01-17-2011 3P Post #6: The Cost Of War

 

“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants & ethical infants.

We know more about war than we know about peace,

more about killing than we know about Living…”.

(Omar Bradley)

“The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst…”.

(Henry Fosdick)

“Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself…”.

(Francis Meehan)

“In war, Truth is the first casualty…”.

(Aeschylus)

“Everyone's a pacifist between wars.  It's like being a vegetarian between meals…”.

(Colman McCarthy)

“We make war that we may Live in peace…”.
(Aristotle)

“Si vis pacem, para bellum:”

“If You wish for peace, prepare for war…”.
(Latin phrase)

One of the fundamental tenets of Sun Tzu’s philosophy of war as articulated in Art Of War is that the victor succeeds through the high-level thinking of strategy and, therefore, doesn’t have to fight very often.  In his philosophy, You never fight unless You have to fight.  To fight when not absolutely necessary is too risky in terms of human Lives, natural & manufactured resources, and political capital.  Not only does it not make sense from any cost-benefit analysis (except the nationalistic unity of a scared home-crowd), but it actively works against You.  For example, whatever political side You are on regarding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that started with Bush and have continued under Obama, the fiscal cost ($2 Billion per week and rising), casualty, wounded, & broken soldier count (in the tens of thousands with no real way of knowing how many), and the vulnerability it has cost us in being able to respond to North Korea or any other hostile nation (just to mention a few of many detriments) are undeniable.

While many political pundits, cultural commentators, or intellectual ideologues will broach the usual topics such as the moral standing of our nation, the loss of so many talented children, the unintended civilian “collateral damage,” the legality of war motivations or morality of war rationale, the nature of the action as preemptive, rushed, or exhaustive relative to diplomacy & other means of prevention, the point i wish to make today is a simple one: War cannot always be avoided, but it should be engaged or avoided based on strategy and nothing else.

It doesn’t seem to me that most people reach this same conclusion.  If we were to survey contemporary opinions, You might be shocked to see what i mean.  As but one example, General Colin Powell articulated during his years of active military service what came to be known as the “Powell Doctrine.”  It stated (as i understand it) that a country should never go to war except as a last result when every other option was exhausted, but — if a country indeed went to war — then it should wage the war with an overwhelming force so as to keep the war as short as possible.  While this is similar to my perspective, it is not quite the same.  The element of surprise is a strategic one, and i believe war should be waged strategically (as does Sun Tzu).  Therefore, a country might not want to exhaust every possible means before waging war in order to keep the element of surprise.  Had General Powell kept this in mind (and been able to convince George W. Bush of it), we would have handled the back-stabbing French in a different manner in the leadup to the Iraq War and had a totally different situation with respect to the coalition supporting us.

So, while many will argue “just war” rationale, i don’t think that matters at all.  To me, there is no such thing as just war.  There is war.  If You must engage in it, win at any cost including using deception, ruthlessness, or any other means.  It reminds me of a scene in the movie Wyatt Earp where Wyatt’s father (a lawyer’s son and person familiar with law himself played by Gene Hackman) informs young Wyatt (played by Kevin Costner), “Wyatt, You know i believe in the law.  Next to his family, it’s about all a man’s got in this world to believe in.  But not everyone believes in law.  When You find Yourself confronted by men such as these, by such viciousness, hit first — if You can.  And when You do hit, hit to kill.  Don’t worry, You’ll know when it comes to that…”.  Put another way and more succinctly, General Patton once was quoted as saying, “The point of war is not to die for Your country; the point of war is to make the enemy die for his…”.

With almost no exceptions, i view war as instigated, started, and brought on by people with evil motives.  The motives of the respondents, at least in my mind, doesn’t make war right or wrong.  If You respond by warring, then You are at war and have to Live with that, and i can Live with that.  i don’t see anything inherently wrong with war morally; i see all war as a choice.  Just as self-defense is homicide but not murder.  Not all homicide is wrong.  Self-defense is acceptable, because to not engage in self-defense is suicide.  To kill without the benefit of self defense is murder.  It’s not the killing or the homicide that is in question, but rather the motive for it.  With war, it’s not the intrinsic act of war itself, it’s the posture of it.  There will be war.  Period.  If You engage in it — for whatever reason — my position is that it ought to be done in the most strategic way possible to bring about the political end desired.

And there is the rub: war occurs because of what is politically acceptable.  When Hitler tried to assert German dominance over Europe, we decided to sit it out and watch.  If not for the attack of the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, Europe might be a very different place today.  Pearl Harbor galvanized our political will into a politically acceptable response.  One might look back today and think that the U.S. entered WWII as a moral imperative to stop tyranny, but that would be naïve and unTrue.  We entered WWII, because we were attacked and deemed it no longer acceptable to be a sitting duck once the war was brought to us.  All the hindsight morality crap is just window dressing to make us all feel better.  Europe begged us for years to enter the war to no avail, and we heard — but didn’t heed — their cries.

However, once we entered the war, we decided to win at all cost.  Failure was not an option.  And it never should be.  Get in or get out, but don’t watch.  Besides the fact that it’s not becoming of a decent human being to observe war, it also serves no purpose.  War was not meant to be watched; war is meant to be suffered and won.

If there is no political purpose behind it, then war is stupid.  Now, just because a political purpose lay behind it does not make war profitable, much less “right(eous).”  However, that gets into the matter of ruling and authority, which is another conversation altogether.  For today, suffice it to say that war is only worthwhile when it is a means to an end to provide a political remedy to an untenable circumstance.

The point i want to make today is that our country is not waging war properly.  War should be waged for a political purpose in a strategic manner and with only one acceptable outcome.  That is not our motive politically, practice strategically, or endgame militarily.  How do i know this?  i know it, because a war should not be hard to describe, define, or defend, and all of our leaders combined have still not provided a coherent, cogent, or cohesive rationale to these longs years of war.

i am not against war; i think war is inevitable and necessary due to the fallen nature of the world in which we exist.  i am not against the Iraq war or the Afghanistan war necessarily.  What i am against is the lack of clarity regarding why we are at war, the strategy being implemented, and the desired result.  It is time someone stood up and said, “Enough” without stridently arguing for either a conservative, kill-as-many-young-people-as-it-takes, let’s-just-borrow-the-money, hawk posture or a liberal, pacifist, no-war-is-worth-it, dove perspective.  There are other ways of looking at war, even though You never hear about them on TV, radio, the internets, or the coffee shops.  i, for one, am tired of everyone thinking FOX or MSNBC are the only alternatives.  They are not.  It has often been said, "Peace through strength," meaning, presumably by implication, that strength prevents the likelihood of war.  Well, i don't believe that.  It is also often said, "Peace through Love," meaning, presumably by implication, that Love makes war unnecessary or preventable.  Well, i don't believe that, either.  i believe in Peace through intelligence (and that includes war, sometimes, waged intelligently).  Peace is, to me, the state of being whole that may occur in the absence of war but also may occur as a result of it.  Personally, i believe every person should be both a warrior and a priest.

 i am lamb – hear me roar….