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General Category => Military/Defense News => Topic started by: rangerrebew on March 15, 2019, 11:09:50 am

Title: Unmasking War’s Changing Character
Post by: rangerrebew on March 15, 2019, 11:09:50 am

Unmasking War’s Changing Character

Zachery Tyson Brown | March 12, 2019
 
 
War used to be easy to define. Once, we could say with confidence whether we were at war or peace. If the former, we could identify with whom we were fighting and where the front was. Americans in particular have for a long time had the good fortune of being able to say that the war—any war—was “over there.”

These concepts have deep roots—in the West, anyway. In ancient Rome, for example, a particular class of priests called fetiales officiated the onset of war by throwing a ceremonial spear into an enemy’s territory and opening the doors of the temple of Janus. Bringing war to an end has traditionally been just as ceremonial—think of Vercingetorix laying his sword at Caesar’s feet, Lee and Grant’s meeting at Appomattox, or Emperor Hirohito’s representatives signing documents of unconditional surrender on board the USS Missouri in 1945.

https://mwi.usma.edu/unmasking-wars-changing-character/