Is War Expired?

There are stories about great warriors in those history books with brownish papers with peculiar smell. I like reading them. They are entertaining. They explain how Genghis Khan blows like a wind from east to west and created the largest empire this planet ever had to this day. They explain how King Alexander the Great marches from west to east. Great warriors they are, they said.

But war is a brutal concept. In a war, one group or groups, physically and socially eliminates other group or groups for some reason relevant to that time. Most probably Genghis Khan woke up one day and thought, “What a lovely day today, I feel like been an emperor, so let’s go on a killing spree and become an emperor”. So he did. He killed. And he killed more. Nothing special about it, everyone expected that in a war. At least back then.

Now war is deferent. We don’t expect to get killed in a war. We rather sit here and blog about it. And have a hot tea. We want someone else to engage in that. Professional solders, we call them. I don’t know exactly when this change started. May be it started with first Geneva Convention, or may be after WWII. But one thing I can say for sure, that change came from west. They come up with concepts like human rights, pow and most of all, they created this group call “civilians”, that we have not heard of before. Civilians turn out to be rather special bunch of people. They do not carry weapons nor wear uniform. But they fund the war and everything about it. War cannot exist without support of civilians. They provide solders and they provide moral support. But at the same time, they have special rights. Such as not be harmed by any means. That makes the war very hard game to end.

I think by the time WWII ended, west seen enough of war. They experienced the distraction they have done to others and to themselves. May be that cause them to tighten up rules of war. Or one can say its western philosophy or industrial development. But because of one reason or another, west created this set of rules and, I must say, it worked pretty well for them. West didn’t kill each after they tie themselves up with those set of rules, because it is not practically possible to start a war and win it too, under this set of rules. It is like trying to butcher an animal without drawing any blood. Almost impossible to do.

Now if one do not follow this set of rule and engage in a war old fashion way, like how Genghis Khan and King Alexander the Great did as worriers, we call them Terrorists, simply because they terrorize people such as hotel guests, school children or train passengers, commonly known as civilians. Genghis Khan did not had any super powers like one of those comic book heroes when he become an ampere, all he had was the reputation he build up as a terrifying person by terrorizing everywhere he go, villages, temples and farmlands. He is a terrorist.

Now the problem we have today is, only one group gets to play with old set of rule, and terrorize civilians, bomb hotels and school buses, forcing them to surrender fast, while other side forced to respect civilians and allowing them to continually fund the war. Now this make it harder, when the “terrorists” even do not follow the simple rule of wearing a uniform or been a professional solder, but rather been an ice cream vender in day time and suicide bomber at night. Now as we all know, this make very hard to defeat terrorists. We see that in Afghanistan, we see that in Iraq, we see that in India and even we saw that in Sri Lanka. Now Sri Lankan government is wining, partly because LTTE also evaluate (somewhat) as a conventional army that have to respect set of modern rules. (And that is why Ranil’s peace process is also an important event of wining this war). Sri Lankan army won the war against JVP whitch is not conventional army, because army got to terrorize people at the same time, more dramatically than JVP ever did.

My point is, terrorism is an important part of warfare. One might say war is terrorism altogether. How modern way of fighting of tying ourselves with set of rules, keep up with old ways of fighting or terrorism as we call it now, where no rules? It is impossible. That makes me thinks; modern way of war is expired. Either we have to give up our set of rules, and start behaving like Israel (which I hope not), or after some terrifying event, South Asians who are the breeders of terrorists right now, also somehow understand the impotency of respecting civilians. If either one did not happen, we have to find some alternative ways to engage in our conflicts, like King Ashoka did. In such an occasion, I suggest food eating contests as an alternative.