Wars are sometimes necessary, but all too often the result of many other factors failing to be addressed long before that point is reached.
In WW1, in the lead up to it, all parties figured the other would back down before war would start.No one did, and millions lost their lives because of that assumption.
The pressures in place after that war ended ironically set up the next one, when the right person appeared on the scene, and used the situation to turn his nation towards madness.
We are tribal in nature, still, and are not as advanced as a species as we sometimes think we are. Although we are not at all that different, we consider ourselves so, much to our loss - as our history has shown.
Add to this complex mix the continuing pressure for cheap resouces, and for profit, and our inability to see the inevitable future result when we lose sight of the greater picture and issues involved.
Ironically, our technological superiority over some nations in military matters drives these underlying pressures into other means of expression, if they are unresolved beforehand. Terrorism is an inevitable extension of an inability to strike back in other, more traditional, ways.
Stealth bombers, night vision googles, Predator drones ?
Marshall McLuhan(where he alive today) might argue that IED's and planes crashing into buildings, are the inevitable response to those types of military hardware. By their existence, because of the superiority of their power, anyone on the receiving end (should they decide that they are oppressed, rightly or wrongly) has two options.
Surrender, or fight back in any way they can.
It's no surpise that terrorism started to show itself strongly in the later parts of this century, when this was became the case. It was certainly in use before, but it soon became the accepted way of responding to perceived oppression.
For some reason, instead of seeing the value of non-violent protest(and it's great potential, as proven by it's history in action), those who saw themselves as oppressed took up arms against that oppression. That trend was supported by outside powers, who used such struggles to fight one another in proxy wars.
In many cases, those arms were provided ( directly or indirectly) by superpowers. They too saw that the ultimate expression of politics, given their newfound military technological wonders, could never be used in a one on one battle in the Cold War without rendering any victory....a total loss.
As such, they fought that battle offstage, in many countries in the Third World, all over the planet. Their support, and it's occasional success(in the eyes of one side or another) trained people in the use of such tactics, and proved their validity.Be it death squads in Central America, or extremist Muslims in Afghanistan, a message was sent - and a Pandora's box was opened that could never be closed again.
The merchants of death combined with the politicians of both major political expressions of thought during the Cold War period, and the ensuing flood of weapons seeded the soil for what was to follow soon after.
Vietnam and Afghanistan taught everyone who would listen that a relatively small group of fighters (with outside support) could tie down a superpower for years, and cause great financial and military losses while doing so. That lesson was sadly forgotten by both sides, and so today we can see the effects of it's success in the insurgencies in Iraq and in Chechnya.
And in the end, those superpowers find themselves at a loss to stop the fruit of their past efforts from affecting their future ones. Ironically, they themselves spread the seeds for their own loss of real power, and rendered themselves helpless by doing so. They can try and contain, but they cannot promise success.
Against a determined foe, and outside support, not even a superpower can assure victory anymore - if the people support the insurgency. Stopping terrorists requires that you are lucky each and every time, and they are not. The odds of an eventual success are always going to be in the attacker's favour, with enough effort.
Unlike those earlier times, where armies could sweep away anyone in their path and conquer lands, today's world balances the playing field to a much greater level to anyone that uses the lessons taught in those far off lands in our recent history.
That's echoed in various elements of technology, where everyday people can now overcome many disadvantages they previously had with the proper use of it. The CD , and digitialized music, meant that record companies lost their control. Now anyone can copy music almost instantly, or produce their own. They can use the technology available, many times for little or no cost, to broadcast and distribute that music to the mass audience, and completely avoid the traditional path they had in the past to work with the industry monopoly.
Filmmakers have done the same, and now anyone can produce a film and show it online, without spending great sums of money, or dealing with film studios.
Big Brother, in seeking to dominate, actually gave the keys to anyone that wants to use them to free themselves from his grasp. It's a bit like the tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, who waves his magic wand, and is surprised by what actually is produced afterwards.
The tale begins as an old sorcerer departs his workshop, leaving his apprentice with chores to perform. The apprentice tires of fetching water for a bath or tank, and enchants a broomstick to do the work for him, using magic he is not yet fully trained in. However, soon the floor is awash with water, and he realises that he cannot stop the broom because he does not know the magic word to make it stop. Despairing, he splits the broom in two with an axe, but each of the pieces takes up a pail and continues fetching water, now faster than ever. When all seems lost in a massive flood, the old sorcerer returns, quickly breaks the spell and saves the day.
The "Zauberlehrling" is extremely well-known in the German-speaking world. The lines in which the apprentice implores the returning sorcerer to help him with the mess he has created has attained the status of a proverb, especially the line "Die Geister, die ich rief" ("The spirits that I called"). "Die Geister, die ich rief" is often used to describe a situation where somebody summons help or uses allies that he cannot control, especially in politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorcerer's_Apprentice
We can even see how terrorists today use modern high tech methods to spread their message to anyone that has the ability to watch it. That in and of itself, has become a weapon to create independant actors following a broadcast message.The same methods that can sell a juicer on TV can sell an ideology, if the audience wants to "buy" it. "Branding" and "informercials" are indeed used in just such a manner in today's political struggles - by all sides.
So, in the end, it's like we are all gathered around this great boiler with it's pressure building each and every second. There's little danger that it will explode massively anymore , but the end result is that the great pressures involved are far more likely to cause multiple jets of steam to explode somewhere along the millions of miles of piping and pressure joints of this world of ours, and they are almost impossible to predict in advance.
No longer having to worry greatly about an all out nuclear exchange wiping life off the planet, we are now far more likely to look up and see a plane crashing into a skyscraper on a sunny September day.
For every Ying....there is a Yang.
"Die Geister, die ich rief"
