War & The Damned Dirty Apes!

Image: They Finally Did It*


I don't really feel we can blame religion entirely for what we are seeing in the Middle East. A brief look look at the history of humankind shows that wars have been fought by various peoples at various times, and places for a variety of "reasons".

Religion is essentially an excuse for going to war, but the main intent of war is theft. War is organized stealing. In the past if you wanted something your neighbor had, and didn't want to trade for it, you'd drum up some reasons, gather an army, and raid their lands.

Some of your party would surely die, but to the victors went the spoils. The victors were paid in sex, slaves, land, precious metals, gems, money, food, beer, and wine. If you survived it war could be a fairly lucrative operation.

War was like playing the lottery. There have always been people so downtrodden that risking their lives to wage war seemed like a risk worth taking.

We believe we're different, but we have our "Oil War", and we pay bonuses to those willing to enlist, or reenlist hoping that we will keep the ranks of our military well stocked. War is war.

War isn't as easy to understand today as it was in the past. We forbid modern armies the pleasures of rape, and plunder. Yet war in the end results in a victor to which goes the spoils.

The spoils may no longer return in chariots filled with gold, but there are spoils none the less. Modern day spoils come in the form of control over natural resources.

Plunder is no longer divided through the counting of coins, or jars of wine, but through lucrative contracts obtained by multinational corporations. Plunder is divided through the redistribution of wealth created via access to natural resources, and markets.

Call it a war of liberation, or a war of retribution, but when it comes down to it - it doesn't matter how we justify war - for in the end we're just a bunch of damned dirty apes running around killing each other so that we can steal as much as we can.

*Image: Not mine, although I edited it. I found the image using a Google Search. I added color, and contrast. I also digitally altered it, and then resized it. It's based upon a scene in the original Planet of the Apes movie. Charlton Heston's character discovers that the planet he is on is Earth. That due to an atomic war all he knew was destroyed long ago. A scene which sent shivers down my spine as a child. There's a horse in the lower right corner. The main character is on his hands, and knees in anguish just in front of the horse. A partially melted Statue of Liberty appears before him on the beach. Is this mankind's fate?