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> He felt that bringing a just war to a swift end justified almost any act. Looking at recent history, I find myself agreeing more and more with him. War is h

> He felt that bringing a just war to a swift end justified almost any act. Looking at recent history, I find myself agreeing more and more with him. War is horrible. War always involves innocent people dying, even if it is just you 18 year old kids either forced or enticed to join the military. War creates casualties both physical and mental in the people that fight it. I would bet if you include mental health, the vast majority of people who were actually involved in combat, came away with some kind of long term consequence. Yet at the same time, war can be a necessity. Take of example WWII. There was no way Hitler could have been stopped without war. At the same time there was a lot of damage to German civilians. The truth is that there is no way you can fight a clean war. Having all these talks about “rules of war” just puts lipstick on a pig and makes a queasy public more willing to go along. If it worth killing people for to achieve you objective, then go do it, and try to make it as short as possible. If it is not, then don’t start a war. But making War into a type of game (these people are ok to kill, these people are not, and lawyering over how connected something is to war), I actually find kind of sick, as if it was just a big game.

thaumiel 5y ago
Ok, so killing non-combatants aka civilians to trying to force the opposition to stop the conflict faster? More biological and chemical weapons, which causes mass amount of damage by not killing people but by remove their combat effectiveness to also able to stop the conflict faster?
whatshisface 5y ago
>The truth is that there is no way you can fight a clean war. Having all these talks about “rules of war” just puts lipstick on a pig and makes a queasy public more willing to go along. If you don't want the other guy to gas your troops, you can agree to in exchange not gas their troops. There's nothing artificial or contrived about that.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  The whole “you can’t gas my troops, but you can shoot them or blow them up, or burn them to death with a flame thrower, seems pretty contrived. World War II didn’t have gas, but it was still pretty horrific.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    An example more relevant to recent memory would be, "I won't torture and kill my POWs if you don't torture and kill yours." They're not grandstanding or moralizing, they're making an agreement.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    World War II didn't have gas because it was tactically and strategically useless, not because of international conventions. Mass bombing and firebombing of civilian targets contravenes international conventions too, but that didn't perceptibly slow anyone down, especially after the Axis powers very helpfully did it first. Ultimately there are no laws in war save vae victis, and while I believe the attribution of the idea to Bismarck is only apocryphal, I agree that the best and only way to curtail the brutality of warfare is to make war with maximum intensity in the cause of making war maximally short - if you can possibly manage it, by not having a war at all. I think Americans are unable to really understand this, and I think that's because our history offers only two examples, none remotely within living memory, of what it's like to have a war here. It's easy for us to think about making war because, with the exception of those who actually participate and are no longer conscripted in any case - and thus whatever happens to them can be trivially written off by those inclined as "what they signed up for" - we never have to fear that anyone will bring war home. Hitler couldn't even get an invasion across the English Channel; who's going to get one across an ocean? The sole exception is nuclear warfare via intercontinental missile, and indeed we find this a uniquely horrifying concept in the American psyche, even now. In theory that's because of radiation, but I don't think that's so; I think it is because that's the only plausible mechanism by which we need fear anyone bombing our cities, and that is something we never needed fear before. And it is worthy of note that, whatever the diplomatic exertions required to ensure this does not occur, we have always been willing to pursue them as tirelessly as the occasion has required.
ReptileMan 5y ago
>But making War into a type of game (these people are ok to kill, these people are not, and lawyering over how connected something is to war), I actually find kind of sick, as if it was just a big game. It's called the great game for a reason. But this is important because wars are most often waged with limited goals and it is better to sit on the negotiation table with some cynical politician and not someone that has held their kid while covered in burning napalm. You really don't want some multi generational revanche to move the other side, especially when you may be on the losing side next time. To illustrate - a clash over Taiwan that ends with mostly military casualties - can be reached some form deal. But nuke a US or China tier one city - and you are talking fight to the last drop of blood.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
  You don’t think a parent would be upset by an 18 year old son or daughter who was blown up by a bomb simply because they were in the military? People come to the negotiating table not because they see don’t think what the other side did was bad, but because they see no way forward to achiever their goals through war.

thaumiel 5y ago

Ok, so killing non-combatants aka civilians to trying to force the opposition to stop the conflict faster? More biological and chemical weapons, which causes mass amount of damage by not killing people but by remove their combat effectiveness to also able to stop the conflict faster?

whatshisface 5y ago

>The truth is that there is no way you can fight a clean war. Having all these talks about “rules of war” just puts lipstick on a pig and makes a queasy public more willing to go along. If you don't want the other guy to gas your troops, you can agree to in exchange not gas their troops. There's nothing artificial or contrived about that.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
The whole “you can’t gas my troops, but you can shoot them or blow them up, or burn them to death with a flame thrower, seems pretty contrived. World War II didn’t have gas, but it was still pretty horrific.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  An example more relevant to recent memory would be, "I won't torture and kill my POWs if you don't torture and kill yours." They're not grandstanding or moralizing, they're making an agreement.
- throwanem 5y ago
  World War II didn't have gas because it was tactically and strategically useless, not because of international conventions. Mass bombing and firebombing of civilian targets contravenes international conventions too, but that didn't perceptibly slow anyone down, especially after the Axis powers very helpfully did it first. Ultimately there are no laws in war save vae victis, and while I believe the attribution of the idea to Bismarck is only apocryphal, I agree that the best and only way to curtail the brutality of warfare is to make war with maximum intensity in the cause of making war maximally short - if you can possibly manage it, by not having a war at all. I think Americans are unable to really understand this, and I think that's because our history offers only two examples, none remotely within living memory, of what it's like to have a war here. It's easy for us to think about making war because, with the exception of those who actually participate and are no longer conscripted in any case - and thus whatever happens to them can be trivially written off by those inclined as "what they signed up for" - we never have to fear that anyone will bring war home. Hitler couldn't even get an invasion across the English Channel; who's going to get one across an ocean? The sole exception is nuclear warfare via intercontinental missile, and indeed we find this a uniquely horrifying concept in the American psyche, even now. In theory that's because of radiation, but I don't think that's so; I think it is because that's the only plausible mechanism by which we need fear anyone bombing our cities, and that is something we never needed fear before. And it is worthy of note that, whatever the diplomatic exertions required to ensure this does not occur, we have always been willing to pursue them as tirelessly as the occasion has required.

ReptileMan 5y ago

>But making War into a type of game (these people are ok to kill, these people are not, and lawyering over how connected something is to war), I actually find kind of sick, as if it was just a big game. It's called the great game for a reason. But this is important because wars are most often waged with limited goals and it is better to sit on the negotiation table with some cynical politician and not someone that has held their kid while covered in burning napalm. You really don't want some multi generational revanche to move the other side, especially when you may be on the losing side next time. To illustrate - a clash over Taiwan that ends with mostly military casualties - can be reached some form deal. But nuke a US or China tier one city - and you are talking fight to the last drop of blood.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
You don’t think a parent would be upset by an 18 year old son or daughter who was blown up by a bomb simply because they were in the military? People come to the negotiating table not because they see don’t think what the other side did was bad, but because they see no way forward to achiever their goals through war.