Martians

Three decades ago, a group of British scholars set out to determine the extent of man's penchant for War.

In their search for answers, these intrepid data crunchers manually pored over modern and ancient texts covering 5,000 years of recorded history, from the earliest Mesopotamian civilizations up until the 1970s when the Vietnam War continued to rage.

In all that time, these researchers discovered that mankind has had only had 27 years--an insignificant 27 years--of Peace, which they defined as the absence of War anywhere on this planet.

Reading about this in one of few dailies allowed under martial law astounded me and is so vivid it remains with me to this day.

Only twenty-seven years without a war anywhere on this martial planet. Incredible!

And hammering home Man's seeming thirst for War is fresh research revealing there have only been 26 days of Peace since 1945. That's only 26 out of the 22,000 days from 1945 to 2005.

Our country continues to contribute to the enduring evil of War with its festering twin insurgencies, including Asia's only remaining communist rebellion.

Mankind has never given peace a chance. History proves that and so do the thousands of wars and armed conflicts and over a billion deaths.

Sadly, War has always been--and remains--the favored arbiter of disputes between nations or armed groups. It is also the least effective sowing, as it so often has, the bloody seeds of the next conflict and the one after that.

Witness World War 1, the "War to End All Wars" that ignited World War 2 (history's bloodiest), which then led to the proxy wars between democracy and communism that, in turn, saw Muslims take up the sword in the conflicts that batter today's world.

And if one gazes at the 19th century, one witnesses our own revolution against Spain, one of the many wars for independence fought by enslaved peoples against predatory European empires, chiefly those of Britain, Spain and France.

Why does man avidly seek to kill?

The answers are as complex as the causes of war. But whether one believes the Biblical comment that Wars begin in men's hearts, or take into account my mother's opinion that most wars are ignited by greed, one cannot escape the reality of War's stranglehold on civilization.

Looked at in this aspect, Peace appears to be those rare moments when Mars, the God of War, loosens its relentless chokehold on mankind's neck. Peace, therefore, is mankind breathing freely.

A New Year has arrived and with it the inevitability there will be no additional days of peace in 2007 to add to those precious 26 days. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Chechnya will see to that, as will our own communist insurgency.

Then there are those "Wars-in-Waiting" such as North Korea, Lebanon, Iran, Taiwan, Russia and Georgia, among others.

A broad look at centuries of warfare reveals that the mutual exhaustion of both combatants--not military victory--has been the chief reason for ending most wars.

The evolution of today's warfare into drawn out and savage guerilla conflicts will again confirm this, and will ensure that military victory truly becomes a mirage in the desert.

With military victory all but impossible, there seems little reason why Man should go to war at all. But leave it to Man to invent reasons to kill his fellowman. George Bush and Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction come to mind here.

The commandment, "Thou shall not kill," remains the Eternal Casualty of War; Peace on Earth an empty promise.

This planet doesn't deserve the name Earth. Mars would be a more fitting name for this blood soaked rock, and Martians a more exact description of its dominant life form.

Welcome to Mars. And which War do you want to fight in first?