War

War
"The 2000 Yard Stare", a famous depiction of the trauma of war
Interest of	• Antiwar.com • Erling Bjøl • Yves Boyer • Coalition Information Center • Anthony Cordesman • Martin Edmonds • Lawrence Freedman • James Gow • Chris Hedges • Michael Howard (Historian) • Information Clearing House • Intel Slava • International Institute for Strategic Studies • Richard Iron • John Keegan • Frank Kitson • Shiraz Maher • Thomas Mahnken • Military Reconnaissance Force • Richard Perle • Quincy Institute For Responsible Statecraft • Peter Warren Singer • U.S. Special Operations Command
Subpage(s)	•War/Generations •War/Preparation
War is the organised and large scale use of armed forces, in the modern era, generally directed by national governments. It has gone on since the beginning of recorded history, though the numbers killed have increased with larger populations and the proportion of civilian victims has increased with more efficient weapons.

Official Narrative

Great lengths are gone to to glorify war. Killing, usually proscribed in the strongest terms by most societies, is allowed and even glorified during a war. Patriotism, love of the country of ones birth and a readiness to kill strangers from outside it on demand are equated, particularly for the young male populations. The general narrative is of war as a necessary evil which should be tolerated within certain limits (the "laws of war" such as the Geneva Convention). Specific wars are always buttressed by carefully prepared official narratives particular to local circumstances, personalities and social mores.

Casus Belli

Full article: casus belli

A casus belli, a cause for war, is an essential part of the narrative of the "just war" which suggests that wars are acceptable. Referring to the United States's entry into World War I, US Senator Hiram Johnson is widely reported to have observed that "the first casualty when war comes is truth".

False Flag Attacks

Full article: False Flag Attacks

False Flag Attacks are attacks intended to be blamed on someone other than the perpetrator. Almost all modern wars begin with one or more such attack which the aggressor blames on the country they wish to attack, to provide a pretext to spur on the attacking forces and promote the support of third parties. These are sometimes treated with scepticism from the outset, other times they remain unrevealed for many years.

The Health Of The State

“War is the health of the state” wrote Randolph Bourne in the midst of World War 1. As the nations of Europe went to war in 1914, the governments flourished, patriotism bloomed, class struggle was temporarily stilled, and young men died in their millions on the battlefields - often for a few hundred yards of land gained or lost.

In the United States, not yet in WWI, there was worry about the health of the state. Socialism was growing. The IWW seemed to be everywhere. Class conflict was intense. In the summer of 1916, during a Preparedness Day parade in San Francisco, a bomb exploded, killing nine people; two local radicals, Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, were arrested and would spend twenty years in prison. Shortly after that Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested compulsory military training for all males to avert the danger that "these people of ours shall be divided into classes." Rather: "We must let our young men know that they owe some responsibility to this country."

"A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at each end." - An anonymous British pacifist slogan during World War II.

Perpetual wars

Full articles: War on Terror, War on Drugs

The "War on Terror" and the "War on Drugs" and are two examples of what Professor Peter Dale Scott refers to as "America's self-generating wars". They are not intended to be won, as they provide a great increase in ease of social control. Many of those involved, from the DEA to the marketers of private prisons, from "terror experts" and their "counter-terror" industry which has sprung up, are so busy profiting from these wars that they don't stop to question them. As Global Research notes, the media “experts” "are nothing less than military salesman hyping their stock portfolios."

Predictions

In 1948, George Orwell's dystopian 1984 included the comment that “The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.” In 1974, Mae Brussell predicted that "We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and “predictions” that have already been planned to come true."

Weapons of mass destruction

Atomic War

The 1945 dropping of atomic weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki forever changed the narrative of war, in spite of extensive efforts to hide the longer term consequences of the attacks. No atomic weapons have been dropped on civilian populations since, though tens of thousands have been (and still are being) produced, most notably by the USA, which has more nuclear weapons than all other nations combined.

Depleted Uranium

Full article: Depleted Uranium

Used perhaps since the 1970s, Depleted Uranium is classified as a conventional (i.e. non-nuclear) weapon, but causes radiological pollution with long term health effects similar to nuclear weapons.

Biological Warfare

Biological warfare is prohibited, as is research into new viruses and biological agents. However, this ban is largely ineffective, since research into prevention of such developments is permitted - and amounts to more or less the same thing. In any case, biological weapons research labs are generally highly secure facilities not subject to oversight in any case.

Chemical Warfare

Chemical warfare began in WW1 with the use of toxic gases such as chlorine, and the terrifying injuries quickly lead to a ban on its use. Chemical weapons such as white phosphorus are nevertheless sometimes used, even in urban areas, for example by Israeli forces in the Gaza War or by US forces in Fallujah.

External Links

• Set of radio shows about war

• Propaganda Set of radio shows about war propaganda

 

Examples

Page name	Start	End	Location	Description
1948 Palestine war	1948	1948	Israel Palestine
1980s Afghan war	24 December 1979	15 February 1989	Afghanistan	Another episode of the Soviet Union and US imploding a third world country from inside by fuelling a civil war with weapon smuggling. Afghanistan has yet to recover.
1982 Lebanon War	6 June 1982	June 1985	Lebanon	An Israeli invasion of Lebanon. They militarily occupied some of the country until 2000.
1998 bombing of Iraq	16 December 1998	19 December 1998
2003 Iraq War	2003		Iraq	A war for oil carried out after "Operation Mass Appeal" an MI6-backed propaganda campaign.
2006 Lebanon War	12 July 2006	14 August 2006	Israel Lebanon Golan Heights
2011 Attacks on Libya	15 February 2011	23 October 2011	Libya	"Perhaps one of the most egregious examples of US military aggression and lawlessness in recent memory", carried out under a pretext of "humanitarian intervention".
2014 Ukraine coup/Civil war			Ukraine
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine	24 February 2022		Europe Russia Ukraine Moscow Kiev Black Sea Donbas	In a new episode of Cold War 2.0 Russia forcefully halted NATO expansion by invading Ukraine, with financial support of China. Although the EU and US denounced the "war crimes" as multiple cities were bombed, several countries opted less severe sanctions to keep importing diamonds and luxury goods and gas (and their loaned money) from Russia, seemingly creating a new iron curtain in Eastern Europe.
Afghanistan/2001 Invasion	7 October 2001	30 August 2021	Afghanistan	The war in Afghanistan, instigated within a month of 9/11, supposedly in retaliation, with the claimed justification - for which no evidence has been presented - that the attacks were planned by Ossama bin Laden, and that he was based in Afghanistan.
Algerian War	1 November 1954	19 March 1962	Algeria	The Algerian War of Independence
American Civil War	1861	1865	US North America	The Start of US World dominations, the Civil war saw capitalists fight capitalists in a war over tax, slavery and the question how big and kind of an imperial force the US should become on the North American continent.
American War of Independence	19 April 1775	3 September 1783
Battle
Bosnian War	6 April 1992	4 December 1995	Yugoslavia	Part of the Yugoslavian Wars, this one had it all as well, rape, NATO war crimes and hidden interests
Civil war
Demoralisation				Keeping the populace demoralised is a goal of the Deep State.
Falklands War	2 April 1982	14 June 1982	Falkland Islands Atlantic Ocean	A politically very convenient military conflict championed by Margaret Thatcher.
Gaza War (2008–09)	27 December 2008	18 January 2009	Gaza	Three weeks of assault launched against Gaza by Israel, including the use of white phosphorus, leaving over 1000 people dead and over 5000 injured.
Gulf War	2 August 1990	28 February 1991	Israel Iraq Saudi Arabia Kuwait Persian Gulf	A war used by the US to effectively cow the Saudis into submission and bolster US military domination of the Gulf region.
Iran-Iraq war	22 September 1980	20 August 1988	Iran Iraq Persian Gulf	An war from 1980-1988, that was ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire.
Irish War of Independence	1919	1921
Israeli–Lebanese conflict
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Korean War	25 June 1950	27 July 1953	Sea of Japan Korea Strait South Korea	The war on the Korean peninsular between the China/Soviet-backed forces of the North and the US-backed South between 1951-53
Kosovo War	28 February 1998	11 June 1999	Yugoslavia	An armed conflict in Kosovo
Low-intensity warfare				War on a smaller scale.
Military				Military groups, generally hierarchical in nature, often controlled by nation states, are organisations that specialise in using violence to achieve political ends of their masters.
Nuclear war
Perpetual war
Proxy war
Rhodesian Bush War	July 1964	December 1979	Zimbabwe Southern Africa
Russian Civil War			Russia
Seabed warfare				Sabotage operations underwater
Six Day War	5 June 1967	10 June 1967	Israel Egypt
Spanish civil war	17 July 1936	1 April 1939	Spain
Suez Crisis	29 October 1956	7 November 1956	Gaza Egypt Sinai Peninsula Suez Canal
Toyota War	16 December 1986	11 September 1987
United States invasion of Panama	20 December 1989	31 January 1990		US war of aggression in 1989
Vietnam War	December 1956	30 April 1975	Vietnam Cambodia Laos Thailand	The Vietnam War was a proxy war lead by US that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from December 1956 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. Millions of people were killed, mostly Vietnamese. JFK was assassinated soon after declaring his intent to withdraw US troops. The war helped the CIA to refine its methods of illegal drug trafficking, torture and the like.
WW1	28 July 1914	11 November 1918	World	The "Great War" and the "War to End War". Perhaps 10 million killed.
WW2	1 September 1939	2 September 1945	World	The second world war.
WW3				The hypothetical dystopian successor to World War II which haunts the MAD holders of nuclear weapons...
War in Yemen			Yemen
War of 1812
War of aggression
Winter War	30 November 1939	13 March 1940	Finland
Yom Kippur War	6 October 1973	25 October 1973	Golan Heights Suez Canal Surrounding regions	A Bilderberg approved war in the Middle East to provide probable cause to increased the oil price, allowing US oil companies to cash in big time.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
James Baker	“The economic lifeline of the industrial world runs from the gulf, and we can not permit a dictator such as this to sit astride that economic lifeline," [...] To bring it down to the level of the American citizen, let me say that means jobs. If you want to sum it up in one word, it's 'jobs'. Because an economic recession worldwide, caused by the control by one nation - one dictator if you will- of the West's economic lifeline, will result in the loss of jobs for American citizens.”	James Baker	November 1990
George Carlin	“Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it’s a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other ‘cause God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the land, vengeance is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. “You believe in God?” “No.” Boom. Dead. “You believe in God?” “Yes.” “You believe in my God? “No.” Boom. Dead. “My God has a bigger dick than your God!” Thousands of years. Thousands of years, and all the best wars, too. The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred.”	George Carlin
Journalist	“And I think, in the end, that is the best definition of journalism I have heard; to challenge authority - all authority - especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.”	Robert Fisk
Salmon Levinson	“The real disease of the world is the legality and availability of war. We should have, not as now, laws of war, but laws against war; just as there are no laws of murder or of poisoning, but laws against them.”	Salmon Levinson	August 1917
Love	“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”	MLK
Bernard Montgomery	“The next war on land will be very different from the last one, in that we shall have to fight it in a different way. In reaching a decision on that matter, we must first be clear about certain rules of war. Rule 1, on page I of the book of war, is: "Do not march on Moscow". Various people have tried it, Napoleon and Hitler, and it is no good. That is the first rule. I do not know whether your Lordships will know Rule 2 of war. It is: "Do not go fighting with your land armies in China". It is a vast country, with no clearly defined objectives, and an army fighting there would be engulfed by what is known as the Ming Bing, the people's insurgents.”	Bernard Montgomery	30 May 1962
Philip Mountbatten	“Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We’re in for a major disaster if it isn’t curbed—not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they’ll do. We have no option. If it isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation and war. Can you give me an example? I was in Sri Lanka recently, where a United Nations project set out in the late 1940s to eradicate malaria. It’s an island and it was therefore possible to destroy the mosquito carrying the disease. What people didn’t realize was that malaria was actually controlling the growth of the population. The consequence was that within about 20 years the population doubled. Now they’ve got to find something for all those people to do and some way to feed them.”	Philip Mountbatten	21 December 1981
Aleksey Mozgovoy	“I'd like to appeal to everyone who is fighting—on both sides. People on both sides are fighting against the oligarchy. But somehow we only kill each other, ourselves. So we’re committing a slow suicide of sorts. The “gladiators” need to break out from the “Colosseum”. Instead, a new Colosseum is being organized. We’re burying ourselves. Do we need it all? War for the sake of war? It’s stupid. Does anyone remember why we have rebelled? Isn’t it clear that the ones we rose up against are ruling us now? For both sides. Isn’t it time for us to come to our senses, military gentlemen? Otherwise, there won’t be a single one of us left. And the ones we should be fighting against…they will be living on. Without problems. And everything’s going to be as it was before. So I appeal one more time: start thinking. Your brain should be working, not your grenade launcher. That’s when there will be order. While the guns are working, there will only be deaths.”	Aleksey Mozgovoy	2015
Nice truck event	“Democracy must not be weak, nor simply commemorate. Democracy must say "We will win the war."”	Nicolas Sarkozy	July 2016
Obedience	“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”	Howard Zinn
George Orwell	“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.”	George Orwell	31 December 1943
Michael Parenti	“The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.”	Michael Parenti
James Schlesinger	“Someone once said that war is hell, and peace is heaven. But we know that the opposite is true: War is heaven, and peace is hell.”	James Schlesinger
Leo Tolstoy	“Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for; again fraud; again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men. Men who are separated from each other by thousands of miles, hundreds of thousands of such men (on the one hand–Buddhists, whose law forbids the killing, not only of men, but of animals; on the other hand–Christians, professing the law of brotherhood and love) like wild beasts on land and on sea are seeking out each other, in order to kill, torture, and mutilate each other in the most cruel way. What can this be? Is it a dream or a reality? Something is taking place which should not, cannot be; one longs to believe that it is a dream and to awake from it. But no, it is not a dream, it is a dreadful reality![...] Every one knows the weakness of the arguments in favor of war, such as were brought forward by De Maistre, Moltke, and others, for they are all founded on the sophism that in every human calamity it is possible to find an advantageous element, or else upon the utterly arbitrary assertion that wars have always existed and therefore always must exist, as if the bad actions of men could be justified by the advantages or the usefulness which they realize, or by the consideration that they have been committed during a long period of time. All so-called enlightened men know all this. Then suddenly war begins, and all this is instantly forgotten, and the same men who but yesterday were proving the cruelty, futility, the senselessness of wars now think, speak, and write only about killing as many men as possible, about ruining and destroying the greatest possible amount of the productions of human labor, and about exciting as much as possible the passion of hatred in those peaceful, harmless, industrious men who by their labor feed, clothe, maintain these same pseudo-enlightened men, who compel them to commit those dreadful deeds contrary to their conscience, welfare, or faith.”	Leo Tolstoy	1904
Kurt Vonnegut	“Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”	Kurt Vonnegut
Howard Zinn	“They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is we're disturbing the war.”	Howard Zinn

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:911 JFK and War	essay	18 August 2007	Peter Dale Scott
Document:Casualties of War	article	1 November 2010	Ian Townsend-Gault
Document:Global Warfare. Preparing for World War III	article	1 August 2010	Michel Chossudovsky	US Global military deployments, bases and command structure analysed as integral to an agenda aiming at total world hegemony
Document:Global economic model of war	article	4 September 2013	Denis Rancourt
Document:H.RES.758	legal document	18 November 2014	United States Congress	This bill puts America on a footing for war against Russia. It has received close to zero coverage in the US and other establishment media.
Document:I will wear a poppy for the last time	article	8 November 2013	Harry Smith	A WW2 veteran airs his disillusionment with the way in which the establishment's cynical use of remembrance day to promote the official narrative of all the US/UK/NATO military escapades as being purely altruistically motivated.
Document:Is media just another word for control?	audio transcript	2 January 2014	John Pilger	This is a transcript of John Pilger's contribution to a special edition of BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme, on 2 January 2014, guest-edited by the artist and musician Polly Harvey.
Document:Military measures	report	3 January 2014	Chris Donnelly	A list of suggested military measures to Ukraine in 2014, including "Mine Sevastopol harbour/bay"
Document:Severe humanitarian disasters caused by US aggressive wars against foreign countries	report	11 April 2021	The China Society for Human Rights Studies
Document:The Reasons for the Decline of MOD	reform proposal	6 April 2018	Integrity Initiative	The Civil and Military Services have seen their intellectual capacity dramatically reduced as they have reduced in numbers, and for the past decade have made virtually no contribution to the redesign of the Whitehall structures of power. This now needs to change.
Document:The War Prayer	short story	November 1916	Mark Twain	Mark Twain's scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war. The piece was left unpublished at his death, largely due to pressure from his family, who feared that it would be considered sacrilegious. Twain’s publisher and other friends also discouraged him from publishing it.
Document:Think Piece: Current Russian Strategic Thinking	strategic analysis	19 January 2018	Chris Donnelly	Chris Donnelly gives his view on Current Russian Strategic Thinking
Document:War Martial Law and the Economic Crisis	book extract	1 November 2010	Peter Dale Scott
File:Reality Denial.pdf	book	2012	David Peterson Edward Herman	A critique of Steven Pinker's apologetics for Western Imperial violence in his much acclaimed 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
File:Report from Iron Mountain.pdf	book	1967	Leonard Lewin	A precient analysis of why war is considered necessary by the power-brokers of the western world
File:The Military and Halakhah.pdf	paper	2006	Dov Zakheim
File:Warisaracket.pdf	book	1935	Smedley Butler	The classic insider's denunciation of war. Easily readable in one sitting, it is sadly just as relevant to the situation facing humanity in the early 21st century as it was when first published a few years before the carnage of World War II.

 

An official example

Name	Start	Location	Description
2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/Israeli invasion of Gaza	27 October 2023	Gaza	After October 7, Israel invaded Gaza with widespread international support. The IDF went on a widely reported revenge killing spree. Even by Israel's own account, they killed 19,500 Palestinian civilians after half a year of bombing hospitals, schools and civilian towers, utilising numerous condemned tactics.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.