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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5722412" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, I've not done an actual tabulation on the history of conflict, but my sense of it is that you are correct.  The vast majority of wars are due to the failure to bring the prior conflict to completion.  In the vast majority of cases, a war never ends until one side is either annihilated via genocide or culturally or geneticly assimilated.  The history of the world until recent times is one dang genocide after the other, and this is universally true regardless of the region of the world you are talking about whether its pre-modern Europe or the pre-Columbian new world.  Tribes rise up, often with a unique language and culture, and they destroy other tribes in a way that Conan would approve of, so that that the defeated tribe's name disappears from history.  Then they try to hold on while some other tribe tries to extinguish them.We get the idea that wars have definate purposes, beginnings, and ends from the Westphalian legal system.  War in the West, at least for the last few centuries, has been a legally defined concept.  Much of the characteristics of the modern nation state are suppposed to ensure that wars have limited objectives and don't have the normal genocidal character wars tend to have.  But even under the Westphalian system, the leading cause of war is failure to bring the prior conflict to completion.  WWII was caused by WWI.  The second Gulf War was caused by the first.  And in all likelihood there will be a second Korean War that was caused by the failure to finish the first.  In fact, legally, the first Korean War has never ended and people continue to die in it decade after decade, which is more the normal case of war in history.Personally, I don't pay enough attention to the name appearing on the left side of the screen to be able to hold a grudge.  It's not so much that I'm not the sort to hold a grudge; it's just that it's rare that I notice that its the same person disagreeing with me as before, or that another poster and myself tend to agree.  However, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the leading causes of arguments on the boards is failure for the two parties to reach a mutual respectful understanding.  To me, agreeing to disagree is just about the optimal conclusion of a thread.  If you can reach a point where you understand why the other side believes as they do, and you reach a point where the two sides are willing to accept that, you've just about as much 'won' an internet argument as it is possible to do.   Most internet arguments begin IMO because the two sides simply can't imagine why the other side is saying what it is saying.</blockquote>

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