This is the sort of logic insane people use. If kids are fighting on the playground you don’t throw up your hands, say it’s just human nature, and wait to see who wins. No, the teacher goes out there and tells them that this behavior isn’t acceptable and teaches them how to get along. You’re trying to give the U.S. license to use force whenever necessary which is just propogating war. And it looks like it’s working. The Iraqis haven’t learned to grab onto freedom. They’ve learned exactly what we’ve taught them – if something isn’t going your way blow the other guy up. That’s going on every single day in Iraq. Some peace.

I think this statement is somewhat misguided. I have noticed that in this thread WWII is cited numerous times as the end all example of how ‘unconditional surrender’ brings peace. Comparing WWII to today’s conflicts is a mistake. First off, allied troops during WWII spent very little time inside Germany during the conflict. There were bombings raids for sure, but actual ground troops weren’t there for very long. My point being, there wasn’t massive German or Japanese resentment towards the US due to a minimal invasion periods. Iraq is an example of an invasion that has lasted far longer than any invasion of Germany. Secondly, the peace spoken of after WWII isn’t a direct result of war but rather excellent foreign policy after the war i.e. reconstruction. Sanctions placed on Germany and Japan limited the military build-up post WWII and economical policies allowed a free market and further industrialization of both nations. So those who have cried, talking and sanctions don’t bring about allies or peace missed the ramifications of WWII. War was only used to arrive at those peace talks.

Which brings us to today’s conflicts. News posts and articles on Omninerd have previously addressed the ramifications of state-less opponents such as Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda. Guerilla warfare and suburban insurgencies make victory that much more difficult and raise the death toll of innocent civilians. The longer an invading force is in a country involved in armed conflict, the greater the animosity and resentment will grow towards them. This in turn makes lasting peace that much more hard. The problem with today’s conflicts is that they have been fought extremely poorly. Let’s call it the Schwarzkopf effect. The Gulf War gave many the impression that technology was the answer and that the air force was all you needed to win a war. Bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb, bomb, ba-bomb. Well, that worked great against an army, but isn’t as effective when dealing with an insurgency or group like Hezbollah. All it does is make a big mess and kill a lot of civilians with a lesser number of enemy combatants. Israel’s reaction to Hezbollah is an excellent example of how you can get it wrong. Hezbollah is the clear winner of the conflict, no matter how you slice it. They were state-less before, are state-less now, but have even more support amongst other Arab nations. They are even leading the way in reconstruction, and that will bode well for them. Had Israel merely stormed the borders and sought a quicker resolution, perhaps things would be different.

I’m sure my point got lost somewhere along the way, but while wars may be inevitable, it is not to say that they are the cause for peace or that they must be had. Many wars are merely the result of decades of poor foreign policy. As cultures become more progressive and obtain more contact with outside cultures, things will begin to change. One of the best ways to do that is to seek ways to integrate countries by using social-economic policies to influence foreign governments and peoples. I’m not talking about carrots and sticks, but meaningful investiment in the economies of other nations. The real question of this thread should be… does RECONSTRUCTION of a nation only have to be the product of a war? I don’t think so. If the US had been perhaps more even handed in distributing aid to middle eastern countries back in the 60’s and 70’s and 80’s perhaps we would see less hostility towards us. Had we sought to not merely exploit national resources from these countries in decades past, but rather invested more in the reconstruction of these countries maybe we would have both peace and cheaper gas prices. And that wouldn’t have involved any wars. It seems to me though, foreign policy is mostly driven by what will benifit our country or economy immediately, in the now, rather than what will benefit us in the decades to come. It’s greed at it’s worst, a greed that brings short sightedness. The situation is similar when dealing with environmental issues as well. One should argue what wars could have been avoided through better policies.