Champthrax said:
As per the title, do you think that as we have advanced technologically, the honour and martial skill aspects of warfare have been greatly diminished?
I understand your sentiment, but I think there are some fundamental problems it presents.
1. Mainly, there's the idea that "honor" has ever
really been the point. Watch kids play, and watch them make up games. Each child will tend to make up rules that make the game more favorable to themselves. Well, that's how the archaic "rules" of war got decided. All that "honorable" meant was that the opponent was being forced to face
our strengths.
So, for instance, a lot of war was built around favoring whichever side had more people. Line up and shoot, line up and shoot, whoever runs out of people first loses. Then some folks figured out, "Hey, if we change things a bit, we can win even though we're smaller." Guerilla tactics were decried as "dishonorable" by the folks that favored face-to-face combat... because face-to-face combat was where
they themselves were strong.
2. There's also the idea that simply being skilled at warfare makes on honorable. I can be extremely excellent at killing people, but also a complete bastard. I could be the most honorable person on the planet, but be awful in a fight. "Honorable" combat tends to favor whoever's
biggest, not whoever's more honorable or right. War would be won by whoever is
better at war, and that's not necessarily what you want.
3. Is the purpose of war to convince the other side that you're right? To show them how honorable you are? Or is the purpose of war to
remove the opposition? Not necessarily exterminate them, no, but at least make the fight too expensive for them to continue. You'll never
convince the other side to see it your way. If you could, there wouldn't be a war between the two of you. You can just hope to cripple their ability to oppose or destroy you. If that's the case, what is there to be gained by handicapping yourself to appear "honorable?"
4. A lot of ideas of up-close combat are highly romanticized. When someone was facing death at another man's sword, do you think he hesitated to throw dirt in that man's face? Do we believe that fights looked like the carefully-choreographed sequences we see in movies? You want to see a more realistic fight, watch a fencing match: messy, and over in
seconds. And that's two somewhat-equally-matched experts in controlled conditions.
Champthrax said:
You may be the best marksman in the world, but it won't save you if you step on a landmine or a plane drops a bomb on you. All your years of training were meaningless, and you will never even realize you are dead. The only equivalent to this, in ancient warfare might be a catapult shot landing on you, but if you were paying attention even this can be anticipated.
There's also this problem: War isn't about one warrior proving himself against another. War is about whether or not your
side wins. As a combatant, you're just a part of that machine, like one bullet in a gun. Some poorly-made bullets hit, some well-made bullets miss.
What did you want to happen with this "best marksman in the world?" Should he be killed by another marksman who was better? Is that the only honorable death for him? (Or switch that for "swordsman," if you like) If he's the best in the world, and I want to kill him, why on earth would I face him on his own terms? Instead, I'll steer him away from his strengths and toward mine.