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In Praise of War

yawn - thing's buddy

11:55 / 06.09.03

Can anyone point me in the direction of good articles which talk of the benefits war have brought society etc. The innate link between War and human development blah blah.

looking for pointers concerning the positive things War brings to the table. Kind of:

Without War, there would be no.....

We're The Great Old Ones Now

16:42 / 06.09.03

Moutains of dead people?

We're The Great Old Ones Now

16:44 / 06.09.03

Oh, all right. More seriously, Anthony Giddens writes about the links between Modernity and the Industrialisation of War. Find a Giddens reader, it's a starting point. Then you could look at the economic consequences of war for the victor - in some cases, there's a dividend.

17:01 / 06.09.03

Could you be more specific in the question? Do you mean the action of fighting wars itself or the cultural / institutional framework devoted to the fighting wars?

17:09 / 06.09.03

I can't imagine that anyone sensible enough to be worth reading would have been that scientific about it.

Here are some pointers though. Some are received opinions, some are, as far as I can make out, facts. Forgive me, no references, but I'm being just as lazy and this stuff can be found in history books:

US War of Independence -- Despite continuing arguments over practice, resulting nation did much to promote the ideas of individual freedom and democracy all over the world.
Colt .45 -- regarded as first mass-produced article with interchangeable parts.
Crimean War -- Modern nursing.
US Civil War -- Working on wounds gave us the first plastic surgery and greater understanding of the workings of the human body. Attitudes to slavery reassessed.
World War II -- Equal pay for women, modernism/socialism in Europe and the motor scooter. Fascism, previously quite popular even in the allied countries, is reassessed.
Cold War -- Educational reform in the US, exploration of space.

Plus loads of infrastructure, e.g. roads, mapping, communication systems, computers etc.

Causality's a tricky thing though -- I mean, could we have discovered any such things without war? Probably. And is it always clear what is a good thing? Or a bad thing? Including the war in and of itself? I'm not talking about moral equivalency, rather, something along the lines of what does a pacifist say to someone who was been imprisoned in Auschwitz? What do I, as a westerner completely dependent on oil and gas technology to supply my food, water, clothing, shelter and heat, say to an Iraqi?

Grand Panjandrum of the Pointless

18:19 / 06.09.03

I'm afraid I don't know of any articles on this, but here are some ideas:

Long range aviation- acceleration of its development by WW1. Prior to 1914, planes tended to be small and incapable of carrying heavy loads. Then the military decided heavy bombers would be a good idea.- Brig-Gen Murray Sueter "Build me a bloody paralyser of an aeroplane"
1919- First crossing of the Atlantic by plane in one hop by Alcock and Brown in a Vickers Vimy heavy bomber. Pretty soon afterwards we have the first airmail and passenger services.

Wernher von Braun and the US Space Program, circa 1950-70. The Americans, finding themselves incapable of building rockets that do not blow up on the launch pad or shortly thereafter, hire Uncle Wernher, a charming individual whose previous occupation was building rockets for Hitler using slave labour from the concentration camps. Benefits- everything associated with the space program- particularly satellite communications et.c.

Alan Turing- don't really know about this too much- but his research into computation was almost certainly accelerated by his codebreaking activities at Bletchley Park in WW2.

WW2- US- Education- the GI Bill- education for anyone who served in the army. If you read biographies about the Beats in New York in the forties you'll find stuff about Columbia being crowded out by prospective officers being rushed through college at state expense. I think they had a special 100 day program for them. William Burroughs also got some education funded by the GI Bill while in Mexico City- despite the fact that the US Military refused to accept him in WW2. So clearly it had an effect on society beyond the military.

00:23 / 07.09.03

Is armed struggle and revolution war?

Is use of constitutive force a necessary element of social change?

If both questions receive affirmative answers, then every bit of welfare and every bit of social justice is a positive thing brought about by war. Well, positive for those who would not have had access to these privileges without the war.

"Men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and then it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.

William Morris"

Fave quote.

13:53 / 07.09.03

Ironically the State of Israel would probably not have been established if not for WWII.

06:44 / 08.09.03

It's not ironic, Hitler was a zionist. The Frst Solution was for the Jews to be forcibly deported to Palestine, sounds like zionism to me, and Britain would not let him. Adolf Eichmann himself worked with the German zionists to this goal, and regarded Britain as there enemy, not Germany. And also the Rothschilds indirectly funded the Nazis with this goal in mind.

Benefits of war: The Lucifer Principle by Howard Bloom talks about how the Superorganism evolves itself through war. There have been many arguments for the positive effects of historical colonialism by saying it benefits the descendents by having them absorb the superior qualities of the parent nation. However true this may or may not be, I still don't find it very comforting for the nation being oppressed now by telling them this.

06:55 / 08.09.03

Ignatius J: I like to disagree with you. Firstly, socialism in Europe is not a good thing. And educational reform in the U.S. since the Cold War is not neccessarily good either. Education is a massive disaster in the U.S.

And what do you say to an Iraqi? I'm sorry my country bombed yours(and put Hussein in power before that) when there are a thousand other ways to get the energy we need short of invading another country. Not to mention, where is that cheap gas we've been promised anyhow?(since we cant do anything about the war, as having had already happened, one might as well take advantage of the present situation), I surely don't see it around here.

07:55 / 08.09.03

You might want to look at Philip Bobbit's book "The Shield of Achilles" for an assessement of the future of war and it's effect on society. Do a google for some reviews as I haven't read it - it's just too big, but a skim might throw up some interesting angles. I think 'Laces has read it - if he's around and not experiencing severe culture shock.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:19 / 08.09.03

[Raelianautopsy: I think you should probably start a couple of threads and describe where you're coming from. I'd love to argue with 'Hitler was a Zionist', for example, and we should really talk about your views in Communism and the alternatives - but not here.]

'Shield of Achilles' is a good idea.

I'd suggest that revolution and war are a different but related. Many revolutions lead to civil war, and many wars lead to social changes which can later spark revolution.

One benefit of WWII in the UK: women's emancipation. It was no longer possible to deny that women could do pretty much anything men could do, because they had - see the Home Front, the Land Girls, and so on...

10:18 / 08.09.03

Offtopic:

There's an article by Philip Bobbit here which might give you a flavour of his thinking. I found this article incredibly annoying but he has got an interesting angle.

17:11 / 08.09.03

Ignatius J: I like to disagree with you. Firstly, socialism in Europe is not a good thing. And educational reform in the U.S. since the Cold War is not neccessarily good either. Education is a massive disaster in the U.S.

Well, personally I think it's bad anywhere undiluted but it does provide a useful counterbalance in ex-feudal societies. Just think of it as our own little experiment in self-determination which even the staunchest libertarian should agree is our right to do, and not yours to comment on. By the way, you know all that Marshall Plan money you gave us after WWII? We spent loads of it on setting up a system of socialised medicine. Ha-ha!

Damn right the US education system is a disaster. I had some experience of it too and I can tell you, it was a lot better when you had the Russians to compete with. Maybe Al-Qaeda should have lobbed a Sputnik over the WTC instead of blowing it up -- that would get you crackin' the books!