????? by ah! guh-ness. on Flickr.

Day of grumpy: 15 June 2011 (by ChrisCopeful)

My (probable) grad advisor went to uni in Southampton! The University thereof, of course, but that’s still the same city. Awesome!

I really like the idea of going to school in southern England, and I guess it probably wouldn’t sound exciting to you, but I’m kinda jealous.

And small island nations? Is that like Tonga, or the really small “nations” like Sealand? Sealand probably doesn’t count since it’s artificial (and I don’t think a recognized nation), but what sort of sustainability are you studying? The very first thing I thought of was a recent article in The Economist discussing what would happen to the recognition of nations that would be put underwater by climate change and rising sea levels, but that’s probably not what you’re doing.

Now this is a big one! First of all, I would love to ask:

‘How do you all feel about the current military interventions in Afghanistan and to a lesser extent, Libya?’

I need to gauge response to this, not because I have extreme views either way, but to establish if anyone else has extreme views, because I think its impossible to have a clear ‘extreme view’ in relation to current global conflicts because of the myriad of variables and factors that led to them.

While I agree war is in no way a constructive action, you have to wonder in some ways is it a necessity?

To consider Wars from this angle you need to remember, things like Terrorism do exist and somewhere along the line innocent people are going to die, as humanity on the whole like to kill each other over relatively trivial things. So do you jump the gun, go in and claim to be fighting for global peace? OR sit and wait for a group of fundamentalists to decide they’re Jealous/resentful/angry at another nation or group and proceed to attack?

With current wars the West is involved in, they have a significantly ‘bigger stick’ to fight with so will cause more damage but seemingly there is at least an intention to focus on the ‘enemy’. On the other hand the ‘enemies’ seemingly wish to harm any innocent person they can.

So it is relatively easy to justify, to an extent, military action to protect the interest and security of a population. By preemptively attacking perceived enemies to prevent them ever attacking you, or attacking again.

However, you could say that:

• Thousands of people are dead.
• It costs vast amounts to fund, especially during a massive financial crisis.
• There are extra motives for attack (resources, spreading political policy, greed)
• Armed forces take people and make them essentially into murderers.
• It is in no way civilized.
• There is no need to get involved as a relatively small nation. (UK specific)

I could add more if it wasn’t 2 am. Overall I think the answer to wars is that there is no answer. No wars would be the best outcome, but the nature of the human race seemingly makes them inevitable at least for many years to come so this debate will rage on and on until something changes that stops the need to fight.

David

The Isle of Wight.

Another addition to my bucket list I’d imagine.

????? by ah! guh-ness. on Flickr.