See, your premise requires either demigods stalking the earth or, well, yeah.

And the Umayyads would not have called Islam the religion of peace!

Of course, now you’re trying to claim again that I’m saying the invaded have the power necessary to avert war. Time to improve your reading skills.

Again, when and how would you “fix” Japan? before the Sino-Japanese War of 1894? Certainly too late then, since militarism was already a central tenet of the culture. OK, back to before the Edo Era? That starts in about 1600 – who would have done what, exactly, to end militaristic and expansionistic tendencies in Japan in 600?

The concept that if someone somewhere somehow could have accurately predicted the economic, political, and social impacts of events that seem rather trivial at the time and then also accurate perform the actions required to circumvent all the possibilities that might lead to armed conflict without resorting to immoral action is almost the definition of naivete; it would reuire men of near-godlike intelligence with access to almost all knowledge and the ability to act globally without restrictions.

Since we live in the Real World this means that war is, indeed, sometimes not only necessary but also positively moral. People involved in positively moral acts that require great personal sacrifice are virtuous by definition. In such circumstances men who go above and beyond, especially in action that save the lives of their comrades are. yes, acting honorably in a manner that reflects glory upon them. If these actions result in their death, their death was honorable.

That is more or less what I’m saying. There was no fixing anything by 1930 or so.

If you wish to take a rather draconian view I believe it is possible to argue that cultures that fight wars and win are not failed cultures – the ones that won’t fight and vanish are the failures.

By definition, but of course, that’s totally circular. We can easily change the criterion and suddenly the cultures successful in war are the failures .

If you wish to take a rather draconian view I believe it is possible to argue that cultures that fight wars and win are not failed cultures – the ones that won’t fight and vanish are the failures. I do not necessarily advocate this view myself, but it is probably more supportable than the idea that war is initiated by failed cultures.

If you wish to take a view of culture and memes as concepts which wish [in broad strokes] to propagate themselves so as to survive over generations it is obvious that the ideas of honor and valor are quite good at this, even the concepts of an honorable death. These ideas have been common from Korea to Pre-Columbian America since the neolithic. We must consider the idea that these ideas survive and the cultures that embrace them thrive for reasons.

And while doing so remind yourself that up to the AB War, there had not been a commitment of British military force equalling that to date; The Anglo Boer War was the largest and most intense ware the British had fought, ever.

And, the significance of this war across a large area of the African continent (mainly in South Africa) and its impact on people living in all of the British Colonies was huge.

Here is the ENTIRE entry:

“The Second War (1899â??1902), by contrast, was a lengthy warâ??involving large numbers of troops from many British possessionsâ??which ended with the conversion of the Boer republics into British colonies (with a promise of limited self-government). These colonies later formed part of the Union of South Africa. The British fought directly against the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. The bloodshed that was seen during the war was alarming. There were two main factors that contributed to this. First, many of the British soldiers were physically unprepared for the environment and poorly trained for the tactical conditions they faced. As a result, British losses were high due to both disease and combat. Second, the policies of “scorched earth” and civilian internment (adopted by the British in response to the Boer guerrilla campaign) ravaged the civilian populations in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
[edit] Controversy and significance

During the Second Boer War, the UK pursued the policy of rounding up and isolating the Boer civilian population into concentration camps. The wives and children of Boer guerrillas were sent to these camps with poor hygiene and little food, although this was remedied to some extent as time went on. The death and suffering of the civilians, according to many scholars, is what broke the guerrillas’ will. The “pacification” theory has been repeated many times in warfare since.[citation needed]

The Second Boer War was a major turning point in British history, due to world reaction over the anti-insurgency tactics the British army used in the region. This led to a change in approach to foreign policy from the UK who now set about looking for more allies. To this end, the 1902 treaty with Japan in particular was a sign that the UK feared attack on its Far Eastern empire and saw this alliance as an opportunity to strengthen its stance in the Far East. This war led to a change from “splendid isolation” policy to a policy that involved looking for allies and improving world relations. Later treaties with France (“Entente cordiale”) and Russia, caused partially by the controversy surrounding the Boer War, were major factors in dictating how the battle lines were drawn during World War One.[

The Boer War also had another significance. The Army Medical Corps discovered that 40% of men called up for duty were physically unfit to fight. This was the first time in which the government was forced to take notice of how unfit the British Army was and this severe lack of physically-trained armed forces strengthened the call for the Liberal Reforms of the first decade of the twentieth century. Thus this was one of the prime reasons for the subsequent introduction of compulsory games and at least one hot meal in British schools.”

“The war was a cruel one for the cavalry, who were handicapped throughout by the nature of the country and by the tactics of the enemy. They are certainly the branch of the service which had least opportunity for distinction. The work of scouting and patrolling is the most dangerous which a soldier can undertake, and yet from its very nature it can find no chronicler. The war correspondent, like Providence, is always with the big battalions, and there never was a campaign in which there was more unrecorded heroism, the heroism of the picket and of the vedette which finds its way into no newspaper paragraph. But in the larger operations of the war it is difficult to say that cavalry, as cavalry, have justified their existence. In the opinion of many the tendency of the future will be to convert the whole force into mounted infantry. How little is required to turn our troopers into excellent foot soldiers was shown at Magersfontein, where the 12th Lancers, dismounted by the command of their colonel, Lord Airlie, held back the threatened flank attack all the morning. A little training in taking cover, leggings instead of boots, and a rifle instead of a carbine would give us a formidable force of twenty thousand men who could do all that our cavalry does, and a great deal more besides. It is undoubtedly possible on many occasions in this war, at Colesberg, at Diamond Hill, to say ‘Here our cavalry did well.’ They are brave men on good horses, and they may be expected to do well. But the champion of the cavalry cause must point out the occasions where the cavalry did something which could not have been done by the same number of equally brave and equally well-mounted infantry. Only then will the existence of the cavalry be justified. The lesson both of the South African and of the American civil war is that the light horseman who is trained to fight on foot is the type of the future.”