War is nonsense and manipulation and there is no reason to fight?

[Brian37]

That statement makes me pretty morose. Sad that mass killing is the best option in some situations. Maybe we should hijack the thread to talk about evolutionary aggression and escalatio?

War doesn't -have- to be mass killing, in an important sense, any more killing than necessary is a waste of military resources - but in practice the bloodthirstier of the two involved parties are the ones who make the rules.  The inevitable result is that the benevolent and idealistic commander who seeks to limit the casualties attributable to his actions is at a disadvantage.  

It's not his charge or duty to lose a war honorably, thus the escalation of body count on both sides.

I will always be for avoiding war until you cant. I am a militant peace monger myself. But I am not delusional either. Our species is like any other, we group and compete, and sometimes it is unavoidable. I don't want to live under Russia's idea of government, or China or Iran or North Korea's ideas of government. I certainly will not vilify every single individual that might be stuck under those governments, but yea, I do want a military to at least keep them in check.

Again, as I said before, in the age of nukes, the best humanity can do right now, is keep war non nuclear and always realize that mutual destruction by using nukes nobody will win.