Saturday, November 17, 2007

War Stories

There was this feature on The History Channel wherein they juxtaposed ancient warfare to modern ones, and it was chilling to see that, yes, history does repeat itself.
Here are the ones that I remember:
First, suicide bombing. The catastrophe at the World Trade Center has its roots in Japanese history, wherein the Japanese army of World War II, out of a desperate attempt to win the war and save their country's honor (they were quite big on this one), deployed young fighter pilots (17 to 22 years old-- you figure out why) to crash their planes on the American fleet anchored on Japanese waters. They are better known as the Kamikazees.
Next, Bioweaponry, like the Anthrax scare of several years ago. Some centuries before, the Mongols employed the first (known) biological warfare by starting the outbreak of one of the deadliest pandemics in history-- the bubonic plague of Medieval Europe known as the Black Death. The Mongols, unable to penetrate the strong walls of Rome in a war that they were desperate (notice the re-appearance of this term) to win, slung out corpses that were in numerous forms of putrefaction. Their purpose was to terrorize; they ended up killing two-thirds of Europe's population, a terrifying enough ratio, but one which even the perpetrators did not count on producing.
History is fraught with war. And war is, ultimately, the result of man's greed-- even hunger-- for domination. The tales of conquest that fathers tell their sons (why not their daughters, one might wonder) for purposes of inspiration and entertainment, aren't so inspiring, or entertaining, after all. What they are, it seems, are stories of horror that we should rightly be scared of, because history teaches that wars like the ones that have already been waged, are sure to be waged again, as long as man lusts after power. And that is a disease that, sadly, will just not let itself be cured.

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