'Daddy, What is war?'

In the news today, a Florida congresswoman is quoted as saying, "We need to think of this as a war". In this instance, she is the sponsor of one of several bills heading for passage in the House of Representatives that address child pornography and internet predators.

When I read the short article and saw that quote, I thought of an old Johnny Cash song. The exact title escapes me, but near the beginning of the song, a child asks, 'Daddy, what is war?'. The man explains, 'It's when people fight, and people die'. And the child asks, 'But Daddy, Why?'.

So, what IS war, anyway?

Does it necessarily have to be an armed conflict? Or just any conflict?

Conflict is essential to the human race. It's been with us as long as we've existed, and it will have to be with us as long as we're around. Should we ever somehow overcome conflict, we won't last long after that.

The original conflict: hunger. We've got to eat. To solve that issue, some effort had to be made to acquire food. Not just anything was edible, and a lot of what was edible couldn't be consumed as found, even if it was readily available. And some of it didn't exactly wish to be caught, either! Our ancestors, some of them in the not so distant past, expended a good portion of their day just trying to catch a bite to eat, whether by gathering or hunting.

Conflict number two: battling the elements. Since it's November in Iowa as I'm rattling this out, I can certainly appreciate one aspect of this - keeping warm! Building and maintaining fire was also a major undertaking of those we're descended from. Today we don't worry about it quite as much, but we sure spend enough on heating fuel and warm clothing in the winter up here! Those of us who spend a lot of time outdoors also battle precipitation, rain or snow.

No one really knows when humans began to battle each other, but it's a safe bet that it was early on and presumably it was over resources. Access to food and water, fuel for fires, materials to build with, and other, shall I say, 'animalistic' interests. I'll let you use your imagination on that one, but the animals were fighting one another for that long before we got here. Especially the males of the varioius species!

Let's consider modern armed conflict for a moment. Ultimately, we have wars when diplomacy fails. A bad situation may deteriorate into armed conflict, or it may happen a lot faster than that. Sometimes a war can be anticipated years ahead of time by the very observant. Anyone who followed world events in the mid to late 1930's could've told you it was certain we'd be back in a war someday. A lot of people who knew it didn't want to admit to it, too. Diplomatic relations with the Japanese had been rocky for a long time before December 7, 1941. No one could deny Europe was a mess by 1936 or so. Ignoring it in an official capacity as the US Government appeared to was mere wishful thinking. Behind the scenes, though, there was a lot happening.

World war two was a classic war in the sense that there were declarations of war by the governments involved and the conflicts were eventually ended upon the official surrender of the defeated sides and the signing of a formal treaty ending the war.

A lot has changed since then. Korea wasn't a declared war, but instead an action of the United Nations to deal with an invasion by the communist North of the more or less free South. Just about every other country that could contribute to the situation did. Few people realize today how many of the UN member nations sent soldiers to help stabilize the situation. There were even a fair number of Austrailians in Korea. Unfortunately, when the situation seemed well on its way to being rectified, China got into the picture, and riding in quietly along with was the Soviet Union. Without looking it up, it seems to me this was late 1950 or early 1951. It really was a case of the so-called 'Cold War' with the Soviets getting 'hot'. Viet Nam was also ultimately a proxy war against the Soviet Union. The USSR was enabling the communist North with financial and military aid. On its own the South didn't have the economy to put up a resistance, so we supplied them with what was needed to stand up to the North. We never officially declared war on the north, the reason we were there was to support the South so they didn't get overrun. What did we care? Specifically, we didn't have any real reason to care if South Vietnam was overrun. In the big picture, it didn't matter that it was South Vietnam. It could've been just about any other country in that part of the world in the same situation. The real issue was resisting the Soviet takeover of the rest of the world, which had been going on since the end of World War II. A number of small nations bordering Russia had fallen and had been absorbed into the Soviet Union. If it didn't stop, the world would soon be back to where it was in 1941: Japan had taken over much of Asia and the Pacific and Nazi Germany had overrun most of Europe. Being isolationist in nature, the U.S. didn't want to get involved unless it had to, and we waited too long for the rest of the world to solve its problems. By the time we got involved, we had a real mess on our hands that was hugely expensive and difficult to fix. We learned that we couldn't watch the rest of the world fall apart before stepping in, and we essentially vowed to never let WWII happen again. How could we show the Soviets we wouldn't sit on our hands and watch them take over the rest of the world? Remember, they were a nuclear armed adversary at this point. If we got too aggressive, it could lead to a nuclear holocaust known as WWIII! We put just enough into Viet Nam to keep the Soviets in their place the best we could without provoking anything more serious. The WORST thing we could've done in Southeast Asia was to have a decisive military victory in Viet Nam. The results of that would've likely become very ugly, indeed. But, excepting Afghanistan in 1979, the USSR never tried to invade another nation or exert undue influence like it did in North Vietnam after that.

War also refers to a prolonged campaign. The war on poverty, the war on hunger, the Global War on Terror, and the war on crime are examples of this. I don't foresee poverty, hunger, terror, or crime ever capitulating and signing a treaty. The United States and other nations involved in Afghanistan and Iraq are in the midst, and hopefully toward the end of, an extended military operation. Note they're officially Operation: Enduring Freedom and Operation: Iraqi Freedom. The objectives do not including getting any parties to sign a treaty by which they'll do or not do anything. Largely, this is because there are no actual parties who can sign a treaty. Sure, there's lots of guerilla organizations such as the Taliban, al Qaeda, and numerous others, but no one actually represents all of them in a collective, binding fashion, just as all of the millions of criminals do not have one leader who speaks on behalf of them all.

So what happens when humankind has no more conflict? I doubt it'll ever happen, and I know it won't in any of our lifetimes, but when that day does someday arrive, think of all the elderly people who at 65 or 67 years of age took the attitude 'I'm retired, don't ask me to do a damned thing!'. With nothing to keep them going, most were dead by about age 72 or so...

As people, we need challenge. Survival of the human species is dependent upon having new challenges to overcome and new adversities to adapt to. Just as we as individuals have to have a purpose in life in order to keep getting up in the mornings!

The TiGor