sorry. i can't help but comment on the biological/immunological
metaphor for war presented in this post. (the rest of my comment is
purely trivial and irrelevant to reality, but i'm going to write it
anyway.) yeah, white blood cells are pretty vicious, obliterating
anything that offends, even pieces of the greater self, but the
amazing thing is that, for the most part, they leave most things
well enough alone.
right now there are more bacteria infesting your body than the
number of your own cells, and they pretty much don't cause disease.
why? because they aren't virulent. they don't make toxic substances
that poison their neighbors, and they aren't trying to kill
anything. they have evolved to accomodate to their environment, and
basically have learned not to fuck things up, precisely so that
they can survive. the only time things go wrong is when the greater
self decides to attack pre-emptively, taking antibiotics, and
ending up killing only the bacteria that actually help, leaving
only the nastiest ones behind to give you horrible diarrhea and
possibly dysentery.
the bacteria that white cells do go after are the ones
that aim to take over and consume everything. we are talking about
some really nasty bugs here. the kind that will infiltrate and
destroy every tissue in your body, the flesh eating bacteria. and
the irony of it is that once they kill off their host, they find it
harder to survive themselves (wow, it's amazing how allegoric my
comment is becoming.)
so. my point. nature has learned that killing other things is
not the only way to survive. but yeah, there is a balance.
sometimes you have to kill. sometimes you don't. being able to tell
the difference is the difference between surviving in harmonious
co-existence and a world where only the nastiest survive. (and
prophylactic antibiotics tend to be a really bad idea)