{"id":9231,"date":"2015-06-19T06:11:04","date_gmt":"2015-06-19T11:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9231"},"modified":"2015-06-19T06:11:04","modified_gmt":"2015-06-19T11:11:04","slug":"the-glorious-imbecility-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=9231","title":{"rendered":"The Glorious Imbecility of War"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Glorious Imbecility of War<\/a><\/h3>\n

Napoleon Returns<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Today, on the eve of the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, we do not celebrate war. Only a fool would celebrate something so horrible. But we pay our respects to the glorious imbecility of it.<\/p>\n

War may be dreadful, little more than a racket in many ways, but it is also a magnificent undertaking. It engages the heart and the brain at once and exposes both the genius of our race and its incredible stupidity.<\/p>\n

But we are talking about real war. Not phony wars against enemies who pose no real threat. Phony wars earn real profits for the war industry, but only an ersatz glory for the warriors. Real soldiers take no pride in them. Instead, to a real hero, they are a source of shame and embarrassment.<\/p>\n

Wars are not conducted to \u201cFree the Holy Land.\u201d Or \u201cMake the World Safe for Democracy.\u201d Or \u201cRid the World of Tyrants.\u201d Or \u201cFight Terrorism.\u201d Those are only the cover stories used by the jingoists to get the public to surrender its treasure\u2026 and its sons. Wars are fought to release the fighting spirit \u2013 that ghost of many millennia \u2013 in the scrap for survival.<\/p>\n

And so it was that, 200 years ago\u00a0tomorrow, one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, Napoleon Bonaparte, faced the armies of the Seventh Coalition \u2013 principally, the British, under the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussians, under Gebhard von Bl\u00fccher.<\/p>\n

\"Napoleon\"Napoleon Bonaparte, born in Ajaccio, Corsica, later emperor of France and famous (and usually victorious) general, and later still, pensioner on the island of St. Helena<\/p>\n

Painting by Paul De La Roche, 1814<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Glorious Imbecility of War Napoleon Returns Today, on the eve of the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, we do not celebrate war. Only a fool would celebrate something so horrible. But we pay our respects to the glorious imbecility of it. War may be dreadful, little more than a racket in many ways, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[5728,6449,6500,6170,862,6501,891],"class_list":["post-9231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-acting-man","tag-battle-of-waterloo","tag-napoleon","tag-pater-tenebrarum","tag-war","tag-war-industry","tag-world-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9232,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9231\/revisions\/9232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}