Warfare and Culture, or the "State of Society".

If culture determines the nature and prevalence of war more than anything else, as I believe, then our attempts to end war will fail unless we pay close attention to the effects of our acts on the culture of other peoples.

The most recent cultural change in much of the Muslim world is the shockingly prevalent willingness to kill oneself in order to kill "enemies".

Such shifts in a culture take on a momentum of their own, so that what was first largely inspired by fear of conquest by the West has led to more deadly warfare between Islamic sects.

We actually need a broader word than "culture" -- maybe "state of society" comes close, because more transient qualities, like the mood or morale of a society can be just as important. Also, the almost total breakdown of normal economic daily life in places like post-invasion Iraq and the Palistinian territories leaves huge numbers of people, men and boys especially, with nothing they can think of except taking up arms to make their lives meaningful. Men (and I'm thinking mostly of more traditional societies, so "men" it is) who once found meaning and satisfaction in being economic providers for their families are an easy target for the promise of "meaning" that war provides (see Chris Hedges' War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning).

The impact of the glorification of suicide "martyrdom" resembles that of a huge technological breakthrough -- making existing strategies of defense irrelevant.

Wars in general tend to brutalize the people affected by them, and the effect of a long war is especially bad - apt to leave behind a generation that knows only war, is totally uneducated and inexperienced in peaceful pursuits (i.e. the pursuit of "normal economic life", in which people spend their time trying to produce something useful for themselves or for someone else to buy). The Viet Nam war was the longest American war and the war with the least happy outcome, but the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are approaching that record. The Civil war and the American involvement in WWII both took under 4 years. Long wars provide a training ground for the people you are fighting. They are likely to develop all sorts of new tactics and weaponry, and in U.S. experience this has often tended to nullify the technological advantage we might have had at the beginning.

If we say we are waging war because we must, in order to preserve or restore peace, then bear in mind that warfare will break down inhibitions against people killing eachother; and at the extreme create whole generations of people who are hardened to killing, have no experience of normal economic life or free inquiry, and have had no chance to be educated.