click here to read The Art of War, Part 1
So, you’ve had a chance to digest my first treatise on the origins of war.
Today we will discuss modern warfare in the continuing series… John Grant’s The Art of War!
Today, Part 2:
Modern Warfare
Modern warfare came about around the birth of the Modern Age. Essentially, people had been making war for centuries and were generally happy with how it was going but suddenly someone pointed out that they were way behind and that they were still in the Bronze Age while everyone else was already in the Modern Age. War was essentially becoming obsolete, and so the National War and Famine Syndicate (NWFS) launched a huge PR campaign and introduced the world to Modern Warfare (“From the people who brought you Death!”).
To really get modern warfare off to a good start, the NWFS brought in those perennial party-poopers – scientists (“Oat bran is good for you! No… wait, it might kill you. Oh hell, we don’t know.”) The scientists took a long look at all the death and destruction achieved up until that point and said, with that can-do human spirit, “We can do better than that.” And so, in New Mexico in a top-secret project, scientists detonated the first atomic bomb in the desert under the watchful eye of J. Robert Oppenheimer who looked solemnly upon what he had created and intoned gravely, “Kick ass.”
Then President Truman – upon hearing about the atomic bomb – thought for a moment and said, “Do we really need to blow up iguanas in the southwest?” This gave scientists pause until one particularly bright fellow suggested blowing up the Japanese instead of large chunks of New Mexico and Nevada. Everyone thought this sounded like a good idea and luckily we were at war with the Japanese at the time so it all worked out in the end.
After World War II, the country decided to re-examine its war strategy in light of this new weapon of mass destruction. After careful consideration, US leaders adopted a policy created by a group of Kindergarteners on a tour of the White House who accidentally ended up in a high-level strategy meeting. Thus, U. S. war policy became, “If you try to take our stuff or just generally piss us off we will completely destroy everything in the entire world in the equivalent of an enormous nuclear tantrum.”
This policy served everyone well until someone suddenly realized that we probably would not want to do that because we also lived on the world and if we destroyed it we’d be cutting off our noses to spite our faces. Luckily, President Reagan came along and suggested putting laser beams in space to blow up enemy missiles before they hit us. This would ensure that we could blow up the world all by ourselves – without any help from anyone else.
TRUE FACT: Reagan’s idea for Star Wars came from a movie that he saw (not “Star Wars”) one night when he was President. This is pretty conclusive proof that Reagan has been out of his mind since at least 1963.
The concept of a missile shield is one that continues to be pursued to this day. What is particularly impressive is that the missile shield costs 1000000000 billion dollars to build and has a 97.65% failure rate. To put it simply, it would take one nuclear missile to destroy New York city. During the Cold War, there were several hundred Soviet missiles targeted on New York City. With a missile shield, only two or possibly three of these missiles would make it through the shield and hit New York City.
Through careful statistical analysis we can see that the concept of a missile shield is really, really stupid and further proof that there is a lot of glue sniffing going on at the highest levels of the government.
So, to summarize: Modern warfare is just as stupid as earlier warfare (what I would label “Not Modern Warfare.”).
In the final part of our series, I will finally get to the part you’ve all been waiting for: hardcore sex scenes.