How does your country perceive war?

[3stan]

So Anzac Day (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anzac_Day) is here, and naturally it's got me thinking about war - in particular how different countries view war.

When I was a kid, we did a project on Gallipoli in school every April. We watched interviews with people who survived the campaign, read books on it from both the perspective of the common soldier and a broader military standpoint, visited memorials and museums, and were often given projects where we had to try and imagine life from the view of a common soldier (one that stands out is pretending to be a soldier writing a letter home). There were a lot of recurring themes throughout the stories - day-to-day life in the trenches given story precedence over the actual fighting, the youth and naivete of the soldiers (who would then die horribly), and generally acts of helping mates out being portrayed more heroically than actual military prowess (see this guy for basically the big example. tl;dr he deserted his post and spent three weeks bringing in wounded before getting shot) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson_and_his_donkey).

All this built up a perception of the campaign (and, by extension, war as a whole) as a bloody, grim, pointless waste of life.

What I find both interesting and disturbing (and I admit, this is a bit of a cheap shot and as someone who has never been to the US I am very probably misreading the situation) is how this contrasts with USA culture. Whenever I hear an American talk about someone awesome from WWI or WWII, they're talking about guys who managed to kill a thousand Nazis with a bow and arrow or something. So much American pop culture glorifies war and violence that it's become trite to even point this out.

My questions are these: How were you taught war in school? How do you think it influenced your view on war as an adult? And how do you think it influenced your nation as a whole?

[Flarecobra]

Having experanced it firsthand, I can see it as an nessessary evil sometimes, and an unfortunate facet of humanity.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

How is it a "necessary evil" except as a means to ensure our paymasters pit us against one another for their own financial gain.

[Geminex]

Well, I'm german, so as you can imagine, we take a rather dim view of the whole affair! Our constitution limits us pretty strongly in what we can and can't do with our military, and we recently abolished conscription, which is nice.

And the glorification of the allies' role in WWII really, really bugs me! I'd go on to rant about this, but I'm afraid I'll offend people, so I'll just shush. Suffice to say that nobody should associate with what we were back then.

[Flarecobra]

Because it feels like it's just something people always consider in dealing with other nations.

Might just be a poor choise of words on my part maybe.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'll do it. The allied war effort was funded by massive exploitation of Africa, by mass crackdowns in colonies- particularly in India, by forced conscription, by financial and political double dealing to extend the war so as to profit more from it, and a vast demonisation of minorities and alternative thinking. We're still recovering from the immense backlash of World War 2 in that it empowered a particularly narrow range of philosophies and values as right and correct.

Also Winston Churchill enlisted the Daleks on his side.

[shiney]

My country views War as an instrument in which to Support Our Troops via yellow car ribbons, and otherwise as a minor inconvenience which we can just put on a credit card. We aren't asked to contribute, or sacrifice, or otherwise actually support war, and as such it has little impact on the average american short of raising the price of everything. So essentially my country doesn't care one way or the other about war, we offer platitudes to end war and suchlike but in reality nobody gives a single damn how many wars we are actually in because they don't have to actually pay for it. If they did it would likely be a much different story.

[Ecks]

I bet if there were a draft everybody would sober the fuck up right quick. Not that I'm advocating for a draft or anything.

[Magus]

I bet if there were a draft everybody would sober the fuck up right quick. Not that I'm advocating for a draft or anything.

My father (in one of his zany ideas) advocates bringing back the draft (in an actual automatic way as in the past, not in the current "well we might use it maybe if like China invaded us") so that it won't be only poor people fighting these wars they insist on declaring every few years (of course, most rich people who wanted to probably got out of Vietnam, but supposedly not alll). Presumably, at least some rich people would get drafted, which would increase anti-war sympathy at home amongst the high and mighty who can actually affect such things.

On the other hand, forcing people to go to war is wrong, imo, so there's that.

I'll do it. The allied war effort was funded by massive exploitation of Africa, by mass crackdowns in colonies- particularly in India, by forced conscription, by financial and political double dealing to extend the war so as to profit more from it, and a vast demonisation of minorities and alternative thinking. We're still recovering from the immense backlash of World War 2 in that it empowered a particularly narrow range of philosophies and values as right and correct.

This is precisely where the "necessary evil" argument comes in though, because on the other hand, NAZIS.

[Bard The 5th LW]

It doesn't really take a whole lot to be better than a nazi though.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

This is precisely where the "necessary evil" argument comes in though, because on the other hand, NAZIS.

Thanks for summing up the exact view I'm railing against.

[BitVyper]

Basically the allies were only better in that they performed their more heinous evils in countries that no one cared about.

Or perpetrated them against people who weren't as white.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

And they were worse in that allied victory fucked us up and we're still recovering! It's a sad state of affairs when you are retroactively rooting for the nazis

[shiney]

I don't know if forced subjugation and genocide is preferable in this instance, Smarms. The Allied victory was jacked up, but I think the world would be a different place if based on German rule of then, instead of how Germany has evolved to its present-day state. It would be nice if the Allies hadn't basically raked Africa et al over the coals, but it did seem likely that Hitler and his would have done the same based on their treatment of the citizens of, oh, every other country.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The Nazi regime was incredibly unstable- it was being held together by the war and even then just barely. It would have collapsed pretty much instantely after the war (and probably before final victory)- this would have lead to global disintergration of power structures and worldwide revolution- most likely led by the extensive socialist and anarchist groups who were collected in the 40s and obliterated by the war.
Instead what we got was an entrenchment of the global elite and their systems, a belief that these systems were correct and just and good and an immense backlash against radical groups which we still haven't recovered from.
The Allied victory entrenched our overlords who we are rallying against today.
A nazi victory would have destroyed these overlords then destroyed themselves because the Nazi regime was held together by chewing gum and glue. Nazi victory wouldn't mean world speaks german, hitler on our money.

[Osterbaum]

But it would mean no Captain America!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I don't like Captain America! We can replace him in the Avengers with Doctor Strange. Vast improvement.


E: They may have been Nazis but at least they weren't fucking Mensheviks.

[Magus]

I fail to see why the German empire, if victorious, would have collapsed into a bunch of smaller socialist/anarchist regimes as opposed to a bunch of smaller fascist regimes, though. I mean, shit, FDR almost declared martial rule in the '30s (well, maybe that's not so surprising...). He literally had two versions of a speech, one where he would suspend democracy and the one he actually delivered.

[Osterbaum]

So yeah, I guess my nation views war as something unpleasant but possibly necessary to DEFEND OUR HOMELAND. No one here would ever go starting any wars, but most would defend the country if attacked. Conscription and all, it does shape society to a degree.

[Amake]

Sweden sees war as the stuff of history books and the sign of an immature country. I see war as people killing each other for lies. Not just that our leaders tell us lies to get us to fight each other, though that's certainly a problem. And not just that people kill each other because what they think is true doesn't agree with that they think the other guy thinks is true, though that's certainly sad.

But at the heart there's this fundamentally broken world, made up of conflicting images from contrary viewpoints. I figured this out in Russia in 1996, where we were told on national television that an American missile had hit a nuclear plant and obliterated large parts of I think it was Kosovo.

I predicted western media wouldn't tell the same story, which you may have noticed it didn't. Yes, this bit of maybe-accidental-maybe-not nuclear warfare probably didn't happen, but the point is that based on someone's political allegiances, a lot of people thought that it happened, and a lot of people thought it didn't. Wars enhance these kind of discrepancies to the extreme, and people die and people kill for the sake of these falsehoods. These lies.

This offends me. It's of course my Autism-related dysfunctions speaking, but I can't stand when someone doesn't know things that someone else knows. I literally cannot function if I'm confronted with such a thing as conflicting knowledge in people. It takes creative ignorance on my part to deal with it unless I can manage some reconciliatory information exchange, as it were.

PS. Here's two tips:
1. If you're writing a lengthy post, make sure to copy it before posting in case something happens.
2. In case something does happen and the page doesn't load, don't panic and do something silly like copying the url in your efforts to get it to load before you've made sure to paste your post somewhere.

[Fifthfiend]

on Fox News

[shiney]

on Fox News

This is exactly what I said only in three words.

[Satan's Onion]

on Fox News

In at least some cases, it's more "on Fox News, and with their hand in their underwear".

[Azisien]

with their hand in their underwear".

That's certainly my preferred method of perceiving the universe.

[Fifthfiend]

It's where mine is right now!

[CABAL49]

Coming from the American South, I always found it ironic that the biggest "Support our Troops\AMERIKUH" people also flew the Confederate flag and came from "Rebel Country."

[Osterbaum]

They just like war. At least when it's fought far away and they can watch it on TV.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Do you know who really likes war? Finland.

[Osterbaum]

Nah man, we just like the sounds the guns make.

pew pew ratatatata pew pow

[Kim]

How does your country view war?

Incorrectly