[2012-Mar-03] Why we wage war

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Issoisso

[2012-Mar-03] Why we wage war

Post by Issoisso »

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2538


I bet my idea could kick your idea's ass

asterisks

Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by asterisks »

shouldnt it be "religion" instead of peace ? I mean religions are nothing but ideas which fight over people.

notapplicable

Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by notapplicable »

Darn it. I hate when this happens. Comic makes insightful joke instead of funny joke... The premise for the insight is deeply flawed. Therefore I can't respect the punchline and since the author already sacrificed funny for epiphany, I'm left as a hollow shell lacking wisdom, laughter and love. Zachary Alexander Weiner, you did this to me!

Wars are fought over access to resources and markets. Ideological justification is only useful from a propaganda standpoint. And that's only super important in a democracy that lacks a draft. You gotta motivate the troops somehow, and it's best if they're motivated by something nebulous and insubstantial. That way the merchant-class can swoop-in after the war and gobble up the spoils without sharing them with the fighting men or the people that financed the war.

Wars over ideas.... ha! Like that's ever happened in a non-Civil war....

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Spinalcold
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Spinalcold »

Noooooo, like it never happened in the Cold war. Nor has it ever happened between the ancient greek cities, nor been the Native American tribes. Never ideas.

Sorry, had to be sarcastic. But to say that only civil war is about idea's is only taking a part of the parcel, just like the comic. War is fought over many reasons, ideology is definitively one of them. Also, many warleaders thought of themselves as gods and it was their RIGHT to make war, not for resources, but because they were superior.

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Gangler
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Gangler »

asterisks wrote:shouldnt it be "religion" instead of peace ? I mean religions are nothing but ideas which fight over people.
No, religions are organizations that fight over ideas*. If you're gonna go that angle then we might as well reduce the countries to ideas.

*Ideas here reads as "People". Yeah, it gets confusing. The concept of why people fight wars is probably more complex than five panels can do justice. Or for that matter than any father would care to delve into when explaining things to his child.
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Crunchy Pete
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Crunchy Pete »

i agree with gangler cos of his backwards pokeymans hat
...then she said "I don't see why" and burst into flames...

notapplicable

Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by notapplicable »

Spinalcold wrote:Noooooo, like it never happened in the Cold war. Nor has it ever happened between the ancient greek cities, nor been the Native American tribes. Never ideas.

Sorry, had to be sarcastic. But to say that only civil war is about idea's is only taking a part of the parcel, just like the comic. War is fought over many reasons, ideology is definitively one of them. Also, many warleaders thought of themselves as gods and it was their RIGHT to make war, not for resources, but because they were superior.
I'm afraid that propaganda has worked incredibly well on you if you think the proxy wars of the cold war were about ideas and not access to resources and markets. Your other examples, I'm afraid, are also about resources.

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Spinalcold
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Spinalcold »

notapplicable wrote:I'm afraid that propaganda has worked incredibly well on you if you think the proxy wars of the cold war were about ideas and not access to resources and markets. Your other examples, I'm afraid, are also about resources.
Well I guess it's how you define the cold war. Yes it was about cornering markets, but both Russia and the US had different ideologies on how to accomplish this. You can still want resources and fight over ideology. And now the US has a complete fear over socialism :-P

notapplicable

Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by notapplicable »

Spinalcold wrote:Well I guess it's how you define the cold war. Yes it was about cornering markets, but both Russia and the US had different ideologies on how to accomplish this. You can still want resources and fight over ideology. And now the US has a complete fear over socialism :-P
You gotta look past the words politicians use. The US has never been afraid of socialism when it comes to giving advantages to its industry. The cold war was less a test between to modes of production (capitalism vs communism) and more a contest between two resource-rich empires vying for territory. The USSR wasn't quite as rich as the US and its western European allies since they lacked 3rd world colonies (or countries that were defacto colonies due to their trade agreements), so they attempted to gain footholds (their own colonies and "colonial" allies, tbh) in Greece, Cuba, Asia (China, Korea, Vietnam), Afghanistan, Africa (Angolia, Mozambique) And the middle east (Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon). The US had its own "colonies and colonial allies," many of which were traditional. And where the two overlapped, there was war -- but over territory. I think it's a naive mistake to believe the conflicts were ideological, afterall, we never declared war directly with the USSR, but only its proxies. This is perhaps mostly because the USSR's military was too strong, but even if the USSR didn't have nukes, I kinda doubt we woulda attacked them directly. We had no need to start a long brutal war with the USSR, when we could accomplish our goals (becoming the world's superpower with access to whatever markets we wanted) by limiting their control of resource-rich, industry-poor territories.

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Spinalcold
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Spinalcold »

You have some good points, but I still feel they fail to grasp the whole point. It was still ideological warfare because the US is a democracy. The only way to sustain that long of a cold war was by getting the ideology to side with them. Hence came the Democracy vrs Communism.

What I mean is in a democracy the ruling class is 'the people' (which was really only true in Athens and the Early Roman Republic; but for argument sake we're talking about current democracy), so the people take an ideological war to other nations, or rather to confront other nations from interfering with them.

Hell, I know it's probably a flawed argument, I'm fcking tired! Just wanted to put in a few cents though.

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Kaharz
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Kaharz »

The reasons national or military leaders go to war is for usually for access to resources of some flavor. The main reason the general public usually support those wars is because of ideology. So wars are fought over both.

The proxy wars during the cold war are good examples. The US was definitely concerned about keeping markets open. The policy makers come right out and say it in NSC 68.* The people supported those wars, at least for a time, because of ideologies. Communism** bad, Democracy*** good.

*The document that more or less sets US foreign policy for the next couple of decades and still has a huge influence. And it only took about 60 pages to do it.
**Socialist oligarchy
***Constitutional Republic
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notapplicable

Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by notapplicable »

Spinalcold wrote:Hence came the Democracy vrs Communism.
That's why we're still in a cold war with Communist China, right? I'm sorry, but the ideology differences were just an excuse. A way of defining how we were better than the enemy.

We don't care about communism as long as we have access to their markets (China). We don't care about authoritarianism, as long as we have access to their markets (Idriss Déby, Dictator of Chad; as well as most of South America until recently). African and east Asian tyrants are often ignored so long as we can sell them weapons or buy their diamonds/oil/rare metals, etc. We did care about the spread of the Soviet Union because of their protectionist iron curtain. We care about the Venezuelan democracy and some even slander it as a dictatorship because Chavez's government is nationalistic and protectionist. We loved Saddam Hussein until he threatened Kuwait's oil reserves, and then we continued to tolerate him as long as he participated in the oil-for-food program. Suspiciously, we didn't invade Iraq on any pretext until Hussein threatened to switch from the Dollar-standard to the Euro for his country's international trade. There's a reason, when there turned out to be no WMD, that President Bush said it didn't matter... that we did the right thing. And it's not because he was a dictator that had to be removed for the sake of his people-- that was just a pleasant consequence.

The closest wars I can think of that were ideologically motivated were the crusades, but even they were based on claiming territory (the first papal crusade was in response to the expansion of Islam into the Christian Byzantine empire, for example). Their ideological differences were a way of dehumanizing the enemy, and made the wars easy to justify morally... but deep down it was always about land. Especially Jerusalem.

I mean, you can say that the propagandistic reasons for war are often ideological. But wars are incredibly devastating events for all participants. To put your nation through such requires tangible, concrete rewards. Proving your idea is "better" by killing all the dudes that disagree is, flatly, not enough. It would be beyond stupid for a libertarian nation to invade another because they want them to lower income taxes, but it's within the realm of possibility to invade a nation because they want them to remove tariffs on their exports.

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Spinalcold
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Spinalcold »

notapplicable wrote:The closest wars I can think of that were ideologically motivated were the crusades, but even they were based on claiming territory (the first papal crusade was in response to the expansion of Islam into the Christian Byzantine empire, for example). Their ideological differences were a way of dehumanizing the enemy, and made the wars easy to justify morally... but deep down it was always about land. Especially Jerusalem.
Actually, the Crusades were never really about territory, it was all about giving soldiers something to do besides war among themselves. Also, the church was feeling threatened so they came up with the plan of sponsoring crusades. Wha-la, no more problems of civil war cause no more knights!

Velex

Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Velex »

There needs to be more of this ridicule of war in popular culture. I'm sick of it being glorified in video-games, movies and other propaganda.

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Gangler
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Re: [2012-Mar-3] Why we wage war

Post by Gangler »

The Gundam franchise is pretty good that way a lot of the time. They're really a big fan of the "War sucks for everyone involved" moral, and often it turns out that whatever allegedly noble ideals any side of the conflict may have had were manufactured by blatantly evil people who stood to gain from the war.
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