War, war, war...

A RISING star of the People's Liberation Army has called for China to rediscover its ''military culture'', while challenging unnamed Communist Party leaders for betraying their revolutionary heritage.

General Liu Yuan displays deep hostility to the United States, says war is a natural extension of economics and politics and claims that ''man cannot survive without killing''.

His essay, in a friend's book, says ''history is written by blood and slaughter'' and describes the nation-state as ''a power machine made of violence''.
Chinese urged to put war on pedestal - Sydney Morning Herald - May 23, 2011


''Military culture is the oldest and most important wisdom of humanity,'' he writes. ''Without war, where would grand unity come from? Without force, how could fusion of the nation, the race, the culture, the south and the north be achieved?''
Let's fly the red flag again, says Chinese general - Sydney Morning Herald - May 23, 2011

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The United States was born through war, reunited by war, and saved from destruction by war. No future generation, however comfortable and affluent, should escape that terrible knowledge.

What, then, can we do to restore the study of war to its proper place in the life of the American mind? The challenge isn’t just to reform the graduate schools or the professoriate, though that would help. On a deeper level, we need to reexamine the larger forces that have devalued the very idea of military history—of war itself. We must abandon the naive faith that with enough money, education, or good intentions we can change the nature of mankind so that conflict, as if by fiat, becomes a thing of the past. In the end, the study of war reminds us that we will never be gods. We will always just be men, it tells us. Some men will always prefer war to peace; and other men, we who have learned from the past, have a moral obligation to stop them.
Why Study War? - Victor Davis Hanson - 2007

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Scarlett: Fiddle-dee-dee. War, war, war; this war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides... there isn't going to be any war.
Brent Tarleton: Not going to be any war?
Stuart Tarleton: Why, honey, of course there's gonna be a war.
Scarlett: If either of you boys says "war" just once again, I'll go in the house and slam the door.
Brent Tarleton: But Scarlett...
Stuart Tarleton: Don't you *want* us to have a war?
[she gets up and walks to the door, to their protestations]
Scarlett: [relenting] Well... but remember, I warned you.
Gone with the Wind (1939) - IMDb