There's been a major European war, on average, every 20-30 years since
about 1600, which is pretty bad, when you realize some of them lasted 30
years, (if you think WWI was bad, and it was, you should look at the
statistics on the thirty years war), and I'm not letting the rest of the
world off the hook either, there were some fairly awful conflicts
between South American Countries, (for fun you could look up the War of
the Triple Alliance 1864-1870, after reading about it you can only ask
yourself /What/ /the/ /hell/ /were/ /they/ /thinking?/ ), and the the
Asians seemed to enjoy hacking and blowing each other to bits too.
Africans didn't much own their own countries, during the historical
period, but the Zulu's were hell on their neighbors. The world has been
a rather bloody place.
But here's some historical some perspective. Vietnam was 17 years of
skirmishing, (Yes it was real if you were caught up in it, I had
friends who were changed for life. Though I don't remember anyone who
didn't come back). The Somme, (July to November 1916), killed twice as
many men in half, a year, (I'm only taking into account Empire
casualties, not French and Germans, since you didn't mention US allies
or North Vietnamese), than the US lost in it's entire Vietnam
Adventure. On average we have three times as many traffic fatalities in
a year in the US than we suffered in an average year in Vietnam, and
that's lumping the wounded in with the dead.
Since WWII there's been 70 years of peace in Europe and much of Asia.
Wars have been a.) small of only local or regional interest, b.) proxy
wars, or lc.) low intensity conflicts with no direct conflict between
"Great Powers". The Eastern Block and The Western Block wanted to rule
the world not destroy it. The existance of Atomic Weapons pretty much
guaranteed any war between them that got out of hand, would do just
that. The fear of mutual destruction has done more for Peace than
anything else so far. For that I credit Oppenheimer. Where there is no
such fear, wars still break out.
mike wilson wrote:
P. J. Alling wrote:
Oppenheimer. The atomic bomb kept the peace for 50+ years, at least
there were no "major" shooting wars for 50 years because no one
wanted to risk a conventional war getting out of hand. Probably the
first time that a weapon was actually too terrible to use.
Wow. Whilst I can understand that you may not consider the recent
stuff in the Middle East major because not so many Americans have been
affected, how you can say that Vietnam was anything other than major
for the USA (especially considering the psychological effect of
"losing" after all those deaths) and at least three other countries, I
do not know.
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