300 to 1 is disproportionate warfare

[sofa king]

100. Just some history, here.

I don't wish to inject another dog into this fight, I just want to show all of you that the theory of disproportionate warfare is deeply ingrained into human affairs going back to the Torah and far beyond.

One can imagine that from the moment a group of people settled down to divert water and grow crops, some other group of people passing by tried to rip 'em off. Rational rules--and rational decisions can be quite evil--quickly evolved. If you threaten a town and the town catches you, you're dead. Similarly, if the town chooses to resist, rapine and pillage are certain to result if the town falls.

At the city level, for thousands of years, it was customary to murder all the men and sell the women and children into slavery. Ghengis Khan and successors like Timur applied the policy as rigorously as one can imagine. A single Mongol could travel virtually anywhere from northern Asia to the outskirts of Europe, wander into any village and demand the best of everything from them, and sleep with other peoples wives secure in the knowledge that if he were harmed, the entire village population would be raped and murdered, the village burned to the ground, and the surrounding farmlands poisoned and denuded.

It was Ghengis Khan, not Arnold Schwarzenegger, who reputedly said, "The greatest joy for a man is to defeat his enemies, to drive them before him, to take from them all they possess, to see those they love in tears, to ride their horses, and to hold their wives and daughters in his arms." Total destruction in payment for resistance.

These rules were studiously followed by everyone from Alexander the Great to Maurice of Nassau to Napoleon and eventually to Josef Stalin and the theories of "Bomber" Harris and Curtis LeMay. The principle of responding with overwhelming, disproportionate destructive force has always been a part of human affairs.

Now, it would be easy to look back on all those who practiced it with disgust and to call them barbarians, except for the fact that the United States was one of the most diligent practitioners of the policy, spreading the love of freedom and liberty to American Indians, rebellious slaves, Confederates, Kent State students and residents of Fallujah without regard for race, creed or color. Now that I think of it, American destruction may be the only thing we have practiced without discrimination.

Ask someone from any major inner city if they have failed to notice the overwhelming force implicit in the government's response to every public demonstration. It's still right there, waiting for you to cross the line.

Does this mean I endorse the policy in any way? Hell no, I think it's disgusting and counterproductive. It is the very essence of the reason why war is a universally negative thing, always for a less-than-zero net profit. (Example: Dick Cheney got filthy rich off of his war, but I fell out of the middle class. There is only one Dick Cheney, thank goodness, but half a million Iraqis and others died and about forty million Americans like me surrendered our lives and treasure for his gain.)

My only point is this: so long as conditions force or encourage a people to choose conflict, they will both practice and be the victims of overwhelming force--or "disproportionate warfare." That is, sadly, an unavoidable obstacle along that chosen path.