Thoughts on War, from Ancient and Modern Perspectives

After reading the following statement in a Substack post this morning I felt prompted to assemble some thoughts about war. I considered writing comments about each but concluded that their effect together did not require additional embellishments.

"Dopamine-inducing propaganda is an omnipresent feature of modern media, and emotions stirred by military conflict only increase the difficulty of separating reality from the innumerable synthetic varieties. It is not uncommon to find wildly different descriptions of the same event from seemingly credible sources."
--Doomberg, Mapping the War

“We experienced first-hand the horror of this war, witnessing the appalling injuries and death". --Senior medical officer Dr. Sandy Inglis, describing the impacts of the recent airstrikes in Rafah, and scenes from the Red Cross Field Hospital as staff received patients

"Wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war."
--Wendell Berry 

"War is a highly planned and cooperative form of theft."
--Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

"I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people."
--Edmund Burke

They sent forth men to battle,
But no such men return;
And home, to claim their welcome,
Come ashes in an urn.

--Aeschylus, Agamemnon

"War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."
--Thomas Carlyle, as quoted by Emma Goldman 

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."
--Dwight D. Eisenhower 

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

     --John McCrae