A. J, we're going to dispense with goods and bads, and
deal with "ises." Humans evolved, and evolution doesn't cut us much
slack. If we were constituted differently, we might not have evolved
and survived as a species. So men complaining about war may be like
women complaining that men only think about sex; if either thing were different,
we might not be here.
The two, not surprisingly, are related. Bonobos, critters that
look like chimpanzees, don't have war. They defuse conflicts by grooming
each other and having sex. There aren't many bonobos left.
Chimps solve conflict by fighting. Then the winners have sex, that
being the "something they get out of it." One strategy is better
for procreation, the other better for protection, and a population needs
both procreation and protection. There aren't many chimps left, either,
but that's because of human-caused loss of chimp habitat, and there are
(I think) more chimps than bonobos.
Is the same true for humans? A news article in early 2003 noted
that fully 12% of the current human population are direct descendants of
Genghis Khan and his siblings. So historically, young men were motivated
to go to war if it represented their only chance to "marry." Old
men preferred to die in "glorious" battle because it beat the alternative,
which involved having other people chew their food for them. That
is to say, old age was not a pleasant affair before modern medicine, and
some preferred to avoid it.
Today, some youngsters join the armed forces, even when war looms, because
it's the only route out of a bad neighborhood and a life of poverty.
(Actually not the only route: Selling drugs gets you out of poverty, affords
the same probability of dying young, and you don't have to take orders
from no stinkin' sergeants.) Others are duped into it, believing
their elders' bullshit about glory and justice.
Suppose we could only stop a genocide by going to war. All other
things being equal, most people would like to see fewer deaths rather than
more. All other things, though, are almost never equal, and I would
tend to suspect decisions based on body-count arithmetic. In any
case, each person must choose his own battles. We have a volunteer
army, but they don't get to vote on where they will fight and where they
won't. It might be worth letting them do that! Phil Ochs said,
"It's always the old who lead us to the war, always the young who fall."
So it's like abortion, which is similarly tragic: I don't like abortion
and I don't like war, but I'm not going to tell women - or men - what they
may or may not do with their bodies.
This is a tough one. I was raised to see preventing further genocides
as a duty, and as a young man I was crushed to see the U.S. fail to act
on that principle, for instance in Cambodia or Rwanda. You're a movie
fan, J; go see The Killing Fields. Should future such situations
arise, I might well decide to rally others to a rescue mission, knowing
violence might result but dedicating myself to miminizing it.
In wars of old, non-combatants suffered in serious, but indirect, ways:
via famine, rape, pillage. In today's wars, innocent bystanders are
far more likely than before to be killed directly. This can happen
in myriad ways, from mined rice fields to mis-aimed missiles to cross-fires
in urban warfare. I hope young people desiring to go to war will
consider the near-inevitability of killing civilians, and think twice and
perhaps decide to stay home in Peoria.
You mention Pearl Harbor, which was a famous failure of U.S. intelligence.
I'll go so far as to say all war is a failure of intelligence, planning,
strategy, communication, or preparation. If a threat is developing
against you, you should, just as in aikido, assemble overwhelming force
at your opponent's weakest point. You tell your opponent what you're
going to do should he not stand down, and then do it. This
is how a mission should be defined and executed.
Even military commanders who have mastered intelligence, planning, strategy,
communication and preparation get caught by ego. They escalate force
beyond what's needed for the mission, responding to "insults" and stooping
to vengeance. Others don't understand mission at all. I heard
a recent speech by a general, who began, "My job is to kill people."
He could as easily and more accurately have said, "My job is to protect
Americans and that may unfortunately involve killing people." That
guy should lose his job before he does any more damage.
There have been isolated human cultures that, like bonobos, shun war.
When threatened, they have hired mercenaries or allowed deviant insiders
to fight on their behalf. The fighters were then exiled when the
conflict ended - if the village survived - so as not to contaminate the
peaceful society. There are, in the modern world, far fewer isolated
cultures. The characteristic, if not the people themselves, may die
out.
So you're right that untrained pacifists may do more harm than good.
Their attitude that violence never settles anything is naive. As
Robert Heinlein noted, violence settled Hitler's hash pretty good.
Work on yourself first, then work for peace! As an aikidoist, you
are peaceable but skilled at forestalling conflict and applying minimum
necessary violence. You position yourself in ways that communicate
your strength and your intention, but you never "attack first." You
don't interpose yourself between someone you want to protect and someone
attacking her - except at the moment a blow is being struck - because it's
unlikely that you understand what's really going on between them.
For the same reason, you would not assassinate even a despotic leader
in cold blood. (Another hypothetical social experiment: Suppose
all international conflicts were customarily settled by assassination.
Leaders would know before running for election that this is what would
happen to them if they piss off another country. This would put a
different complexion on politics, n'est ce pas?) You give everyone
every opportunity to fix up their karma, until and unless they launch another
attack. Only then is matching violence indicated - but if you are
unprepared for their next attack, shame on you. -FP
