Because there will always be those to whom violence is the first choice. To end a difference, to use force upon those who will accept no other bargaining point. Read it again: War’s purpose is to settle a conflict. Diplomacy will falter when one side does not bargain in good faith. Restraint, taken too far, is just a suicide pact. When a society does not restrain its members, when a people encourage their children to kill ours, then we have come to a point where we are left with no recourse. We have come to the point where these two world-views can no longer coexist. In our position, they would wipe us out (or try, because in truth extermination of a people is far harder than they realize).
#WAR WAR NEVER CHANGES QUOTE FULL#
They don’t understand our desire to hold back the full strength of our response. As a result, we have emboldened those who think such restraint is a sign of weakness. We have targeted terrorists, we have moderated our responses. We have tried for years to prevent a full-scale war. Their stated intent is to draw the West into returning their attacks, to then mobilize more of their society to support them. They are the products of a radicalized version of their religion, one which promotes violence, victim-hood, and which feeds off of provocations. They are the same people who bombed the USS Cole and the Marine Barracks in Beirut. The people who attacked in Paris are the same people who have attacked in Bengazi, they are the same people who have attacked on. You hurt them until they stop hurting you. When someone attacks you, you don’t make apologies for them, you don’t discuss why they are called to violence or what harms you have done them. Logic and empathy both have their places, but only when it comes to moderating our response. This is not the time for diplomacy, for discussion. This conflict is one based upon economic, societal, and lastly religious reasons. When a societal band declares that they will harm you until you do what they want, they have declared war in the most basic way possible. When a society, or even just a large minority of a society does this, it is war. When individuals do this, it is murder or assault. When the animal parts of their brain tells them that they are right and everyone else is wrong… and the best way to prove that is to do violence on them until they surrender. Yet this can only work until some people feel that their grievances are such that the law and diplomacy will not suffice.
What they did, what they hoped to do, was to contain human nature, to tame it, to pacify the beast with law and diplomacy. Cities were bombed, civilian populations were targeted, and the societies that suffered such casualties rejected war, empirically, in order to prevent its future outbreak. Yet the price of such a war is catastrophically high. The Allies continued the war until the Germans and Japanese forces were defeated, until they surrendered and afterwards their nations were occupied and restructured by the victors. What happens in war, at least modern war, is that the conflict is such that neither side wishes to surrender until defeat is proven, until a side is forced to admit their defeat. The human brain is wired for conflict, to settle issues in the most basic fashion: I win, you lose. Humanity will never truly be without war, because we will always have differences and disagreements.Ĭonflict is wired into us, just as firmly as the tribalism that causes us to identify into groups of “us” and “them.” While diplomacy and discussion are methods to bring peace, they rarely bring any satisfaction or long-term resolution when between social groups. Why does this come up now, of all times? Because in times like these, when terrorists attack innocent people and we, in turn, bomb the places where they have support, it is something to remember. It is a quote that speaks to anyone who has ever served in combat, because we understand it at our souls. I’ve seen it in video games, heard it in speeches, read it in books. Most often, of late, I’ve seen the first sentence used in relation to current events… missing entirely the meaning of the full statement. This quote is one I’ve seen chopped, abused, misused, and misquoted quite a few times. War is like winter, and winter is coming.” So seek peace, but prepare for war, because war, war never changes. “Although a soldier by profession, I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.