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[athelind]

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[stalbon.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the human concept of 'war' has been lost over time. Or perhaps it's still as strong as ever in our minds. WW II was horrible, bloody, and catastrophic, especially at the end. Vietnam and Korea were our wars, for the most part, so we remember them as bloody and vicious for us. But are we forgetting the millenia (That's right, thousands of years) that came before the 20th century? War was just as prevelent. England and France fought for a century. The civil war was bloodier for us than WW II and WW I combined. Genghis Khan conquered two continents in war, and Napoleon was on the verge of taking the most prosperous cities in Russia before he was stopped. War has come, war has gone. And now we're complaining about a war that we were forced into. A war that has come about because we live in fear of terrorists, because our President thinks it best to rush forth and crush everything that is possibly dangerous to our safety before anything can happen, conclusive evidence be damned.

Why are we upset? Because we're the United States? Because it's the 21st century? Seven hundred years ago, countries went to war over tiny slices of land, strategic holding positions, resources, manpower, technology, relion, broken egos and ticked-off lords. Things are no different today.

Palestinians and Israelis have fought for decades over a strip of land no larger than some of our smallest states. The Balkans are still a mess because everyone hates each other for their culture, their religion, and their ancestors' past travesties. Chechnya and the ex-soviet satellites along the Caspian Sea want to overthrow the Russian government and destroy each other.

And finally we come upon the U.S. Previous aloof and isolationist when wars erupted about the world, we've been forced into these previous encounters. But now that we fear for ourselves, now that we see that the terrorism that has erupted all over the world can strike us, our President decides it is our duty to act as peacekeepers and destroy 'evil' regimes. That the country we are 'at war' with now is a large holder in OPEC is most likely a secondary concern that could end up being the most primary benefit. People are for the war, people are against the war...it's all been done countless times before.

If we're uppity about it because we are supposed to be better, different, because we think our leader has made a stupid decision, or because we think this is the 21st century and things should be better than they were 50 years ago, we're just making the same complaints that many others have made in the past.

Paranoia, ego, pride...it doesn't matter what, it's been the reason before, it'll be the reason again. Live with it.

(As a post-rant note...I don't really know where that went. I just....wanted to speak out, even if it made little sense. I don't express hateful sentiment to either the pro-war people or the anti-war people, but I think that people should know that this isn't a unique event. This is just a repetition of events past, but we think it's different because it involves us. I don't know. Thanks for listening, if you've read all of this.)