I guess I just look at the horrible waste of life, and it seems to me that no matter what war has done for the advancement of technology or medicine, the loss of so many potential poets, scientists, philosophers, enterpreneurs is too great a price to have paid.

Perhaps even if humankind hadn't engaged in war, we could have still gained some, or maybe even most, of the same "benefits" of war. Commerce--competition on the open market--drives enormous creativity and invention...yet, compared to war, remarkably little (actual) bloodshed. Industrial competition can, as we all know, be fairly bloodthirsty without actually doing any direct physical harm to the individuals involved...unless you count ulcers and the like...an arguable point, I suppose.

I beleive it was Napoleon who "poo-pooed" England as a "land of shopkeepers," but I think he may have seriously underestimated the cunning and drive of a determined entrepreneuer.

Sneer at the Ferengi all you want, but I'd rather be concerned about a hostile takeover than a nuclear war. :-)