What is the exact point of war? It makes no sence to me?

Question

And How are you saving lives by killing?


Omg ><

Answer 1

The Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression — an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.
Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity — and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion — has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt — once the most heavily Christian areas in the world — quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.
That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.
Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne'er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders' expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.

The Crusaders two goals, both of which would remain central to the eastern Crusades for centuries. The first was to rescue the Christians of the East.

The Crusade was seen as an errand of mercy to right a terrible wrong. As Pope Innocent III wrote to the Knights Templar, "You carry out in deeds the words of the Gospel, 'Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friends.'"

The second goal was the liberation of Jerusalem and the other places made holy by the life of Christ. The word crusade is modern. Medieval Crusaders saw themselves as pilgrims, performing acts of righteousness on their way to the Holy Sepulcher.

The reconquest of Jerusalem, therefore, was not colonialism but an act of restoration and an open declaration of one's love of God.

It is often assumed that the central goal of the Crusades was forced conversion of the Muslim world. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the perspective of medieval Christians, Muslims were the enemies of Christ and His Church. It was the Crusaders' task to defeat and defend against them. That was all. Muslims who lived in Crusader-won territories were generally allowed to retain their property and livelihood, and always their religion. Indeed, throughout the history of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Muslim inhabitants far outnumbered the Catholics. It was not until the 13th century that the Franciscans began conversion efforts among Muslims. But these were mostly unsuccessful and finally abandoned. In any case, such efforts were by peaceful persuasion, not the threat of violence.
The Crusades were wars, so it would be a mistake to characterize them as nothing but piety and good intentions. Like all warfare, the violence was brutal (although not as brutal as modern wars). There were mishaps, blunders, and crimes.

The purpose of the Crusades was not to kill Jews. Quite the contrary: Popes, bishops, and preachers made it clear that the Jews of Europe were to be left unmolested.

By 1098, the Crusaders had restored Nicaea and Antioch to Christian rule. In July 1099, they conquered Jerusalem and began to build a Christian state in Palestine. The joy in Europe was unbridled. It seemed that the tide of history, which had lifted the Muslims to such heights, was now turning.
But it was not. When we think about the Middle Ages, it is easy to view Europe in light of what it became rather than what it was. The colossus of the medieval world was Islam, not Christendom. The Crusades are interesting largely because they were an attempt to counter that trend. But in five centuries of crusading, it was only the First Crusade that significantly rolled back the military progress of Islam. It was downhill from there.

Crusading in the late twelfth century, therefore, became a total war effort. Every person, no matter how weak or poor, was called to help. Warriors were asked to sacrifice their wealth and, if need be, their lives for the defense of the Christian East. On the home front, all Christians were called to support the Crusades through prayer, fasting, and alms. Yet still the Muslims grew in strength. Saladin, the great unifier, had forged the Muslim Near East into a single entity, all the while preaching jihad against the Christians. In 1187 at the Battle of Hattin, his forces wiped out the combined armies of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem and captured the precious relic of the True Cross. Defenseless, the Christian cities began surrendering one by one, culminating in the surrender of Jerusalem .

The response was the Third Crusade.

By 1291, the Muslim forces had succeeded in killing or ejecting the last of the Crusaders, thus erasing the Crusader kingdom from the map. Despite numerous attempts and many more plans, Christian forces were never again able to gain a foothold in the region until the 19th century.

In 1480, Sultan Mehmed II captured Otranto as a beachhead for his invasion of Italy. Rome was evacuated. Yet the sultan died shortly thereafter, and his plan died with him. In 1529, Suleiman the Magnificent laid siege to Vienna. If not for a run of freak rainstorms that delayed his progress and forced him to leave behind much of his artillery, it is virtually certain that the Turks would have taken the city. Germany, then, would have been at their mercy.
Yet, even while these close shaves were taking place, something else was brewing in Europe — something unprecedented in human history. The Renaissance, born from a strange mixture of Roman values, medieval piety, and a unique respect for commerce and entrepreneurialism, had led to other movements like humanism, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Exploration. Even while fighting for its life, Europe was preparing to expand on a global scale. The Protestant Reformation, which rejected the papacy and the doctrine of indulgence, made Crusades unthinkable for many Europeans, thus leaving the fighting to the Catholics. In 1571, a Holy League, which was itself a Crusade, defeated the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto. Yet military victories like that remained rare. The Muslim threat was neutralized economically. As Europe grew in wealth and power, the once awesome and sophisticated Turks began to seem backward and pathetic — no longer worth a Crusade. The "Sick Man of Europe" limped along until the 20th century, when he finally expired, leaving behind the present mess of the modern Middle East.

From the safe distance of many centuries, it is easy enough to scowl in disgust at the Crusades. Religion, after all, is nothing to fight wars over. But we should be mindful that our medieval ancestors would have been equally disgusted by our infinitely more destructive wars fought in the name of political ideologies. And yet, both the medieval and the modern soldier fight ultimately for their own world and all that makes it up. Both are willing to suffer enormous sacrifice, provided that it is in the service of something they hold dear, something greater than themselves. Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam's rivals, into extinction.

Source(s):

Thomas F. Madden

Answer 2

Its easy to sit back and armchair quarterback any war. Had more been done in World War 2, The whole world would be under Axis control.

War is a last resort and should never be taken lightly. Our problem in America is we try to do things and not make people mad. We don't want too many people killed, reduce collateral damage, and send our troops in harms way with their hands tied.

But, if we take the gloves off, and let our troops do what they are trained to do, the liberals yell about the rights of the innocent people being violated and our troops are charged and tried for war crimes. You cant have it both ways, you either have to fight to win or stay on the porch and watch the world go by.

As long as this world has two bit dictators like Saddam, Kim in North Korea and of course, Iran, the possibility of war is real. We cant sit on the side lines and hope they wont come after us. 911 showed us just like Pearl Harbor did, we cannot be neutral in a world like this.

Answer 3

War has been since the beginning of civilization, war happens because people can't agree or people take advantage of weaker people and people step in, kind of like the school yard, You have your bullies, your weak nerdy kids that get picked on and your strong kids that go to bat for the weak kids, most of the time. only on a larger scale.

Accept the fact that as long as there are human beings, there will be wars. One day all wars will cease but til then, we will just fight.

For all of you that want to blame it on the President, all of the Corporations and blah blah blah, Why don't you get you cowardly asses into the Recruiting Office and sign up to help our men and women over there instead of making their jobs harder by your psychological anti American warfare which is all it is that you spout, Help and support our troops or just keep you mouths shut until it's all over then you can do some more accurate armchair work and say all of the damned "I told you so's"

Answer 4

Clausewitz said that "war was the continuation of politics by other means." What he was saying, is that war is a political act. And like most political actions, it does not make much sense.

"War is a terrible way to spend an afternoon." However, war is sometimes necessary. Nearly every nation on Earth was waged war. Sometimes for a small reason, like a soccer game; or larger reasons, like stopping Nazism.

Answer 5

first off, read up on your history. war is never good, i hate it, but i believe that it sometimes is necessary. look at WW2, Korea, Vietnam (if only we hadn't let politics interfere with military operations), even WW1, Waterloo, etc.! those conflicts were all necessary in order to ensure the saftey, security, and future we all enjoy now. war always has a point, it's just not always a good one. land, resources (oil), prestige, etc. are all reasons to go to war. Mussolini invaded ethiopia in order to stay in power, since he had promised his people he'd bring them a new roman empire.
long story short, you have a point, killing is terrible, read All Quiet on the Western Front, one of the characters (soldiers) has an idea where he thinks that, instead of peasants and grunts doing all the fighting, the political leaders who wanted the war should just get into a ring and go at it, and the guy that wins, his side wins. i kinda like it, bush vs. hussein, putin, kim jong-il, etc. lol

Answer 6

Lets say you don't kill the people who come and invade your country.

How would you like it a sqaud or unit of an invading forced kicked down your door took out your daughters raped them along with you wife, executed your sons and stole all your valuables?

You think this his horrible? Well sorry but this is the real world and some people forget that and think they live in fairy tell where dogs chase cats.

Edit* How can you not understand this? If you kill someone who is killing people by the hundreds, you stop him from killing another thousand.

Answer 7

Bingo boomer. I know I don't want either of them being in charge of my world. War is a necessary evil at times otherwise those who run countries in a dictatorial and authoritarian way can run their countries and others into the ground. There was no negotiating with Adolf Hitler and his blitzkrieg war machine. There was no negotiating with the pope and those who were the crusaders. And as that is/was the case in these examples, so to is it the case now. These Islamic terrorists, and terrorists of any race color creed nationality are not to be negotiated with as there is no negotiation for "I want to wipe you off the face of the map." There is no way to talk that down and no way we can let that happen, so at times, war is necessary yes.

Answer 8

There is a big difference between a defensive war and an attack on another country for no reason. The War in Afghanistan was started to eliminate Osama bin Laden, his Al Queda, and his support group, the Taliban following a vicious attack upon our country.

We left there to fight in Iraq.

Wars never really solve anything. I don't believe God is ever on the side of anyone waging war.

Answer 9

Hmmmmmmm lets see what war has solved. Ending Slavery in the U.S. Ending Hitler's reign in Germany and thus (that's a fun word) the end of the Nazis. Ending communist rule in many other countries. And right now helping bring an end to terrorism or at least deplete (another fun word) it. And last it freed the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA so that we could be a country!!!!!

Answer 10

Except for ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism and Communism, war hasn't solved anything.

Make sense now?

Answer 11

The point of war is to get back at the other person. They messed around with your country, took your crap, bombed your stuff, and you get pissed and send 50k troops into their country and screw around.