Scottish Primrose: Great anti-war image ... The end of war? AFSC's Eyes Wide Open campaign, Long time UC Berkeley and USC Prof. Manuel Castells made the argument in an UC Berkeley course in 2000 that the nature of war has changed dramatically due to Information Technology, Here's Manuel Castells himself on war in the information age in a UC Berkeley interview from 2001, AFSC's anti-war campaigns, now for nearly a century, and beginning in the name of Quaker conscientious objection during WW I, by organizing to provide alternative service opportunities to COs, may have developed in a parallel way, from providing materiel then to media images such as the ones above

Great anti-war image ...

... vis-a-vis American Friends' Service Committee's Eyes Wide Open campaign image 
... https://afsc.org/campaign/eyes-wide-open  

... see, too, Peace and Social Justice wiki Subject page at WUaS, as well as its Quakers' and Nontheist Friends' wiki, Subject pages + ... 
http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Peace_and_Social_Justice_Studies#World_University_and_School_Links

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Long time UC Berkeley and USC Prof. Manuel Castells made the argument in an UC Berkeley course in 2000 that the nature of war has changed dramatically due to Information Technology, starting the negative impact of body bags on TV during the American War in Vietnam. The American public's dislike of this transformed the Pentagon dramatically. His argument is involved, but here are some rough mortality statistics from recent wars: Vietnam: 59,000 Americans and 2-3 million Vietnamese; Persian Gulf: 148 Americans, ?; American War in Iraq: 5000 Americans, 100,000? Iraqis ...

The future for war is hard to predict, however more good anti-war media may continue to be a good deterrent ...

War in some ways used to be predicated on attrition: throw one army against another and see who outlasts/outbleeds the other (as tragic as this was). And information technology also now makes it possible, for those armies that possess it, for example, to target command and control centers (and related strategic advantages), and so, in a sense, win nearly instantly, with very little mortality, and instead of raping and pillaging and removing resources from a conquered territory (one interpretation of war in the past), democratic nation states now use information technology to conduct forms of PR (public relation, or educational, campaigns) in countries where a kind of fast supremacy has been established, and, further, to then use this PR to help establish that 'losing' nation states' sovereignty with democratic governments; what a turnaround from history. While these Castellian theses are difficult to verify empirically looking ahead, especially given history, they are fascinating arguments.


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Here's Manuel Castells himself on war in the information age in a UC Berkeley interview from 2001:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con4.html

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See also these related blog posts ...

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/04/dove-wings-end-of-war.html

http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2009/07/rainbow-organization-anti-militarism-at.html


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AFSC's anti-war campaigns, now for nearly a century, and beginning in the name of Quaker conscientious objection during WW I, by organizing to provide alternative service opportunities to COs, may have developed in a parallel way, from providing materiel then to media images such as the ones above, - all part of such information technological and media developments, - and could be argued to be somewhat successful, for example, looking at the above reading of mortality statistics due to American wars.

There's still a long way to go, however ... and information technology seems to be a boon to the process of lessening war.

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