Elf Sternberg

Something I forgot to say. Diamond, in Guns, Germs, and Steel, suggests that war as we think of it today - fighting to the death, organized and widespread destruction, fighting over ideals, rather than the occasional territorial confrontation and random killing - *is* a function of civilization.

Professional soldiers require a society with sufficient food production to feed them, to feed the people who make their weapons, and to feed the politicians who send them to war. Whether people fighting wars are uncivilized or not is not the question. If they can fight wars as we know them today, they are. The problem is what they're doing with that civilization. Or what we're doing with it, if you prefer.

-HH