A Few Thoughts on War

It was a routine that one did not or, perhaps – could not – get used to. Each day, like clockwork, the bombers’ presence was announced with their monotonous droning, a bee-like buzzing-noise that was at once familiar yet terrifying. Without prevarication or a moment’s hesitance, the bombers never failed to deliver a nice fulsome serving of death to the anonymous faces crouching below in expectant terror.

And while the die rolled without fail, one could never be sure exactly how it would fall.

Sometimes, the ‘result’ (how shall we put it) was merciful, a benevolent death that finally released its recipients from their much-prolonged anguish on this pockmarked earth. Other times, when the bombs had only half-finished their work, the result was less magnanimous. Men and women, boys and girls, would, in such cases, be relegated to a long and drawn-out death, cursed to suffer within their own private hell before tasting the long-awaited dew drops of their untimely release.

While it is true that death was inescapable, it is also true that one must not rush his work. And while it is further true that its origins were man-made, they could not be said to be avoidable, having long taken root in the heart of man like a deeply embedded and rather gangrenous bullet.

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It has often been said that war is hell, an event whose horror is undeniable but accepted implicitly. I disagree. Hell is a place in which those who have obstinately refused to repent from their wicked ways choose to languish. War, in searing contrast, is an event in which the majority of those who suffer and die are innocent people: men, women, and children who, by no fault of their own, are caught up in a sophomoric contest of raw power and violence between two impersonal entities. One’s righteousness has no effect in determining whether one lives or dies. Rather, the ‘winner’ is determined solely on the basis of who has the biggest gun. Through war the powerful are granted carte blanche to sate their greed, lust, and hate elsewhere, and whereupon crossing the threshold back into civilization are feted and praised with pomp and circumstance. 

If there is no more mendacious axiom than ‘the ends justify the means,’ then war is its apotheosis, the highest and most devastating mutation of this monstrous logic. For war, at its essence, is the pursuit of unfettered destruction for an uncertain end. History and reason reveal that when it comes to any of war’s bloodstained varieties the damage will almost certainly be incalculable – if not indelible – and the desired result elusive – if ever achieved.

Still there are those who claim that while war in general is horrible, it is sometimes necessary – thus the ‘just war’ theory crowd. While at an airy, philosophical level this may be true, history has shown war to be impracticable as a moral means of conflict resolution. Even if we were to put aside questions of morality – which is normally a pundit’s way of supporting something that is in all other ways also impracticable – history shows us that war seldom (if ever) results in a ‘resolution’ of matters that deserves the term. It simply does not matter if in theory a war can be moral or just if, in practice, conducting such a war is impossible.

To illustrate these themes two case-studies shall be used: the supposedly ‘necessary’ war of WWII and Israel’s laundry list of wars, those of supposedly the most ‘moral’ military power on earth. These two are selected because most proponents of war as an instrument of conflict resolution agree that WWII was just, or at least necessary, even if the other wars of the 20^th century were not. The case of Israel and its wars is chosen because it has successfully managed to fend itself from American criticism by maintaining a deceptive façade of ‘purity of arms,’ fostering the notion that somehow it is unique as a country, holding itself up to unprecedentedly high moral standards when at arms.

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Denouncing WWII has become something akin to heresy. Perhaps no subject in human history elicits a greater emotional response when engaged. Enter the history section of any library and you are bound to find that books on WWII fill up the bulk of its shelves. Ask history students what their favorite topic is and you are bound to meet the same response. There is probably no greater consensus, no greater sense of certainty amongst Americans of all stripes as to who were the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys in this War than on any other topic.

Yet, was WWII, as the highly-acclaimed Ken Burns documentary ‘The War’ puts it, really ‘necessary’? Was it really more just than the wars that presaged and followed it?

I would say no. In fact, I think that WWII illustrates precisely why war never works as an effective or moral means of conflict resolution. While language proves insufficient for describing the atrocities committed by Hitler’s regime (as it is insufficient for describing the atrocities of any war), it is a mistake to see the Axis Powers as entirely morally bankrupt in comparison to the good ole Allied Powers. After all, which set of powers had burdened Germany with the millstone of the Versailles Peace Treaty after WWI, with its onerous provisions that scarred an entire generation of Germans – including a young man named Adolf Hitler? In many ways, WWII was the bastard child of WWI, though WWI’s lunacy and senselessness is not seriously debated today. Territorial ambitions and corporate avarice hardly merit the deaths of over 36 million people, much less the death of a single archduke.

And which set of powers were perfectly content to allow the smaller countries surrounding Germany to become amalgamated under Nazi control as long as their own territory remain unscathed? Appeasement has rightly been seen as morally indefensible but wrongly used as a justification for the war. What it really reveals is the fact that all the players involved were and continued to adopt policies based on their own narrow interests rather than on loftier moral principles. And if narrow national interests guide decision making in ‘necessary’ wars then what does this mean for war in general? If anything, this unfortunate reality would seem to render impossible the notion of a just war, or at least one that is pursued and conducted on moral values.

This fact was made eminently clear after the conclusion of the war when Roosevelt quietly allowed Stalin amalgamate Eastern Europe into the USSR. That amoral politics was the name of the game was also evident in American support to fascist groups in Greece and Italy after the war, a cynical move made to prevent the ascent of leftist groups to power.

If restoring the map of Europe to a healthy equilibrium was a chief aim of the war then the post-War carve-up of Europe into hostile spheres-of-influence should be cause for serious soul-searching among WWII yuppies.

Unfortunately, the cold and cynical policies of the Allied Powers did not stop there. Much ink has been expended on the minutest details of Hitler’s life in an attempt to understand (and capitalize) on the madness of a man whose very name has become synonymous with absolute evil. While to say that Hitler was a warped and dangerous man is an understatement, one must not forget who the U.S. chose to cozy up with during the war: Stalin, probably the greatest mass-murderer in human history. After the war, Stalin’s paranoia and venality resulted in the mass imprisonment of Soviet POWs, who were feared of having ties to the West or – gulp – simply having realized that those who did not live under Russia’s bizarre-brand of ‘communism’ were not necessarily worse off. To put it plainly, it seems a bit hypocritical to bestialize the kooks on one side while conveniently overlooking the blemishes of those on the other side. This seems especially disingenuous when it means presenting the man who was probably the greatest mass-murderer of all time as a ‘necessary’ evil and ally. That our society’s archetype of the ‘necessary’ or ‘just’ war entailed such morally-compromising political calculus appears to wholly undercut its allegedly righteous purpose.

But let us not forget the final seed of destruction born of WWII: the nuclear weapon. After attaining one of the greatest implements of violence ever known to mankind, the U.S. chose to use it on Japan – twice. Traditionally, Washington apologists have said that the nuclear weapon was, again, a ‘necessary’ evil, essential to averting a bloody invasion of the Japan. What they fail to recall, however, is the fact that Japan was already willing to surrender before it endured its nuclear Holocaust. Its only condition was that the U.S. would allow it to keep its emperor, a position with religious overtones. A Japanese surrender at this point was inconvenient to the U.S., which had spent so much time and effort into constructing the world’s most deadly weapon to date. In the end Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incinerated in a pall of dust and blinding heat – and the Japanese got to keep their emperor.

When the other side has been vaporized or damned to live in the torment of abnormal, radiation-soaked bodies, I suppose that this too is easily dismissed as a ‘necessary evil’, the other side’s voice having been drowned out by a multi-ton atomic weapon. I also suppose that expecting the U.S. to listen to the death cries of 10,000s of Japanese people is a bit unrealistic, seeing as the American government had already thrown its own Japanese citizens into concentration camps during the war’s duration – another ‘necessary’ evil I guess.

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There is another model of warfare that continues to enjoy the reverence and fealty of the American public, which is that of the Israeli government. Like WWII, Israel is viewed by most Americans as something sublime, an unadulterated model of righteousness amid a hostile sea of Arabs. Egyptians, Jordanians, and Syrians, oh my! To date, the U.S. continues to grant more foreign aid to Israel than to any other country in world, protect it from international law (Israel enjoys the distinction of being the world-record holder for violating the most UN Resolutions), and generally allows it to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes in the Palestinian Occupied Territories with impunity.

But what does this have to do with the question of war, you might ask. Israel’s ‘independence’ was secured through a ‘war’ that in actuality meant the ruthless and one-sided ethnic cleansing of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes between 1947-49, or what Palestinians refer to as al-Nakba (The Catastrophe). The fact that the founding ‘war’ of a power that masquerades as the most ‘moral’ country on earth was little more than a one-sided rampage against a largely unarmed and pacific people raises serious questions about the idea of ‘war’ itself.

The old adage that ‘the victors write history’ is just as true as it is fails to penetrate the minds of those who hear and utter it – that is, if they are the victors. Israel and the U.S. can entertain the folly that war can be used justly precisely because they are powerful countries, or the victors. And, of course, this mantra is completely self-serving if you are, like Israel and the U.S., a power that has started the majority of wars in which you have been involved.

Thus, Israel can say that the 1956 Suez War – in which it schemed with France and Britain to steal a chunk of Egypt for no other reason than to satisfy its voracious appetite for land and resources – was just. It can also delude itself into claiming that the 1967 War – which it ‘started preemptively’ in order to, again, satisfy its lust for land and resources – was just. (It can also say that the displacement of 1.5 million Egyptians from the Sinai during the conflict was a ‘necessary’ evil I suppose.) And lastly (for there are too many incidents to recount) I suppose it can call its assistance of the Phalange – a Lebanese Christian fascist group inspired by the Nazis – in its massacre of several 1000 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, was just. (How dare you languish in those refugee camps after I have ethnically cleansed you from your homes! You needn’t remind us of the past, you ‘two-legged beasts’ and ‘insects’ – to use to terms applied by Prime Minister Menachem Begin during the war.)

As previously noted in the case of ethnic Japanese during WWII, the powerless do not enjoy the privilege of having their stories told. Instead, those who ‘win’ wars, i.e. those with the biggest guns, get to write their histories. This not only obfuscates the scale and form of suffering that occurs by downplaying the number of civilian casualties – especially those on the ‘wrong side’ – but works to uphold a rosy view of the institution of war itself, maintaining the fatal illusion that war can be ‘just’ or ‘necessary’.

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The last justification for war that is often cited, particularly in the case of Israel, is that it is religiously sanctioned. These arguments generally go to the Old Testament of the Bible, especially the book of Joshua, in order to support the rather dubious idea that the wars of modern nation-states can be Biblically sanctioned.

Besides being dangerous, these ideas are also heretical. The life of Jesus Christ, in other words, what Christians are supposed to imitate, makes this beyond clear. What is perhaps most striking about Jesus’ life is the fact that he never encourages his disciples to attack another person, but instead commands them to pray for those who persecute them and to love their enemies – not kill them. It was not by wielding a sword that Jesus chose to combat evil but, rather, by dying on a cross for his enemies.

Even in the Old Testament, the majority of battles in which the Israelites (no relation to present-day Israelis – it is, ironically, most likely that Palestinians are their closest biological descendents of the Biblical Israelites) engage are not sanctioned by God. And in all of these cases, the Israelites are punished for acting out of pride instead of relying on God. It is, incidentally, due to this disobedience and apostasy that the Israelites of the Old Testament are exiled – a pivotal detail that current-day Israelis somehow manage to overlook.

Lastly, let us not forget that it was in this same Old Testament that God gave his followers a command that could not be more concise or clear: “Thou shalt not kill”.

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While war may be justifiable in a theoretical sense, the real world is not shaped by theory. Not only is war never ‘justly’ waged in the real world, but it is never a practicable means of resolving conflict either.

WWI may have ended but from its scars came the specter of WWII. And the ‘Greatest Generation’ might have seen the end of WWII, but from its scars – namely, a dysfunctional world, nuclear weapons, and renewed agitation for a Zionist state – came more war, this time a ‘Cold’ one and the now perennial bloodbath of Israel-Palestine.

Besides teaching us that the result of any war is unforeseeable, history has also taught us that all wars entail the shedding of innocent blood. Thus, to say that any war is ‘necessary’ is to automatically even if unwittingly buy into the Machiavellian logic that ‘the ends justify the means’.

It is important to note that the debate about war’s justness or necessity is in itself distracting in many ways, since it presumes that war is the only solution able to adequately address whatever problem is at hand. War has become the go-to strategy for powerful countries, requiring little creative thought process or grasp of the finer details of the problem. The problem’s complexity is instead reduced to a comforting but dangerous logic: that sheer force can solve not only this problem, but all problems.

A sledgehammer does not solve a plumber’s every problem, a paper-shredder will hardly help an accountant balance their client’s budget, and a lawnmower will not help a farmer meet the every need of his crops. If this is the case, then why on earth would we expect raw force to solve the duel problems of resource distribution and apartheid in Israel and Palestine? And why on earth would we expect historically marginalized religious and ethnic groups in Iraq to suddenly come together on these same violent principles?

Yet the lunacy goes on.