Why Must War Be So Destructive?

Following many years of seemingly endless wars, the perpetrators of those wars sat down together to establish a new set of ground rules that would make those wars less randomly lethal to civilians and to end the destruction of property, which all the leaders agreed was very costly.

After some haggling, the U.S. president offered a remarkable idea everyone quickly agreed to. From now on, in exchange for not launching drones, death squads and other elements of hell, the other combatants would no longer set off bombs, fire rockets nor conduct sneak attacks.

Instead, each side would use computers to select a predetermined number of its people to be executed in the most humane way, lethal injection, thus satisfying the need for huge numbers of dead people war always requires.

The names would be chosen in lotteries, much like power-ball, in which massive numbers of ping-pong balls would be thrust around in machines, with computers making random selections.

Of course wealthy people and their families and others of high stature would be excluded, similar to what has always been done.

Everyone agreed, this would be the best of all possible worlds. The long established and highly profitable military industrial complex could continue to make all of its deadly weapons but those weapons would then be put in storage.

No longer would vast numbers of children be killed nor would they be orphaned, unless both of their parents were selected in the new power-ball approach. Being thoughtful leaders, they all agreed that no more than one parent in a family should be sacrificed.

As a result of this new means of warfare, the world would be less overtly brutal.

"From now on," said the U.S. president, "people will die and it won't appear nearly so bad. And all those people who used to suffer horrific debilitating injuries such as brain trauma, facial damage, blindness, organ destruction or lose arms or legs but still survived, will no longer be subject to those injuries."

He added excitedly, "It's a win, win."

In addition it was agreed that every giant religious organization would continue to have conflicting passages of its holy books honored, such as "do unto others as you would have done unto you," while still implementing the jihad that has always been held throughout history.

"But how will we know who won," asked a diplomat. "Nobody ever wins," came the reply. "World War l led to World War ll, which led to the Cold War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, two Iraq Wars, and the Afghan War and all the other wars we have now."

Another person added, "It is amazing that we still have a planet."

As the leaders agreed to this new warfare approach, they did so proudly knowing that they had taken civilization to new and compassionate heights and warfare to the most efficient level in human history.

Dick
Note: Thank you to my son Kevin who helped to inspire today's fable by telling me of a post-World War ll radio show he listened to that proposed a similar concept.