Poll: Has war changed?

[Kortney]

war has always been about murdering those who dont agree with you. the only way it has changed is that it has become more vile, more devastating, and more merciless

...Evidence of this?

I completely disagree. War has more mercy now than it used to thanks to international protocols, a world wide media and globalisation. In the past an invading force would rape the women, slaughter the boys, burn houses down and kill everyone or enslave them. Public image matters a lot now. Think of all the "war crimes" you are hearing about in Iraq and Afghanistan now. They are nothing compared to the disgusting things armies committed in the past. Also, in the past if a soldier even slightly disobeyed orders he would be strung up and left to die (especially true in Ancient Rome's time in power).

I agree it has become more devastating - mostly do to the sheer scope of it all and the technology but saying it is "more vile" and "more merciless" is being a little ignorant to history. Just my two cents.

 

[00slash00]

war has always been about murdering those who dont agree with you. the only way it has changed is that it has become more vile, more devastating, and more merciless

...Evidence of this?

I completely disagree. War has more mercy now than it used to thanks to international protocols, a world wide media and globalisation. In the past an invading force would rape the women, slaughter the boys, burn houses down and kill everyone or enslave them. Public image matters a lot now. Think of all the "war crimes" you are hearing about in Iraq and Afghanistan now. They are nothing compared to the disgusting things armies committed in the past. Also, in the past if a soldier even slightly disobeyed orders he would be strung up and left to die (especially true in Ancient Rome's time in power).

I agree it has become more devastating - mostly do to the sheer scope of it all and the technology but saying it is "more vile" and "more merciless" is being a little ignorant to history. Just my two cents.

well that all kind of varied from nation to nation

 

[maddawg IAJI]

War has only really changed technologically. New technology gave birth to new Tactics which in turn gave birth to new ways of fighting, but in the end, the goal remains the same. To crush the enemy. No matter what happen in the future, war will forever like this.

 

[The_Amazing_G]

People do not fight each other;
governments fight each other.
War has not changed.
Read "the memory of earth" by Orson Scott Card. It's a great book that goes straight to the heart of this exact question.

Bullshit. Governments may point at who to shoot, but none of todays politicians would last a second on the battlefield.

Go get a dictionary, and look up the word 'government'. I'll wait.
But still, this is my mistake. I did a bad job of phrasing what I said. I'll make an edit.

 

[FalloutJack]

You're gonna take Snake's word on war? Come on...

 

[Reshkar]

War. War never changes.

Damn, ninja'd.

War. War has changed.

Exactly what I was thinking when I saw the title..

 

[Regular Guy]

War? War never changes. As long as there are leaders who are willing to use the common man to advance their aims, as long as people shoot at people with whom they have no quarrel simply because their leaders forced them to via a draft or convinced them to via misguided nationalism or religion, as long as man walks the earth---and indeed, perhaps even after a massive global nuclear exchange---man will fight over the most trivial of things.

The weapons have changed throughout the ages. Sticks and stones gave way to swords and arrows gave way to bullets and the technology for man to kill man has advanced along with civilization itself. But all this is merely a question of method, not of ultimate cause.

Because indeed man may someday succeed in destroying the world, but war? War never changes.

/thread

Seriously, stop posting now.

 

[CarpathianMuffin]

The point of war's still the same. Kill the other side before they kill you, usually under the facade of self defense. But it's being done in a different way.

 

[Jfswift]

"The more things change, the more they stay the same" - Snake Plisskin

I think this statement sums it up neatly. New guns, new nations, same wars. I don't think the motivations behind war have changed all that much to be honest.

or to paraphrase Fallout..

 

[Nomanslander]

Yes, war has changed a lot, people on the other hand, barely any...=/

 

[Kryzantine]

War has changed and it hasn't. Of course, war results in the deaths of people, some called soldiers and some called civilians. That will never change.

But war has changed in the last 100 years, more than just technology. We go to war for different reasons now. America invented the idea of going to war and supported revolution to protect overseas business interests. Hell, we made Panama an independent state so we could build a canal there; the Panamanians were less supportive of a revolution than we were. We went to war with Columbia over that (granted, I don't believe anyone actually got killed). You got independence movements. You got trade interests. We're at a point where land is becoming less relevant.

Communication hasn't just changed the tools of war, it has changed the point of war. Instead of land grabbing and conquering other states to support the main one financially, war is now about guarding trade routes and grabbing resources instead of the land they're on. In the past, if China wanted a mine in Mongolia, they would have to conquer the land that the mine is on. Now, they don't have to own the land: they can simply build a railroad to the mine and split the profits with Mongolia.

 

[ShatterPalm]

The reasons for war have and haven't changed, same thing with the way wars are fought. It's still politics and land, but there are other factors I can't quite place. The weapons have changed quite a bit too.

However, war has changed because it's no longer as honerable or masculin as it used to be. I mean, --and many people are going to disagree with me on this-- war nowadays is just standing on the opposite side of a large space of ground from another guy, both of you have guns, and both a trying to shoot the other. People who go into war aren't nearly as brave as they used to. Back in the old days, and I mean the REALLY old days, people had to actually go up to you and bassically say "I'm going to stab you through the stomach" or "I will cut your head off" before actually doing so. Even archers were liable to get their legs cut off at the hip. Soldiers today are cowards becuase you have to make sure your enemy can't see you before striking to make sure everything goes well. It was never really like that in the middle ages. To fight a war back then, you took a few hundred people, gave them spears, organized them into lines, and said "Kill everything that is not wearing the same kind of armor as the people you see standing around you."

Take, for example, Japan. In mideval Japan, generals of warring armies sent each other gifts, such as poems or salt, so to honor each otehr before battle. Some of the time, battle would end the moment the gifts were delivered, and both generals would all off their troops.

Disagree with me all you like, war is endlessly more cowardly then it used to be.

 

[SimuLord]

War? War never changes. As long as there are leaders who are willing to use the common man to advance their aims, as long as people shoot at people with whom they have no quarrel simply because their leaders forced them to via a draft or convinced them to via misguided nationalism or religion, as long as man walks the earth---and indeed, perhaps even after a massive global nuclear exchange---man will fight over the most trivial of things.

The weapons have changed throughout the ages. Sticks and stones gave way to swords and arrows gave way to bullets and the technology for man to kill man has advanced along with civilization itself. But all this is merely a question of method, not of ultimate cause.

Because indeed man may someday succeed in destroying the world, but war? War never changes.

/thread

Seriously, stop posting now.

You could write anything about conflict, bookend it with "war? War never changes", imagine Ron Perlman reading it, and it would be epic.

 

[Wereduck]

The reasons for war have and haven't changed, same thing with the way wars are fought. It's still politics and land, but there are other factors I can't quite place. The weapons have changed quite a bit too.

However, war has changed because it's no longer as honerable or masculin as it used to be. I mean, --and many people are going to disagree with me on this-- war nowadays is just standing on the opposite side of a large space of ground from another guy, both of you have guns, and both a trying to shoot the other. People who go into war aren't nearly as brave as they used to. Back in the old days, and I mean the REALLY old days, people had to actually go up to you and bassically say "I'm going to stab you through the stomach" or "I will cut your head off" before actually doing so. Even archers were liable to get their legs cut off at the hip. Soldiers today are cowards becuase you have to make sure your enemy can't see you before striking to make sure everything goes well. It was never really like that in the middle ages. To fight a war back then, you took a few hundred people, gave them spears, organized them into lines, and said "Kill everything that is not wearing the same kind of armor as the people you see standing around you."

Take, for example, Japan. In mideval Japan, generals of warring armies sent each other gifts, such as poems or salt, so to honor each otehr before battle. Some of the time, battle would end the moment the gifts were delivered, and both generals would all off their troops.

Disagree with me all you like, war is endlessly more cowardly then it used to be.

That's not cowardice, it's learning. Armies don't have massed engagements today the way they used to because doing so guarantees they'll get slaughtered by machine guns or artillery - if you want to get all your soldiers killed it's simpler to just poison their food. Also, it could be argued that soldiers in the middle ages had an easier time of it because they generally had some advance warning before someone tried to kill them. In the 20th century it's technologically possible to destroy anything as long as you know where it is. Likewise, if your enemy knows that you're there you can be killed with little or no opportunity to defend yourself, ergo the military importance of hiding and the social importance of PTSD.

OT - Yes & no. Weapons and armor are changed and improved, tactics and strategies change to exploit their strengths and weaknesses so certainly, warfare today is not what it was 1000 or 100 years ago. On the other hand, the reasons for war and the combatants' basic motivations are unchanging.

 

[Frotality]

we wage war with different tools, but other than that, its still fought for the same, primitive, idiotic reasoning; "i want something you have, and as i have absolutely no concept of far-sightedness, i will instead chose the immediately gratifying solution. my massively narrow-minded perspective has no idea that that will inevitably bite me in the ass, or that i will make the same stupid decision again and again repeating an endless cycle of smacking each other upside the head to steal what we have, until we're both suffered enough brain damage to destroy ourselves and let some mentally un-bludgeoned chaps take over where we left off."

god bless america.

 

[toastmaster2k8]

Im pretty sure Swords and self aware missiles are 2, TOTALLY different kinds of warfare tactics.