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Personally, I don't believe in peace. That's not to say I support war and destruction, so much as when I make my way through the world, I don't really believe we as a species really want "peace" deep down. There is so much deeply buried passive-agression in so many people that I truly believe man wants war, we want to have an "enemy" and we want to be "victors". Weither it's a foriegn country, or the store clerk who messed up our change, we love and are addicted to drama.
Do you believe man's nature is one of peace? Or do you believe man will always have a need and craving for violence?
Mankind doesnt want Peace unless they have been without it for quite some time . Given our propensity toward selfish gain, entitlement, power and control, liberty toward freedom , materialism ,hedonism, and the like....I think there is great unrest and dissatisfaction among Man , with America leading the way.
There's only one way a people want peace: As long as their group enjoys dominance over other groups, whether the group they identify with is a nation, a religion, or an ideology.
After all, not much war profiteering to be had in the Sudan, yet the government continues to indulge in a genocidal war against its own people.
Americans didn't make any money in the former Yugoslavia either. The Bosnians and the Serbs simply opened their armories and began slaughtering one another. Same thing is true in Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Congo, Burma, East Timor, Fiji and untold dozens of other little brushfire wars. Yet in virtually all of those conflicts, the United States had little stake or influence. Not exactly good support for the war profiteering argument you forward.
Nope. Nietzsche, Carlisle, and Gobineau were right. War is the natural state of mankind, sad to say.
Of all those countries you named, in how many of them did a majority of the people want those wars? The wars you named were a handful of revolutionaries gathering armies of maybe hundreds, terrorizing people who want no part of war.
By saying that the PEOPLE of those countries wanted to engage in warfare proves that your "typical kneejerk reaction" is based on a complete ignorance of the realities on the ground there. Most of them,, like Sudan, is not a war at all. It is an armed gang of terrorists going through the country taking what they want and killing who they want, with little or no armed opposition. And for every country you names with your so-called wars, there are ten that have NOT had any belligerence, either within the country, or against neighbors,, during the lifetime of the present citizens. Albania, Andorra, Antigua, Armenia, Austraila, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain,
Barbados,--- tell me when to stop.
Do you believe man's nature is one of peace? Or do you believe man will always have a need and craving for violence?
I'm not sure man has a need or a craving for violence but his ability to learn is certainly hastened by the sight of blood. The other part of that odd nature is that if it's his own blood, he seems to learn faster.
Of all those countries you named, in how many of them did a majority of the people want those wars? The wars you named were a handful of revolutionaries gathering armies of maybe hundreds, terrorizing people who want no part of war.
By saying that the PEOPLE of those countries wanted to engage in warfare proves that your "typical kneejerk reaction" is based on a complete ignorance of the realities on the ground there. Most of them,, like Sudan, is not a war at all. It is an armed gang of terrorists going through the country taking what they want and killing who they want, with little or no armed opposition. And for every country you names with your so-called wars, there are ten that have NOT had any belligerence, either within the country, or against neighbors,, during the lifetime of the present citizens. Albania, Andorra, Antigua, Armenia, Austraila, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain,
Barbados,--- tell me when to stop.
Obviously you haven't picked up a history book or a newspaper in the past two decades, otherwise you wouldn't have made this easily-refuted argument. Let's just go through the countries you listed, along with a number you left out:
Hmmm...Albania had considerable social unrest in the 1990s. Before that, it had a deplorably oppressive government under Enver Hoxha.
Andorra, Antigua...I'll give you a pass on these two, chiefly because they are tiny and mostly homogenous states. Which fits into my theory, by the way.
Angola...You conveniently omitted this once, of course, since it didn't fit your argument. I notice you did the same thing for Afghanistan, Algeria, and Argentina. Not very honest of you, was that?
Armenia...You realize, of course, that the Armenians had some pretty spectacular butchery after achieving their independence in 1991, particularly in the Ngorno Karabach enclave of Azerbaijan, resulting in an unofficial war between the two states.
Australia...Fought in the Boer War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and both Gulf Wars and intervened in several small scale conflicts throughout Oceania.
Austria...Gosh. This one was the seat of the Austrian Hungarian Empire, and fought continuous wars as one of the great powers of Europe until 1918, when it was eviscerated by the treaty of Versailles. Known for its brutal repression of ethinic peoples throughout the Balkans.
Azerbaijan...See Armenia.
Bahamas...Gosh, since it's a British commonwealth, a virtual extension of the United States, ethnically homogenous, and fifty miles from Miami, not much chance of conflict going on there.
Bahrain...You forget the Islamic uprising against the minority Sunni ruling elite that took place in the 1990s, not to mention an interesting history of police brutality and torture.
Barbados...Kind of along the lines of all those other little Carbbean countries with populations smaller than most American cities.
So, of the first 14 countries in our revised little list, 10 have had considerable either internal or external conflicts. 3 of the remaining 4 were British crown colonies that were also within the sphere of United States influence, while Andorra is sandwiched between France and Spain, traditionally hostile powers in Europe. Andorra, Antigua, Barbados and Bahamas are too small to afford a military, and really don't have the means to fight either a very large neighboring country (In the case of Andorra) or across dozens of miles of open water (In the case of the other Caribbean countries). That's not a case of innate peacefulness. It's merely a lack of opportunity.
And the list goes on. And, as I said previously, as long as there are countries with ethnic and religious divisions, then war is indeed the natural state of mankind.
A while back, I read an article pointing out that in all of human history, there have been less than 200 years without a war of some kind, somewhere on Earth. That certainly doesn't make much of a case for mankind wanting peace. Quite the contrary, it seems to indicate that we're not satisfied unless we're at war.
cpg, Im 70 years old and Ive been in 125 or so countries. You'd think Id have seen one of these perpetual wars that your mankind is constantly chomping at the bit to perform over and over again. But no, I just walk down the streets and everyone is peacefully going about their business. Rarely do I encounter one who is even impolite. I always seem to come away with the impression that people want peace. I guess they put on a show just for me. I'd really like to know where you live, so I can come and see for myself what people who don't want peace get up every morning and go out and do to each other.
First, explain why you can never have peace without war. Just saying it does not make it true. More than half the nations on earth have never gone to war once in the entire history of their nationhood. So how did they achieve peace without war?
Second, what does your crime reference have to do with the topic? Is that your way of proving that mankind doesn't really want safe streets, either?
Because dictators who murderer their people never willingly give up their power. How did everyone achieve peace without war? The US stepped in, along with other nations, to stop it. It was clear in WWII that if we hadn't stepped in ,if you were still here, you'd have blond hair and blue eyes. To dismiss the achievements of many wars would be acquaint to acting like you can go to school and get good grades without paying attention, it happens.
Man kind wants peace. A people free to choose will always choose peace barring no one else outside of their bubble would rather seem them dead then have a voice.
cpg, Im 70 years old and Ive been in 125 or so countries. You'd think Id have seen one of these perpetual wars that your mankind is constantly chomping at the bit to perform over and over again. But no, I just walk down the streets and everyone is peacefully going about their business. Rarely do I encounter one who is even impolite. I always seem to come away with the impression that people want peace. I guess they put on a show just for me. I'd really like to know where you live, so I can come and see for myself what people who don't want peace get up every morning and go out and do to each other.
You seem to confuse good manners for peacefulness. I am very well-traveled myself. The people with the most extravagant manners I have ever met are the Japanese, and all you have to do is look at how they behaved during the first half of the 20th Century.
Come to think of it, the Germans are pretty polite people, too. In my travels, Germans have always been willing to bend over backwards to help anyone, yet they launched themselves into two lemming-like crusades over the past century to conquer Europe, with the bonus of stuffing millions of Jews into gas ovens.
Arabs are the soul of hospitality, too. Yet they typically put up with some of the most brutal regimes in the world.
If you can convince a person that he has an enemy who wants to kill him, of course he will be favorable to going to war to repel that imagined enemy. The entire history of the world has consisted of tyrants who dedicated their every waking moment to scaring the hell out of their subjects and convincing them that somebody wants to kill rape and pillage the townspeople. But when no a$$holes are whipping them into that frenzy of bloodthirst, the people go about their business perfectly peacefully. The fact that you yourself swallow the BS every time Washington tells you you are in dire peril, should reveal to you how easily that fervor can be cultivated.
What about you, yourself? Do you desire peace? Or do you desire war? Yet, look how easily Bush and Kennedy and the rest convinced you that it was essential for you to go to war.
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