World War Whatever.......still?

[splat@14]

I posted this earlier on the General discussion website and didn't get any feedback or opinions so I thought maybe this venue is better. I ramble through a margarita induced thougyt process that while maybe the path isn't clear, I hope the point is. Anyway, have a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks - Splat!

How many simultaneous conflicts/wars does it take to become a world war? Did WWII really end? Actually, for that matter, did WWI really end (there was only about 10 years of relative peace between the end of action in WWI and the death spiral into WWII using the current terminology for both events)?

I wonder how history will regard the period (assuming there's someone left to give a shit) of the last 100 years and the next 30 or so. If one considers all the "conflicts", "wars", "police actions" (I honestly lack for different means to define "war" with terms that indicate its size or severity) that have occurred and those that are likely to happen, what we see now as two world wars may really be a single event.

No real revelation here. It seems we have never stopped fighting each other somewhere on this globe for the past 100 or so years and the "end" of a war/conflict generally germinates the start of the next mess. Not that we didn't fight each other before that but the technological advances in the last and this century make us much more proficient at the task. Enough so that we can now exterminate ourselves (that'll show `em!)

Allow my rant here: As I think I'm picking up a trend... we do all these "wars" that we first have to name, then we agree on what the goal is or how we achieve victory. We can move the goal, rename it, whatever, it isn't important as long as we get there. Once that is achieved, then we can go to the next one. The end result is that we are still in THE world war. Contestants, governments, armies revolutionaries, resistance fighters, etc, all may change but that doesn't matter. What does matter is the size and span of the conflict across the globe and the human suffering because of it. The wars don't even have to relate, Columbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, etc. They aren't the same combatants but its the same globe.

We are, and have been for about 100 years, in a world war. Numbering them doesn't mean crap.

Check out the two time lines links.

1914 - 1948: http://worldatwar.net/timeline/18-48.html
1948 and on: http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/timeline /

Thanks for listening,
Splat!

[ladjf]

1. I wrote a lengthy response to your post but my post and yours

disappeared. Bummer. I spent lots of time answering you.

[splat@14]

4. I've had that happen too. Frustrating. Too bad, I would have liked to

read your thoughts.

[Ready4Change]

2. The worlds a big place

Someone, somewhere seems to always be fighting over something.

History is pretty much an unending series of wars, with spots of peace breaking out here and there.

[wli]

3. the US has waged continual aggressive low-grade conflicts since WWII

There is little in history that is even remotely analogous. People are still trying to characterize it, with "neocolonialism" and other neologisms to try to capture its essence. What it amounts to is the state as an organized crime syndicate or armed robber or similar carrying out analogous actions of extortion or robbery against other states under the auspices of the IMF and similar. There are other complex aspects that break the analogy. It's a new and unique phenomenon, which is why it's so difficult to grasp.

We can't quite cop out and say it's "like the Roman Empire" or "like Nazi Germany" because it's fundamentally different from both. But it's no less evil and no less oppressive.

In fact, many of the excesses we complain about are actually tactical errors on their part. The offshoring and corporatist economic management, war crime -related atrocities, and so on actually serve to expose them, and even undermine their own agenda. They could have even more insidiously maintained an overall image of integrity and altruism on behalf of the American people while continuing the despotic domination of Third World countries and furthering global economic injustice.

We're waking up to something far worse and far larger than Bush as a grossly incompetent Hitler wannabe gang-sodomizing little boys in front of their mothers and chainsawing little girls into pieces in Iraq. We're discovering that all our "prosperity" and our prominence in geopolitics is founded on state criminality of a degree not witnessed in national leadership since the autogenocide by torture of 16th century Wallachia. We're discovering that this has been continuous across numerous ostensibly differing regimes for at least 50 years, and that we've even directly sponsored and profited from all of the most murderous and horrific regimes in the latter part of the 20th century. And we're discovering that the basis of not only our prominence and prosperity, but our very dignity is all crimes and lies.