Total War

I'm reading The Hundred Years War in an effort to acquaint myself with that era. What a brutal time. For starters, we have King Edward III, who started his reign as a puppet, deciding to rid himself of the power behind his throne. He and a small team sneak into the castle through a secret chamber, kill a few guards, and burst into his mother's chamber to seize her lover, Roger Mortimer who was the true ruler of England. Mortimer is soon hung, drawn, and quartered. Film at 11.

War during medieval times was similarly brutal. Towns and farms were razed and civilians and livestock intentionally slaughtered in an effort to weaken the enemy government. Horrible stuff, isn't it? This was the day of the "personal killing" with sword, knife, or pike which is quite unlike today's antiseptic methods of rifle, missile, or pistol. I wonder what the men involved thought and felt as they waged war. Was it hard?

It seems, though, that the easier we make killing, the more our society abhors it. Or do we? The brutal, public violence of public executions no longer occur in the west and westerners frown on targeting civilians during war. But only 60 years ago, the western nations were targeting each other's cities. But today, the west's armies take great care to avoid "collateral damage" partly because it doesn't make for good press back home.

Our society has a problem when it comes to civilian casualties in "other nations'" wars. We just don't care enough when other nations break our moral code. We act too slowly and do not prevent massacres in Africa or Serbia, for example. And I wonder how we would react if our cities were being indiscriminately bombed (by another country's army - not terrorists). Our isolation has made us soft - something we cannot afford to be when the rest of the world is still medieval.