On the TV, there was a Vietnam documentary to pass by. And then there was a snippet of "Apocalypse Now," which I count as perhaps the best war movie ever. Why is it the best? Because, in my mind, it is closest to a real, live nightmare and what is war if not a nightmare?
The movie may be a best in my lexicon, but watching the snippet, I knew I could no longer watch it. First, I have seen it so many times. But second, deliberately immersing myself in a nightmare is beyond me now. It's like watching a horror movie: Why should I heap a celluloid horror on top of the horrors that are plainly in the making even as I type?
I have turned into a wuss ... to such a degree that I don't mind being called a "wuss" any longer. Anyone who wants to stop war -- which history proves very few do -- has an option: "If you want to stop praising veterans for their heroism and their 'greatest sacrifice,' then stop making them." In extolling the dead, the living excuse the fact that they did the sacrificing of young men and women whose deaths are then portrayed as their own choice and determination.
I'm a wuss and I dislike lies.
Perhaps the dead will forgive me for seeking out some light comedy or frothy love story or sassy cartoon ... creations they might well have lived to create.
At it's height, the Dutch East India Company employed 10,000 troops. The British East India Company took it up to 26,000. War's are usually about territory, markets, resources, etc. I think the defining quality of an empire is a willingness to use force to acquire and protect such things.
ReplyDeleteSeneca's accounting of the Pax Romana only extends said peace to the wealthier classes of Rome. It ignored the efforts to squash middle eastern and germanic insurgencies among others. So yeah, whatever they're telling you, there's pretty much a war going on always somewhere. Some 29 countries are involved in war at this moment. (http://www.warsintheworld.com/?page=static1258254223)
And somehow i doubt the working class ever jumped up and said "let's go to war". They had their daily efforts to pay rent and feed families. Somebody else came along and told them to line up and at whom to shoot. I'd lay that task at the door of somebody with the power and wealth to force them to participate, and an interest in their doing so.