Wars Without Victories
I'm always puzzled by the impression that the Cold War is over and that the U.S. won it.
Actually the Cold War was badly misnamed and was never a real war at all, since very few people were killed during it, relatively speaking. Mainly it was a decades-long session of breast-pounding in the gorilla style, full of sound and fury and providing nothing much except for being a tremendous boon to the people who make weapons and to the people who can't get enough of having at hand new instruments of death and destruction.
The U.S.couldn't have won the Cold War, because Russia didn't lose it. Instead it just sloughed off all those satellite countries as if they had gotten to be just some extra plates of armor that had gotten too unbearable to wear. Russia downsized to a sleeker and more manageable and less expensive size and shape.
Meanwhile the Americans and the Russians are going jaw to jaw with each other much as before, as shown by the talks going on now between Bush and Putin, with nothing much changed, even though they seem to have pledged to reduce their nuclear arsenals. To what size? Merely enough to turn the whole planet into a radioactive wasteland just once over, instead of enough to do that many times over when they had warheads up into the tens of thousands? Certainly they will never vow to keep only enough warheads to ravage each other, the most fitting result because of the basic immorality of even making such weapons and stockpiling them and pointing them at each other, and also because of the equal obscenity of being ready to drag all other living things down into rack and ruin with them, when the rest of the world had nothing to do with a quarrel whose significance diminishes the moment you ask people to define capitalism and communism.
The hostile attitudes called "the Cold War" never ended and still are being expressed, and will keep on doing so as long as the U.S. and Russia, in particular, along with several other countries in general, still have the means and the will to lob nuclear and other types of weapons at others, in a variety of constantly updated ways.
Actually this means that World War 2 never ended either, and that these countries just have never been able to halt the powerful charges they made to apparent victory in 1945. I say "apparent" because in the 1970's and 80's, it was easy to think that because of the positions of their economies, Japan and Germany had won instead, and that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had lost.
It seems that in recent times wars don't end at all but just get all tangled up with each other. For instance look at Israel and Palestine, and how long their confrontations have been going on without letup and in the process igniting other hostilities as well. Soon there will be few left alive who'll be able to remember when that part of the Middle Eastern desert wasn't on fire.
Actually the Cold War was badly misnamed and was never a real war at all, since very few people were killed during it, relatively speaking. Mainly it was a decades-long session of breast-pounding in the gorilla style, full of sound and fury and providing nothing much except for being a tremendous boon to the people who make weapons and to the people who can't get enough of having at hand new instruments of death and destruction.
The U.S.couldn't have won the Cold War, because Russia didn't lose it. Instead it just sloughed off all those satellite countries as if they had gotten to be just some extra plates of armor that had gotten too unbearable to wear. Russia downsized to a sleeker and more manageable and less expensive size and shape.
Meanwhile the Americans and the Russians are going jaw to jaw with each other much as before, as shown by the talks going on now between Bush and Putin, with nothing much changed, even though they seem to have pledged to reduce their nuclear arsenals. To what size? Merely enough to turn the whole planet into a radioactive wasteland just once over, instead of enough to do that many times over when they had warheads up into the tens of thousands? Certainly they will never vow to keep only enough warheads to ravage each other, the most fitting result because of the basic immorality of even making such weapons and stockpiling them and pointing them at each other, and also because of the equal obscenity of being ready to drag all other living things down into rack and ruin with them, when the rest of the world had nothing to do with a quarrel whose significance diminishes the moment you ask people to define capitalism and communism.
The hostile attitudes called "the Cold War" never ended and still are being expressed, and will keep on doing so as long as the U.S. and Russia, in particular, along with several other countries in general, still have the means and the will to lob nuclear and other types of weapons at others, in a variety of constantly updated ways.
Actually this means that World War 2 never ended either, and that these countries just have never been able to halt the powerful charges they made to apparent victory in 1945. I say "apparent" because in the 1970's and 80's, it was easy to think that because of the positions of their economies, Japan and Germany had won instead, and that the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had lost.
It seems that in recent times wars don't end at all but just get all tangled up with each other. For instance look at Israel and Palestine, and how long their confrontations have been going on without letup and in the process igniting other hostilities as well. Soon there will be few left alive who'll be able to remember when that part of the Middle Eastern desert wasn't on fire.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 1:41 AM
1 Comments:
I've come across some posts that argue WWI never really ended, and that all the unrest in the Middle East, and especially now Iraq and Iran, is just an extension of that war.
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