Humans all hunt and use the same resources; we can all eat the same
things, use the same things. Between such animals, violent combat is
often seen, such as baby birds casting siblings from the nest, because
all the resources each need they hold in common.
> Why don't we utterly eliminate all ethical rules for wars? A la guerre
> comme a la guerre - Nuking the soldiers,
> napalming the wives, raping the sheeps and eating the children... Wiping
> out major cities and sniping UN \red
> cross \salavation army forces... When wars would cost so much, it would
> be utterly non-profitable to rush into
> one. Wars could be prevented by the most realistic threatens rather than
> arbitrary moral values.
>
> I'm not talking about Mutual Assured Destruction, which only prevented
> 'small' wars of becoming world wars.
> I'm talking about 'small' wars causing inevitable lethal damage, so no
> one would have the guts to fight it.
When wars cost so much /for whom/? Look at Desert Storm. Look at the
utter devestation that occured to the Kuwaiti oil fields and recognize
that most of the civillian destruction occured at the hands of the
retreating troops. The Geneva Conventions and other `moral'
limitations don't really matter much to the eventual cost. Nuking the
soldiers, attacking civilian targets, etc, wouldn't /decrease/ the
cost of war; using the power of such atrocities properly would
actually /decrease/ the cost of the war to your own forces by
demoralizing the enemy. Of course, the enemy would be trying to do
just the same to /you/, so things inevitably escalate, but if you'd
committed in the first place, the use of atrocity combat would simply
fan the fires higher not cause you to count the cost.