Violence is a learning tool. Inasmuch as exposure to bacteria are needed to strengthen our cells immunological responses, violence is a tool to develop compassion, caring and love.

Hate, prejudice, ignorance are mandatory at this level. You simply can't escape them. Realizing this is the first step to squashing utopian visions and visions of peaceful societal harmony.

Wars are the forest fires of societal development. ;-) They devastate a current generation of people to instill better opportunities and growth for the next. Dead rot sets in in a complacent society. The very bottom of the cultural totem pole, the have-nots become the societal motivation and we see this in the music and entertainment sold to the haves with rap, reality television, etcetera.

War purges the rot. New buildings, new cities, new attitudes are borne out of war.

Iraq will progress 100-fold over its previous rate of development - thanks to war.

All of the territories that were conquered by Rome became thriving urban centers and cultural epicenters.

The US was born out of war. West Germany was born out of war. Modern Japan was born out of war. Many nations owe their present constitutional freedoms and various versions of democracy to WWII.

An intelligent people benefit the most from war, when it is done. They rebuild with the latest technology, the latest equipment and are not chained to the past. The young embrace a new lifestyle and attitude of freedom.

The beat generation of 1945-1960 were the byproduct of war. The industrialization of large parts of the world that were living like aborigines is also due to war. The sharing of medicines to poor foreigners who used to die off in droves from TB, measles, cholera and countless other maladies can now thank the west for their longevity and the problems this longevity causes in cultures that it is 'gifted' upon.

America's culture is still a post-war culture. The suburban lifestyle which dominates was invented around 1948 and spurred by the return of soldiers to small towns that had gone to seed in the absence of working men as well as folks motivated to start life anew in areas outside the old cities.

War is good. War works. Just like a forest fire.

The lessons of war are this: stay out of the forest when there is a fire and don't let YOUR community accumulate dead wood. If you live in a place where lots of cultural dead wood sits and the population is stagnant...the storm is coming. Get yourself and your family to a place where new ideas, new things are born daily.

Then you won't be a victim of the continual cyclic purgings nature performs to breed better, happier, more intelligent versions of humanity.