L 179 F

We’re just wasting time
While we running blind
Stop the hate
One more chance before we go

The War And Peace unit of Headway set me thinking about the cruelty of wars. It seems that the more intelligent we grow, the fewer controversial issues of international politics can be settled in a peaceful way.

The main aim of a war is actually always the same: conquest. But of course, there have been many wars in man’s history which are now accounted for having other reasons: offended pride of a nation, revenge, religious motives, etc. In my opinion these are just the aggressors’ attempts to obscure the intention to conquer an area and subdue its inhabitants. Bad enough that a whole nation can be made believe that its leaders start a war “for a good cause” - which cause could be “good” enough to kill people for? I guess there isn’t such a reason.

In connection with this I would like to refer to the wars that the whole international public has recently been concerned about: the one in Bosnia and the one in Palestine and Israel. Both of them have been started because of religious quarrels: at least that’s what the leaders said. But I’m not so sure they think about settling these quarrels without having the opportunity to take possession of some areas owned originally by the enemy country. Both wars have got out of international control in recent times, but fortunately the Bosnia war could be stopped by an international collaboration. (Now I wonder how long these crazy people will be able to live with each other in peace.)

Parallel to the development of human culture, intelligence and technics “war methods” also have changed. I mean by “war methods” the way people kill each other. In Ancient Times and in the Middle Ages there was a hand-to-hand fighting with “classic” weapons: swords and bows. This kind of fighting appeared in many films that tried to represent these historical ages. The approach of war in these times is conveyed successfully by Sean Connery who played the last Berber prince that had reigned before Morocco was conquered by the Great Powers in the film titled “The Wind And The Lion”. He said: “Real warriors fight with swords and they are not scared to face each other and to look each other in the eye - they fight like men and not like dogs. “That reflects to the main difference between these two ways of waging war: the “high-developed countries with a natural confidence of surpassing the Arabic and Berber tribes. This confidence isn’t a new phenomenon. The Europeans and North-Americans have always been proud of their advanced technics. It’s funny that they think the modern weapons that they invented and that they kill thousands of people with within a moment by simply pressing a button are all evidences of intelligence and civilization. I think there’s a contradiction here: lots of scientists and cultivated people devote their time and capacity and all their ideas that could be used for better purposes to planning and constructing machines which are used to kill people with. I think this inconsistent with what we usually call sensibility - I’d rather say it’s like rabbits constructing guns or mice inventing mousetraps. Of course the Moroccans could do nothing against the machine guns and all the modern stuff- they had to go under. The difference between the two cultures is obvious, and so are their reasons to start a war: the Great Powers wanted to conquer the territory and exploit land and inhabitants; they acted by right of the stronger and - strange but true - in complete agreement with each other. The intentions of the Moroccans are much more simple and understandable: they wanted to protect their home with all means. But that was not enough; they were alone, and the whole world was against them. The developed countries considered them undercivilized barbarians and they surpassed themselves in diplomatical organization - all because of a war; if they had lost, nothing would have happened to them except a little loss of respect from other countries. The Moroccans knew: if they lose, they will stop existing as a nation - and so it happened. They despised the modern weapons, but they couldn’t resist them.

These modern killing machines are results of human brains sacrificing their capacity and best ideas. But not only that, armies and governments spend sky-high sums of money on these experiments. It’s hard to imagine that there are some people who are more interested in getting richer and richer by having these machines constructed than in helping nations facing starvation and suffering from fights of rival tribes, from drought and different epidemics. But it’s not only money they waste on that- there have been experiments that claimed many lives, too. For me the most shocking example is the “Philadelphia Experiment”. The US Navy tried to make a gun-boat disappear from radar screans in 1943 with the help of some kind of electromagnetic radiation. Now we know that this kind of radiation has a desctructive effect. They didn’t know it then; but they didn’t care, eighter. They didn’t waste their time on experiments for finding out how the rays influence man’s health, therefore the whole crew sustained dreadful secondary injuries: some men died immediately, some got insane, some burst into flames- and then, having seen all this, performers of the experiment said: Oh, what a big discovery! Electromagnetic rays are destructive!- Well, they couldn’t have denied it after all that. I think taking part in this experiment was a shame on Albert Einstein, who planned the theoretical part of the whole thing.

The main difference between a warrior and a war machine could be summed up as follows: a warrior is capable to decide who is the actual “enemy”, the war machine kills indiscriminately- no wonder, its programme doesn’t allow any mercy. Unfortunately, the difference seems to disappear gradually. Fanatism, drill and ideology change many soldiers into “war machines”. The usage of these apparates raises an important question: the question about responsibility. That machines must be handled by someone. What is that someone like? What does he feel while operating the machine gun? Does he feel anything at all? And what about the inventors of these instruments? Do they feel their responsibility? I’ve only heard of one such example, and that was Robert Oppenheimer. After Hiroshima he was filled with remorse and broke with the Americen government. He achieved two results by doing so: he became a persona non grata for American diplomacy and he also became an object of many books, plays and films. But he couldn’t stop things spreading. But who could? I think nobody. At worst everybody.