Those of you who have read my writings at this location to any extent may have formed the impression that I hold soldiers and soldiering in mild contempt. This would be an unfortunate misinterpretation of my sentiments as they touch upon such matters.
It is not those who do the fighting and dying whom I hold in low esteem. Rather it is the horror and obscenity that is war itself that draws forth my full angry disdain and vituperation.
Unfortunately those who are empowered so as to be able to command a nation’s resources, both human and material, and to direct them into the madness that is war invariably seek to rally the general populace behind their decision by a variety of appeals to the general sentiments of a nation. These appeals range from memories of hearth, home, and loved ones, to national honor and dignity, calls for revenge, to tocsins and alarums for the future. These are all the ordinary repertoire of propaganda.
One other such element in this repertoire is the call to support those who choose, or who are chosen, to enter the dark and dreadful theatre of pain that is warfare. A people at war think it just and necessary to lend support to those who face bloody dismemberment or oblivion in their behalf. That this should be so is clearly obvious.
But, I make a distinction between wars. All war is an obscenity. There is no good war. One need not have been in combat to understand its nature. A person need only read of the horrors and listen to those who experienced them to understand that these experiences are such that you would not want to wish them upon yourself or upon others. Similarly, one need not walk off a cliff to understand that it is not a good thing to do.
However, there are wars which, despite their inherent tragedy, are inevitable and necessary. I have just finished reading biographies of Truman and Churchill, and I am now reading the latter’s memoirs of the Second World War. Both these men were admirable figures who did not shirk from the need to wage war, for they believed in all sincerity, and I think rightly so, that their nations fought to preserve the humane foundations of Western Civilization against a tyrannical and feudal new order based upon the enslavement and extermination of human beings.
World War II was a necessary war. Interestingly enough, Churchill was of the opinion that the central tragedy of the conflict lay in the fact that it was an unnecessary war. He thought that an alliance of militarily potent nations could have convinced the Nazi leaders to limit or even forego their imperial designs.
However that may be, I am convinced the current conflict which engages this nation in the Middle East is wholly unnecessary, and that our republic is squandering its human and material resources in a quixotic crusade to attain a victory we can not identify by means wholly unsuited to the circumstances.
Yet, the current Administration and its acolytes have sought repeatedly to turn public support for the soldiers engaged in this misdirected imperial adventure into a referendum on its global policies. The President and his minions would have the American people believe that support for the soldiers is support for the war. To posit, as does the current President, that in order to support the troops one must vote for the funding to pursue the misguided policies requiring them is circuitous reasoning of the most cynical sort.
No. To support the troops under the current circumstances is to make the war unnecessary. Talk, negotiate, build lines of friendship and trust. Make war unnecessary. Build toward a future in which those who speak of the need for war and its concomitant horrors are regarded with disdain and dismissed. People must no longer be led to believe that a due regard for the sacrifices of the fallen requires an implicit affirmation of the need for war.
I believe the memory of the fallen is best served by striving to seek an end to war.
I’m sitting here listening to NPR on the radio, as I do virtually every morning, and from time to time I find that the words take on a sort of meaningless droning sound. This brings me to the realization that the world we hear is full of cant, painfully crowded with a meaningless verbal noise.
