Alright, I admit, you dont have the screaming of the dying as much. But I count that as a good thing, not a bad thing. 

[DocRorlach 25]

Moose, I agree (to a point) with Lexus. Violence with the intend to kill or inflict bodily harm will not stop. There will always be crazies out there simply because we are a violent species.

But I disagree with Lexus on arms control. It is possible and can be done, by as simple a means as legislation. It is not that the arms manufacturer exists that is the root cause, but that such a company can lobby with impunity. And ust as there will always crazies among the general populace, there will always be greedy bastards among the professional political classes, as the recent Bush Administration demonstrated so vividly by starting two wars on fake evidence for no other reason than political expidiency and fianncial gain.

Armies are here to stay, but in the west we do have the choice of these being prely defensive units or aggressors. Unfortunately wince WWII we have moved from the defensive stance to the aggressive positions that we "owe it to the free world" to strike first. That doctrine has been a false assumption in every sense. Our world is not free and tends to be limited to a handful of nations, and we (pick your nation) do not owe anything to it.

War can be made unprofitable; it will take some time, but the process has to be started at home. Politicians, especially in the West, ought to focus on the two issues that surely must be the most pressing ones, since both involve the survival of society and the humans that make up societies: economy and environment, and not necessarily in that order.

[hym 358]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Without powder weapons, we'd be back to knives, bows, slings, and catapults.  No cannons, no rifles, and especially no hand guns.  If we make killing a personal event, there will be less of it.  It is too easy to fire a distance weapon and not worry about whether you hit anything or not.  With no powder weapons, the arial guys would be down to nukes.  Somehow, I don't think that would fly.  In fact, the air force would become the observer corps.quote>

We would most certainly not be back to just up close and personal killing tools.  If anything, such a restriction would accelerate the demand for research into magnetic and plasma weaponry.  Plasma weaponry may well still be the stuff of science fiction, but magnetic weapons are very much real and close to being ready for use on the battlefield, and magnetic weapons are capable of being far more deadly than conventional propellant based weaponry.

[-Lexus- 2]

Originally posted by: DocRorlach

Moose, I agree (to a point) with Lexus. Violence with the intend to kill or inflict bodily harm will not stop. There will always be crazies out there simply because we are a violent species.

But I disagree with Lexus on arms control. It is possible and can be done, by as simple a means as legislation. It is not that the arms manufacturer exists that is the root cause, but that such a company can lobby with impunity. And ust as there will always crazies among the general populace, there will always be greedy bastards among the professional political classes, as the recent Bush Administration demonstrated so vividly by starting two wars on fake evidence for no other reason than political expidiency and fianncial gain.

Armies are here to stay, but in the west we do have the choice of these being prely defensive units or aggressors. Unfortunately wince WWII we have moved from the defensive stance to the aggressive positions that we "owe it to the free world" to strike first. That doctrine has been a false assumption in every sense. Our world is not free and tends to be limited to a handful of nations, and we (pick your nation) do not owe anything to it.

War can be made unprofitable; it will take some time, but the process has to be started at home. Politicians, especially in the West, ought to focus on the two issues that surely must be the most pressing ones, since both involve the survival of society and the humans that make up societies: economy and environment, and not necessarily in that order.quote>

If with arms control you mean that not everyone should get a gun so easy, then I wont disagree. I believe that the state should have the monopoly on violence. However, such arms control wont change a thing when it comes to war. 

Also, war is unprofitable for now. Look at America, it fought two wars, one war which cost about a billion dollars a day to wage. I dont know about you but there is no country in the world that can pay for such a war without any negative side effects. I believe the trick is to make war profitable, not for just a few CEO's but for the world. Since war is inevitable we might as well make it as useful as possible. Channel it into something more constructive. 

[DocRorlach 25]

I cannot believe you just wrote that: there is today no possible argument for war "being here to stay" or, worse, making it profitable. You are aiming for a society in which ten percent of the adult population ends up as connons and 90% as cannonfodder! What I said was that violence cannot be erradicated because we are predators , ever since we climbed down from the trees.

War is not inevitable, especially on a planet where distances and borders are already meaningless and mostly fictional. My guestimate would be that about 75-85% of today's political deliniations of nations are pure inventions of political deals or unwarranted conflicts. Transportation and communication, as they are evolving, should really hasten the demise of this idiotic politial fences. If mankind finally comes to its senses, the only possible borders would be defined by shorelines; and even those do not mean much, as several island nations show us already. War can only continue to exist if nations exist - get rid of that antiquated concept, and all you have left are local skirmishes fueled by greed. And if, in the next few hundred years, the economic bases of the continents can be reasonably aligned, you would not even have much cause for that. Soldiers cannot fight on an empty stomach, and even less so if they are too well fed to move too far from the remote or the keyboard.

As I said befoe, if we do not get our economic and environmental houses into order within the next century, there will be little to fight over, and far too few humans left to put up a fight in the first place.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I would be willing to believe that the curtain has already fallen on the last act of the human tragedy.  If the climate trends continue as they are we can expect massive crop failures in the next decade with the resulting starvation, volkerwanderung, and the usual atrocities.  If any humans survive at all, it will probably be the Inuit and the people of the reindeer.  Maybe some people in Patagonia will make it, but it all depends on how the fisheries do.

The land has been raped to the point where it cannot support us.  If the oceans fail, then good night.  A few pickets of people, who are attuned to live with their land like the Masai might survive since they don't really need anything from "civilization".

Man's tendency to kill his neighbor will help this all along, and the apocalypse will not be the second coming of anybody.  Just the centuries long recovery of mother nature.  If we are ever forgiven by Ceres, maybe some crops may appear in the future that can nourish a small number of people.  Be aware that the Earth Shaker has been making some rather startling appearances, and that the tropical storm season is predicted to be a strong and long one.  Poseidon resurgent.  If I was an ancient greek, I'd be scared as hell.