Rant

21st century Wars

Posted 11 months ago|4 comments|397 views

TAGS

World , Wars , Technology

Written by

Karthik
India

Men fought wars since civilizations existed. I have heard of a number of flourishing civilizations which were lost to wars. Trojan War, comes first to my mind. People fought for Power, Pride or just for the heck of it.. To prove that they are great... After all "War is a Drug", as Hurt Locker says it.

I was never one to support wars, but that was not my point to begin with. When wars were fought before technology grew out of bounds, people had to fight with some normal arms and were involved in man-man combat. Considering the current scenario, and how wars are being fought, I feel that those wars are way better than the wars that are being fought today.

With all the cutting edge technology available, ala Nuclear bombs, the damage is no longer limited to the war itself. It spreads over to the ecological system, Damage to terrains, Ozone system, Wild-Life.. And wars nowadays seem to be like long running episodes.

If you really want to war that much, please go back to basics... Use some spears, bows and arrows, swords and keep the other stuff out of it.. That should atleast limit the damage. Atleast then, we can have some peaceful wars...

I must be dreaming though.. That is not gonna happen...Since power is a drug too... and you can't ignore it, once you got addicted to it..

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Out Of The Box

Moderator

11 months ago: I think that we should divide the world's nuclear arsenal between all the countries equally. Then forms pacts that should one country get attacked, the others will take out the aggressor. Sure, of course there are the Irans and North Koreas to worry about, but they wouldn't get off many missiles before they are turned to glass, and that would probably be just enough deterrent for even a madman. Then we could bring the boys home, close down most of our bases worldwide, and save a ton of money on defense.

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Altruist
Eugene, OR

11 months ago: Right now only 5 countries have the capability of long range delivery of nuclear weapons. It is fairly easy to control those. Giving more nuclear weapons to everyone would be a disaster because of inherent risks of mistakes.

The solution is the elimination of all nuclear weapons, but this can only be done very gradually. The first step would be eliminating most of ours and Russia's.

Air Force Strategists have determined that even if Russia and all of the other nuclear states kept all of their warheads, the United states would still be just as secure if we cut back to only 311 nuclear weapons. http://peaceandhealthblog.com/2010/03/18...

Having thousands and thousands of warheads(We have over 5100 active and inactive and another 4500 waiting for dismantling), doesn't increase our retaliatory ability. It only takes one to retaliate. Having thousands does increase the chances that we can eliminate all life on earth and increases the chances of mistakes. http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nu...

With fewer warheads we can keep track of them better and make certain they don't end up in the hands of terrorists.

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Karthik
India

11 months ago: I so agree with Altruist... Out of the Box.. It could be possible... even if its a distinct one if we divide all the ammo equally.. but then we never know if all the ammo is equally divided... what with all the nations trying to keep as much stuff secret as possible to keep an upper hand.. and with this I am not referring to any specific nation.. what these guys dont understand with the use of destructive weapons is.. it causes a hell of a damage... which does not limit itself to the battlefield...every day I see newspapers... I come across people being born with abnormalities... I cant help but believe... this being a result of all the ecological damage.. which causes a damage to the genes....

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Altruist
Eugene, OR

11 months ago: I agree Karthik. We are using a lot of depleted uranium munitions which results in a lot of extreme birth deformities. http://stgvisie.home.xs4all.nl/VISIE/ext...

Today Vietnam is still suffering birth defects from agent orange 25 years after that war ended. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/04...

The effects of open pit burning of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan has been compared to agent orange. http://www.care2.com/causes/environment/...

The public is increasingly opposed to losses of American lives so we are using more and more bombing strikes and drone strikes to attack our enemies. The problem with this is that there is always a lot of "collateral Damage". Where innocent civilians are killed. This makes the entire war effort counterproductive because in that culture when someone is killed there is a demand for retribution so killing innocent civilians recruits more enemy fighters.

You are right. The civilians would be much better off if we got rid of all of the modern methods of destruction and just let the actual combatants have at each other with swords and spears.

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