What would winning look like - a big party down Main Street? Medals for everyone? That guy kissing THAT girl in THAT photo?
We fight wars to make the other person lose.
This isn't Rome v Carthage. People don't occupy territory, because honestly we - Britain - did that. We did that a lot. And the people in those territories didn't much like it. They'd kill us. We'd kill them. Eventually we left. That's what conquering armies do.
Eventually.
Maybe people never get bored of killing, but they get bored of dying. And back home the political will to fight a foreign war drains out like sand in an hourglass, where every grain is a human life. Even the people who waived the flags the most never see any tangible benefit. This isn't Rome v Cathage. There's no triumph. No slaves. No booty. Unless you were a Halliburton exec ($39.5 billion, which is still less than the UK government spent on an ineffectual test and trace program).
So, basically, when the other side can't take any more death, they stop fighting. This isn't Agincourt - its not two sides having a scrap in a field in France with the crown up for grabs. Even people back then knew that if you killed all the civilians there would be no harvest and everyone would die of starvation. But we don't get to kill the king and live happily ever after anymore.
This is not a bug. It is a feature.
Civilian death is baked in to asymmetric warfare. Troops in body bags don't do it anymore. We need children stacked like cordwood. That's the price we pay for war. Inflict so terrible a death toll that the other side stops for a few years while they rebuild their houses and bury their dead kids.
Do you think people who bury dead kids stacked up like cordwood think 'well, I guess we did kind of deserve that. Lets not fight a war again'. Or do you think the next generation dips their hankerchiefs in innocent blood and swears undying eternal revenge?
I know what I'd do. And I'm a fucking pacifist.
This is what war does.
Rome fought three Punic Wars against Carthage. Each time the Carthaginians went home, rebuilt, swore undying vengeance and raised another army. Except the last. You see, Rome sacked Carthage, killed everyone they didn't enslave, killed every farm animal, tore down every building and sowed the fields with salt so nothing could grow.
There wasn't a fourth Punic War.
This is not a bug. It is a feature. We pretend it is not because people are squeamish about all those dead children, but they are not a bug, they are a feature. This is what war does - even the just wars and the holy crusades. Piles of childrens bodies, stacked up like cordwood.
Targeted drone attacks from a continent away. Only the guilty live in a country we don't like. We are all Henry V cradling the body of the Boy. This is what war does, even in the so called age of chivalry. And yet eventually there are enough dead children to sate our appetite for inflicting random death on people one country along, and we go on a break.
Like Ross from Friends.
And then we have articles like this one. Oh really? Civilians who cannot leave, who cannot protect themselves, die in wars. Stacked up like cordwood or victory points. And for a moment we say, this is unfair, this is unjust, this is unconscionable.
War is. It always has been. It's not a bug. It's what war does. What it has always done.
Its a feature.
