Why we need wars.

By
Harry Bathwater

It’s a sad fact that we need to have wars. Wars are a necessary part of our existence and I’ll explain why.

Every creature on this planet is subject to the “balance of nature”. There are mechanisms in place that keep their total numbers down to a reasonable level. The world doesn’t get overrun by rabbits for example because there wouldn’t be enough food for them, many would die of disease and other animals would prey upon them and so their numbers would be reduced to a normal level.

Every creature except mankind that is.

We live in strong buildings that shelter us from the weather. We have developed a sophisticated food supply. We have amazing medical techniques that keep us alive long after we would have otherwise died. We have, to a large degree, stepped outside of the balance of nature and so we have had to invent things that would reduce our numbers and primary among them is war.
Imagine ALL the people that have died from anything that could be called a war. Not just in recent times but go all the way back to when cavemen first got angry with each other and mounted raids on other cavemen camps.
There is no way of knowing how many people that number would be but I’ll bet it’s in the Trillions and Trillions!.

Now imagine if there had never been a war and those people had not died but had gone on to have children who also had children and so on.
There would be so many more Trillions of people on this planet that we would be standing shoulder to shoulder in any empty space available.

So wars, just like car crashes, abortion, sky diving accidents etc, are ways that modern mankind has had to keep our population down to a reasonable level.

It’s a terribly sad fact that we die. But we have to in order to make way for the next generation that is coming up behind us on the relentless conveyer belt of life.

So from a global viewpoint we need wars. However, from a local level I still feel that we must do whatever we can to avoid them and we need to critically hold to account those who start wars for unnecessary reasons like the Bush regime has recently.

Britain and America used to be the good guys but we no longer are. Our leaders have dragged us into a vile conflict that we had no business starting.
After the terrorists attacked America on September 11th 2001 we did the right thing by saying to the Taliban in Afghanistan “Hand over those responsible or we are coming in”

We had the moral high ground in that instance George Bush did the correct thing. In fact at that moment I was glad that our president was George Bush and not Al Gore because I thought Bush was doing the right thing and he seemed to be acting like Margaret Thatcher did when the Argentines invaded one of our islands in the South Atlantic in 1980.

I was totally behind him. And it’s not so much that the Taliban didn’t hand over Osama Bin Laden, because we could not have been sure that he was responsible for 9-11. But they didn’t even try to help us.

America was a big friendly guy who has his faults but had been hit in the face, hard for no reason.

The Taliban deserved to get dethroned.

Iraq however is a totally different issue. We had no business at all invading that country. It was very clear to me, an idiot living in Michigan, that Saddam Hussein had no connection to the 9-11 attackers.

We invaded his country because this Bush government is full of nasty, war mongering power lusting people whose only concern is filling their pockets.

The citizens of America and Britain need to rise up and throw these people, not just out, but in jail.

So, as a person who clearly sees why humans need wars I am still very ashamed that my leaders have started one that is immorally wrong.

Oh and by the way.
The war was not started on 9-11. That was a criminal act. Wars are fought against solders of other countries not Terrorists.
This is how you can tell what is a war and what is not.
It’s a war if your opponents are soldiers in uniform.
If they are wearing civilian clothes it’s not a war it’s a police matter.
Those caught wearing regular clothes during the 2nd World War were considered spies and were tried and if convicted that were shot. They were not afforded the treatment that a soldier was given under the Geneva convention because they were not soldiers.

You can’t have a war on terror just as you can’t have a war on drugs.
I’m arguing semantics now because we still need to fight terrorists just like we need to fight drug use but the wording is wrong. These are not wars.