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Did Making the Rules of War Better Make the World Worse?
- chiefalchemist 5y ago> he suggests that this new form of warfare is so civilized that it has reduced our incentive to stop fighting. There's that and there's also: 1) A complacent and complicit media. Compare the amount of coverage of Iraq or Afghanistan to Russia in the Ukraine. There's no comparison. Afghanistan went on for a record length and barely anyone noticed. But Ukraine is embedded in the news cycle. Along the same lines, the media (and the gov) conveniently rarely discusses costs - lives and dollars, nor opportunity costs (e.g., would the monies spent in the last 20 yrs gotten us closer to say nuclear fusion?) 2) Improved medical procedures. Soldier - and civilians? - who might have died from their injuries previously are now surviving. Are extreme burns and other crippling conditions that undermine the quality of post-war life civilized? Are taxpayers aware of these obligations? 3) And the most famous and powerful of all: The Military Industrial Complex. It's real. It's not a conspiracy theory. Yet again, most US citizens are unaware. Simply put, you can fight and sustain a war without public approval. The answer to that is: Out of sight, out of mind. That's not civilized. Unless of course you believe 1984 was civilized.