DavidCooper wrote:
Solar wrote:
You really think any military dispute in the last, oh, 1000 years or so could have been avoided by "knowing what's right"?
It would have been a big help.
That's actually touching on my
other hobby... the history of war.
If we were sitting in the same room, with a cold drink, an interactive map on the wall, and lots of time, I'd really (honestly!)
love to talk some history with you. Perhaps starting with the fall of Napoleon, the First and Second Schleswig War, how it led to the Austro-Prussian War, how
that led to the Franco-Prussian War, the buildup to the First World War, and how that set the stage for the Second World War. We could then pick apart who was "wrong" in the Cold War, and its proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan -- the latter basically giving birth to what are the Taliban today...
I would
really like to hear your take on "right" and "wrong" in all these cases... but this isn't the place for that, and it's better not done at all if you're not talking directly to each other.
DavidCooper wrote:
You typically have two sides which feel aggrieved in various ways, seeing only the harm done to their side by the other and not the harm they've meted out in the other direction. With an unbiassed referee...
Wars are not fought for "feeling aggrieved". That's just what they tell the soldiers. Wars are fought over control, power, influence, and resources. One side wants it, the other side doesn't want to abandon it. There is no "right" or "wrong" there, just shades of grey.
And I don't think powermongers will agree on the "unbiassed-ness" of a "referee" you might want to impose on them,
except if you have the power to make them. By force (dissenters
shot dead), or by economic pressure (dissenters
starved to death).
So we're talking autocracy, suppression, and inevitably, rebellion. Well done.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." -- Dante
DavidCooper wrote:
I see lots of people in power today who have such good intentions that they are prepared to allow huge numbers of refugees to relocate to their countries even though most of those refugees have signed up to a religion which may cause a lot of problems further down the line due to the way the hate speech in its holy texts generates terrorism...
/{Sputters into his coffee}
Hate speech in holy texts, let's see....
I recommend starting with Deuteronomy, the fifth book of Mose, in the bible. Chapter
12 and
13 should suffice for a start. To basically sum it up...
The Bible wrote:
Destroy holy sites of other religions. Kill everyone who follows a different faith.
And it only gets better from there, including death by public stoning for women who are not found to be virgins at marriage... at which point you'll have to agree that a man's religion is not about what is written in some book, but about which parts of it he actually listens to.
(Oy vey.... now I've really done it, politics of war
and religion in the same post. Take cover....)