Could we actually fight a war against an alien race?

[scottie]

sapphi_snake said:

scottie said:
We wouldn't stand a chance in a conventional war.

Their technology in general would be so far ahead of ours to allow inter solar system travel.

We are assuming that they are militaristic enough to simply attack us as opposed to diplomacising. I think it very likely that such an aggressive species will have put a similar amount of their scientific research into warfare as we did. Therefore, their technology will be vastly superior.

If they came to wipe us out, we would die, with the possible exception of disease killing off the invaders a la war of the worlds. If they came to enslave us, we would probably eventually win/force them to give up.

Diplomacising? Do humans diplomacise with forest animals before cutting down a forest? If they're that advanced, what makes you think they won't view us as simply an inferior species, and do what we do to the animals we consider to be 'inferior' to us (zoos, funting for sport, circuses, eating us etc.)?

And it's unlikely that a resolution like in War of the Worlds would happen in real life. It is a deus ex machina after all. If the aliens are that advanced, I'm sure they'd study the atmosphere and the environment before exposing themselves to it. Heck, we humans would do the same too. 

There is plenty of possibility of a diplomatic outcome of aliens turning up. They could be a more kinda civilisation than colonial humans.

 

Furthermore, you may compare us with animals in our inability to do damage to invading aliens, but we have one thing the animals don't have, the sheer bloody mindedness to give it a shot. If aliens were to attack, we would probably detonate nukes as a last resort rather than letting the aliens get our planet :P