Currently world governments are spending 100s of billions of dollars on there Miltary, whether its research, buying new hardware, keeping troops employed, wars etc. Lots of money each year is spent on maintaing army troops. 

With the worlds governments having tonnes of equipment and thousands of troops sitting around in base. Having an War points those troops to work, uses up there excess outdated equipment so they can bring in new equipment, test there new equipment and tactics. 

Having an war against an weak enemy is like practice for any possible big war to follow and in the past empires and nations have had these small wars to do just that, practice. 

examples: British empire wants to train its generals and create battle hardered troops and try new tactics and equipment so when they come against another european power. Just invade some asian/african nation/area or some small nation, and put them to work. 

An when looking at it Afghanistan appears to be the allies training ground for desert combat for when possible miltary action in the middle east occurs (cough iran.. cough). 

Really why invade Afghanistan, an nation who had an long history of invasions and countless times resisting to such invasions from many powerful empires. And the whole terrorist thing could of been solve with special operations then an full ground operation: sure its sounds all well liberating from the Tailban who are pretty bad, but when the people despise outside influences you are going to get no where. Really they should be in somailia: thats an country in need of full Allie support. They should of been in Seirra leone during its bloody blood diamond fueled civil war. 

We could say Afghanistan was use as practice for the Russians in 1980-90, since there Cold war arms race was producing alot of weapons and with the Amerians gaining combat expereince in Veitnam, they cant have there troops sit at bay. 

Another reason from being also practice is intemidation: Did you know ally navies gather in Hawaii for war games which sole purpose is to intemidate China's growing expanison of there navy. 

really this is me rambling on. But really we need to pull all troops out and use them in an better war. Its been 10 years: thats enough, time for some where else.

War is also great for the economy, you can build lots of weapons to destroy your enemy, and once you won, you help them rebuild everything you destroyed and let them pay you for it.

and if you are lucky you manage to control their resources too!

and you can also sell guns to the other side and profit off the enemy to fund the war against them. 

but of course! one of the best business models! supply all sides!

War is just the projection of the primitive self of humanity. I'm willing to bet that natural selection will take care of it, or so I hope.

No offense... but that's just stupid.

You are going to learn WAY more from war games then you are fighting a horrible opponent like the Iraqi or Afghanistan or Libya.

I mean, what are soldiers really learning?   Nothing, because the competition is way too low.

I mean, is a proffesional sports team going to learn more by scrimmaging against itself or by playing the local highschool team?

That's what War Games are for.

Interstate warfare has been at a long-term historic low, so it's harder to call these wars pointless. Nobody fights wars for the hell of it because war is a no-gains game nowadays, since it's considered uncouth (well, illegal) to seize other countries for their mineral rights or take war-slaves, you can't really get much out of interstate war anymore, so you have to pick your battles more carefully. Pointless war is mostly a thing of the past, and even big interstate wars are usually localized around civil wars nowadays (Afghanistan, Libya, even the Russia-Georgia thing was focused on South Ossetia's struggle, any fighting in the Balkans

If you run Interstate Wars that are A: after the Cold War, and B: have nothing to do with Intrastate conflict, you get

A: Gulf War I
B: Gulf War II (2003, which initially had nothing to do with civil war and devolved later)
C: Yemen-Eritrea in the mid 90's
D: Eritrea-Ethiopia in '98

my ideal of a war would always be the opponents both get a group of their elite soldiers onto a uninhabited island and let them fight each other. last man standing wins.

would save us a lot of hassle,and also make great quotes

What kind of quotes?

TV quotes

of course it would be a reality show for everyone to enjoy