Does War change?

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Have you ever wondered who was right about the future (and history) of warfare in 2008, Ron Perlman or Hideo Kojima In Fallout 3, the narrator (Ron Perlman) says “War. War never changes.” And in Metal Gear Solid 4 Old Snake’s monologue goes “War. War has changed”. There are different ways of examining these claims, and Anonymous chose one of them on a comment section somewhere:

"I'm pretty sure that the intro to Fallout games are meant to show how war has always been a visceral and messy, violent ordeal. It is not meant to be taken so literally. Nice try, though."

Now you know that Ron Perlman in Fallout 3 has been up for discussion before, and that I’m not trying not to create a strawman, actually being aware of the basic definition of war as a struggle for resources that often leaves people feeling pretty shitty. But that makes me wonder, what exactly is a terrorist attack? Or someone trying to overthrow the government? Mothers Against Canada’s attack on Terrance and Philip? Jack Thompson’s attack on violent video games such as Postal? The actual violent video games? Postal? Shelf space is valuable commodity, darn it! The specific definition of war as a struggle for resources not only leaves lee room for militaries to exploit, but also doesn't encourage further analysis of warfare in a historical context. A structuralist approach often tends to position itself as quite ahistorical so let's go *post* and identify the reasons then? Let's do it internets-style, by posting a link to the original post and discussion.

Also, the X-Ecutioners put something about war nicely by sampling someone else:

“We’re not using spears anymore! Weapons have become highly impersonal, developed to travel fantastic distances—how the hell are my enemies going to see my appeasement signals?!”

I mean, today people bomb buildings with innocent people in it—how's that for accuracy and appeasement signals? There was even an art game depicting the consequences of this type of warfare, where each building you put your aim on and understood to be a terrorist headquarter had some innocents which became terrorists after the bombing, in a perpetual cycle of war. There was no end to this "game", and there was no victory state. Ah, life would be so much easier if our cross fire's would only turn red when seeing someone hostile, no rocket launchers were allowed and friendly fires was turned off. But I sure as hell wouldn't want the US government to program the AI of that program.

PS: I portrait Hideo Kojima as the voice of Metal Gear Solid 4 and not the specific voice actors name from the scene in which the quote is from (David Heiter, Scene 1) or Snake (the main character), or even Old Snake (the main character, tired of war) because Kojima is an auteur, and who the hell knows who wrote what in Fallout 3? And who the hell is Ron Perlman? Media doesn't seem to be interested in telling us about the writers of Fallout 3, and Bethesda neither, which probably isn't because nobody wants to take responsibility for Tenpenny Tower but rather because the script, well, isn't that good.

But never mind that. Or do, because that's what we're here for. But I digress...

...

Ah what the hell, just read this on terrorism. And this on the auteur theory.