why did the mongols use cruelty and destruction to achieve their military goal?
448664
One of the ways to control the people is through fear.  It kind of sucks for the people there, but it works.\n\nThe other way is through being nice and all that, but once you stop giving them stuff, they answer to the next despot coming along.
480682
When a Chinese chorse mis-behaved, the horse is stanpped to the groud and they drop a length of barbed wired and give the horse one thousand lashes.\n\nThat way it will perform in battle
82574
The Great Wall of China (as it is called) was built to protect the ancient Chinese from the invading Mongol tribes in modern day Mongolia (just north of China).
947813
The Japanese were taught that the Chinese were inferior to them.  They were taught that the Chinese were less than human.  The Japanese brutalized their soldiers during training.  In brutalizing their own soldiers they taught them to be brutal.
699576
Because he brings death and destruction to mankind.
363977
A Mongol would hoard as many boards as it take for a Mongol horde not to be bored.\nThat Mongol horde needs to meet the woodchuck.\nAwoodchuck would chuck as much wood as he could so a Mongol could hoard the boards necessary for his bored horde.\nPhilosophically speaking, why must a Mongol hoard boards for a bored Mongol horde?
9475
I don't have any solid research but I imagine there were at least a few general reasons:\n\nTo spread out a kingdom because individuals and their livestock needed more land, OR to accomodate growing populations in a certain kingdom/city/empire.\n\nTo provide a safer buffer from enemies, that is, cities in the center of an increasing territory for better protection.\n\nTo secure resources or trade routes\n\nTo convert other people to the expanding religion\n\nTo populate newly/randomly discovered territories\n\nI am editing now, I suppose those things could have been the reason in the very earliest of times but in prehistoric societies, I bet survival sums it up pretty well. Maybe not expansion but certainly the nomadic thing...pick up and move to beat the weather or a threatening pack of animals, to find food or land appropriate to grow food and support livestock. Territory would certainly have had something to do with it, if there was a serious enough pissing contest with a threatening enough adversary, such as an unfriendly neighboring clan, a settlement of people might pick up and move to give themselves more safety by giving the big guy wider berth.
100810
It was a decisive victory for the Mongols.\nMstislav of Kiev's forces, which had chosen to cross the river, were attacked and besieged in their camp by the main body of the Mongol horde. The Kipchak allies retreated in disarray, but Mstislav the Bold stood firm. The camp was assaulted for three days, and finally taken. There was no mercy for the defeated army. Six princes were taken prisoner, and only a tenth of the original army escaped (led by Mstislav the Bold) to return to Kiev. The imprisoned princes were stretched out under the wooden boards and slowly suffocated while Mongols feasted upon the boards during their victory banquet.\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kalka_River
807013
OPPRESSION and GREED is the MAIN reason for CONFLICT.
254223
I would say the Mongols.  C'mon, an empire that could subjugate Russia for years...that's amazing.\nOf course, you might also say the Soviet Empire of late, terrified many around the world with the thought not just of wiping out cities, but perhaps entire continents, pretty scary.
857020
all you need is here:\n\nWhen Genghis Khan died, a major potential weakness of the system he had set up manifested itself. It took many months to summon the kurultai, as many of its most important members were leading military campaigns thousands of miles from the Mongol heartland. And then it took months more for the kurultai to come to the decision that had been almost inevitable from the start — that Genghis's choice as successor, his third son Ögedei, should have became Great Khan. Ögedei was a rather passive ruler and personally self-indulgent, but he was intelligent, charming and a good decision-maker whose authority was respected throughout his reign by apparently stronger-willed relatives and generals whom he had inherited from Genghis.\n\nOn Ögedei's death in 1241, however, the system started falling apart. Pending a kurultai to elect Ögedei's successor, his widow Toregene Khatun assumed power and proceeded to ensure the election of her son Guyuk by the kurultai. Batu was unwilling to accept Guyuk as Great Khan, but lacked the influence in the kurultai to procure his own election. Therefore, while moving no further west, he simultaneously insisted that the situation in Europe was too precarious for him to come east and that he could not accept the result of any kurultai held in his absence. The resulting stalemate lasted four years. In 1246 Batu eventually agreed to send a representative to the kurultai but never acknowledged the resulting election of Guyuk as Great Khan.\n\nGuyuk died in 1248, only two years after his election, on his way west, apparently to force Batu to acknowledge his authority, and his widow Oghul Ghaymish assumed the regency pending the meeting of the kurultai; unfortunately for her, she could not keep the power. Batu remained in the west but this time gave his support to his and Guyuk's cousin, Möngke, who was duly elected Great Khan in 1251.\n\nMöngke Khan unwittingly provided his brother Kublai with a chance to become Khan in 1260, assigning Kublai to a province in North China. Kublai expanded the Mongol empire and became a favorite of Möngke. Kublai's conquest of China is estimated by Holworth, based on census figures, to have killed over 18 million people. \n\nLater, though, when Kublai began to adopt many Chinese laws and customs, his brother was persuaded by his advisors that Kublai was becoming too Chinese and would become treasonous. Möngke kept a closer watch on Kublai from then on but died campaigning in the west. After his older brother's death, Kublai placed himself in the running for a new khan against his younger brother, and, although his younger brother won the election, Kublai defeated him in battle, and Kublai became the last true Great Khan.\n\nHe proved to be a strong warrior, but his critics still accused him of being too closely tied to Chinese culture. When he moved his headquarters to Beijing, there was an uprising in the old capital that he barely staunched. He focused mostly on foreign alliances, and opened trade routes. He dined with a large court every day, and met with many ambassadors, foreign merchants, and even offered to convert to Christianity if this religion was proved to be correct by 100 priests.\n\nBy the reign of Kublai Khan, the empire was already in the process of splitting into a number of smaller khanates. After Kublai died in 1294, his heirs failed to maintain the Pax Mongolica and the Silk Road closed. Inter-family rivalry (compounded by the complicated politics of succession, which twice paralyzed military operations as far off as Hungary and the borders of Egypt (crippling their chances of success), and the tendencies of some of the khans to drink themselves to death fairly young (causing the aforementioned succession crises), hastened the disintegration of the empire.\n\nAnother factor which contributed to the disintegration was the decline of morale when the capital was moved from Karakorum to modern day Beijing
1169715
because,\n\n‘When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.\n\nor\n\nThe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
569394
Because they think that by raging wars they would succeed in their undertakings and defeat their opponents.But that's not true.One can overcome his or her shortcomings or rivals even by peace and non violence.
294727
To gore things that are trying to attack them.
322596
There were a variety of purposes.  For the people who actually went on them they believed among other things that they would have their souls cleansed and their sins for given (though the loot was a nice bonus).  For the Royalty of Europe it was a chance to curry favor with the Vatican by providing soldiers.  The Vatican had a variety of reasons both political and eccumenical for wanting to secure the Holy Land.  For the younger sons of the Nobility (ones who did not stand to inherit land) it gave them a chnce to make a name and claim land for themselves.
197996
Vlad the impalier.  He was hungry for blood but not to drink, although their a ledgends of people who believed drinking the blood of you enemy gave you their stregth.  Vlad use to put a big spike right through the torso, from rectum to neck then put one end in the ground, crucifx stlye, puting the bodies on display as a way of getting others to comply with his wishes.\n(I know; too much information.)
14231
Ever since there have been more than one group of humans living nearby eachother -  Tens of thousands of years. It is more useful to enslave an enemy than to kill him. He can till your fields, pick your corn, and carry heavy items. There were slaves as far back as recorded history, and it surely has gone on since the population explosion after the last iceage.