Prolonged War Entering a New and Worse Phase
If a war lasts long, something terrible or drastic happens as if it were entering a new phase.
The Empire of Japan had been fighting against China since 1937. Then the US demanded withdrawal of Imperial troops from mainland China while freezing Japanese assets in the US and imposing embargo of crude oil to the Empire. Finally in December 1941, Tokyo was virtually forced to attack Pearl Harbor to address the diplomatic impasse.
And in August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the long and bloody battles around the Pacific Ocean.
The Vietnam War was fought between 1960 and 1975. And after this war, a massacre occurred in Cambodia, adjacent to Vietnam. One million or more citizens were executed by the communist government led by Pol Pt around 1978. Even a war broke out between Vietnam and China in 1979. These tragedies in the Indochina Peninsula were apparently triggered by the Vietnam War.
Afghanistan experienced a civil war with interference from the Soviet Union from 1978 to 1989. Subsequently the Taliban took over power in 1996 through another civil war. And, in 2001, the Taliban together with its ally AlQaeda, based in this war-torn country, came to be attacked by the US and its coalition forces after Osama's attack on New York and Washington DC on Sept. 11, 2001.
Iraq was put into a war with the US in 2001 as Saddam Hussein did not surrender in the wake of the 9/11 Terror, though Hussein had no clear connection to AlQaeda. Around 2006, the US finally almost controlled and kept order all over Iraq, and Barack Obama, after elected as President in 2008, started withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Then, an extreme armed group called ISIS began to prevail in regions from Iraq to Syria.
Now Syria has been in a civil war since 2011. And finally Russians have come to be engaged in this war with military planes to support the Assad regime; on the other hand, the US is going to send special forces there to fight ISIS. But ISIS is also fighting back, even by setting a bomb in a Russian jetliner flying over the Sinai Peninsula.
So, if a war continues in a longer period of time, something so different in paradigm and scale would often emerge. In other word, such a long war enters a new and worse phase eventually.
And, today, those prolonged states of wars in the Islamic regions seem to invoke something different, which should be probably called the Third World War. Indeed, millions of Muslims are fleeing those regions to the center of Europe while the US and Russia are getting involved more and more. The prospect for these movements looks so ominous.
But, those who call the name of God should be saved. Since this era might be really in a process of the end of the world for many involved in a tragic manner. Truly, if the 21st century becomes another century of war following the 20th century, the world can be ended.
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Mar 11:5 And certain of them that stood there said unto them, What do ye, loosing the colt?
Mar 11:6 And they said unto them even as Jesus had commanded: and they let them go.