Why do men still practice war?

Man's claimed respect for life is not borne out by his actions.

You don't need fairy tales or myths to note that Man is often a shortsighted and aggressive creature in a social context.

Avarice. Well, on the part of many of the more powerful nations who have fought on other peoples' soil, anyway. It's either oil, or some other way of making lots of money out of the venture.
And of course, the hig weapons manufacturers make a huge profit supplying the weapons to which-ever countries want them, too.
There can often be other reasons as well, not listed in the seven deadly sins. For example, a war against some foreign foe often does wonders for a less-than-popular government around election time!
(God, I'm getting cynical! )

Either because they really like it or are irresistably drawn to it by their genes.

(Not that the two are mutually exclusive)

Many of us in 2009 believe that mankind is able to continue to engage in the warfare of old and cowardly, but powerful, rulers because the young men and women who fight the wars do not appreciate how terrible it is.

How many movies, novels, and songs have attempted to acquaint us with the real horror of war?

Have any of them worked in reducing our proclivity for warfare?

Is it because none of them have struck just the right chord?

Consider "Saving Private Ryan."

The opening scene of the invasion of Normandy could not be more realistic or horrific unless the audience themselves actually were being killed and maimed.

I saw the movie twice, and both times I and the audience watched the carnage in total silence; with mouths agog.

And yet when the GIs finally fought their way through the storm of bullets and explosives and fell upon their German foes, each time the audience cheered as the Americans slaughtered their surrendering enemies.

I know two young men who enlisted, despite having seen not only that movie, but "Full Metal Jacket," as well. The latter, I thought when I saw it, had to be the most sure-fired means to drive young people away from enlisting.

I made each of my kids watch it, and my oldest enlisted in the Navy.

(Maybe he thought hell only resided with the Marines)

Perhaps you might argue that even if these horribly realistic cautionary tales can't quench the romantic follies of young would-be warriors, the real thing surely will.

Check out current reenlistmates rates.

We are engaged in two wars and yet the reenlistment rate is high.

Those who can't help but express their personal anti-war sentiments in each and every aspect of life will argue that it's because times are tough, or the soldiers and marines have been somehow brainwashed.

Maybe there is some truth to this, but clearly the horrific reality of warfare is not disuading them...enough.

Now, look back to times when warfare was very up close and personal.

For thousands of years warriors, literally, saw the foes they killed or maimed, or who killed and maimed them.

Young men of the time didn't need Steven Spielberg or Dalton Trumble to show them how horrible war is, they, inevitably, experienced it.

And yet warfare continued and continues, and not only so, but the romance of warfare does as well.

Perhaps a time will come when no one will be willing to engage in warfare, but here we are at the apex of human civilization and this isn't, at all, the time.

We like war, and have liked it for hundreds of thousands of years.

I see no reason to believe we will give it up in the near or far future.

Religion and borders

When animals of the same species fight battles, they frequently do it through displays or non-lethal combat (many african tribes like the Zulu used to use rituals to prevent war). But animals don't have ideologies which supersede survival. People on the other hand will give up their lives, or take lives, purely for an idea. Since it is the nature of humanity to live in a world dominated by their views and thoughts rather than simple physical needs, I assume that war will never end completely, although it may be marginalized if the planetary culture can be unified sufficiently to allow for ritual war to replace real war. For example, the USA is unified enough in cultural behavior that there hasn't been an internal war in over a hundred years. Our ritual battles are the legal system.

You could probably trace it back to anger or avarice by the aggressor, but then the other party may counter-attack for self-defense or retaliation. Sometimes people go to war to pre-empt an attack, which can certainly be justified if they are, indeed, pre-empting a future attack.

Humans, like many species, is a territorial animal. Unlike that of the other animals, the human imagination is boundless, what with religion, imagined virtues and needs, long memories of slights - and thus the territories we fight for are as imaginary as real, and as limitless as our thoughts are capable of stretchng.

Thanks for the replies. First off I am not an authority on wars and can only offer my thoughts on the subject. That said .....
Wars start in the mind of one man and that man by necessity is a good man or good men would not follow him into war. Anger, a human emotion, is not self sustainable, angry men get over it and go home. Avarice or greed grows on itself .... the more you acquire, the more brazen you become in your acquisitions.
How would you classify the current war in Afghanistan, a war of anger or avarice?

Why limit it to just those two choices? Wars seem to be a universal expression of human frustrations and the motivations for starting them could be numerous. The simple -- and, I admit, simplistic -- answer is that aggressive behavior is part and parcel of human nature. We are hard-wired to be protective of whatever we consider to be ours and, at the same time, we do tend to be envious and avaricious when it comes to the possessions of others. Wars are generally fought for one of two reasons. One side may want something the other side has. This may be but does not have to be material goods e.g. territory or natural resources or the enemy's women. It can be something as intangible as the enhanced reputation of being the fierces dudes in the neighborhood. The other reason, of course, is that the attacked must defend themselves. If everyone just refused to fight when attacked, there could be no wars. There would still be massacres, but no wars.

Using all my imagination, I cannot really envision a world within anything like the forseeable future where all wars would somehow stop. Nearly 100 years ago the event which we now refer to as World War One was supposed to be "the war to end all wars." How'd that work out, btw?

Except... most wars have two aggressors.

Because they haven't perfected it yet....

Since men have fought in most wars, can one make a connection with testosterone? Can one also think of war as some sort of deviation from the original "hunt"?

But, in today's world, contact sports with teams are popular, in my opinion, since they are sort of non-lethal re-enactments of war.

Like the army ants, humans may be hard-wired for war. The parable that the meek shall inherit the Earth may be based on all the warriors having killed each other?

the claim from women is that if women were in charge we would have no war, it is all the men's fault. I don't buy it. In the two battle arenas that I am familiar with, office politics and love, my experience it that women are every bit as combative as the men are. The styles of battle are different, but the levels of aggression are equal.

However, I believe, women tend to be interested in other women's lives more than men are interested in other men's lives. In other words, I would think there were women that traded recipes with Indian women, in the U.S. frontier, before the males tried to make peace. At least it would make a nice interlude in a Hollywood movie version?

Women can be violent; however, I think it can be controlled better. The proof is possibly shown in which gender has a greater rate of incarceration. I blame the level of testosterone for this.

i think that men tend to act out aggression physically, which is likely to run afoul of laws and thus put them in the justice system, and that women tend to act out emotionally and psychologically which often does not. Men tend to be direct, women tend to be passive aggressive. It may be that women are less aggressive than men, but the prison population stats are not going to answer the question.

I don't think this is true. What about, say, Desert Storm? Iraq invaded Kuwait. Kuwait asked us for help. We drove the invaders out. Who was the aggressor besides Iraq?

Your post sounds as though you're suggesting that in every conflict, both sides are about equally wrong, which is simply foolish.

practice makes perfect...

government existence is based on warfare.

greed

We practice war because we have been biologically programmed to be aggressive and our brains have allowed us to be creative in the application of this programming.

Averice and anger are secondary, or even tertiary, causes.

War is an excellent example of mankind's power to transcend nature's programming.

Every day we seem to find a new example of how nature is more perverse (by our standards) than we ever thought (e.g. Deer killing and eating birds in Scotland, Chimps murdering each other...)

And yet there really is no example in nature of a species being capable of wiping itself out through agression. Since we haven't done it, we may not be capable of it either, but it isn't hard to imagine how we might.

And if we do --- we will be the first!

Men killing one another is way more complex than simply greed or anger. If it were not, there could be no way that war might involve concepts like honor, nobility, self-sacrifice, courage, creativity, and even genius.

The huge mistake pacifists make is believing that war can be stopped merely by explaining its consequences in terms of human meat and lives.

We're not total idiots. We know that war leads to death and destruction, and yet we continue to pursue it.

Clearly, life is not as simple as some would like to believe.