Beat the Drum Slowly: The Story of War

2012

CHAPTER 1

It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator. Mahatma Ghandi

WAR - WHAT IT IS - AND IS NOT

Any philosophical examination of war will generally center on four general questions: What is war? What causes war? What is the relationship between human nature and war? Can war ever be morally justifiable?

Defining what war is requires several determinations examining the entities that begin and engage in war. A person’s definition of war often expresses that person’s broader political philosophy, such as limiting war to a conflict between nations or states. Alternative definitions of war include all forms of death and conflict not just between nations and individuals but, between schools of thought, natural disasters, disease or ideologies. Anything that causes premature and unnatural human death can be defined as war.

Mainly, this book will discuss what we will refer to as ‘conventional war.’ The kind of war most of us think of- the grander scale of murder and killing. Answers to the question What causes war? largely depend on the philosopher’s views on determinism and free will. If a human’s actions are beyond his or her control, then the cause of war is irrelevant and inescapable. Those who accept this imbecilic and fatalistic point of view can and should stop reading now, we have nothing to say to one another!

On the other hand, if war indeed results from human choice, then three general groupings of causation can be identified; biological, cultural, and faulty ( diseased) reasoning. While exploring the root causes of conflict, this book investigates the relationship between human nature and the seeming inevitability of war.

Finally, the question remains as to whether war (any war) can ever be morally justified? The ‘Just War’ theory is a useful structure within which a sane and productive discourse on war may be reasonably conducted. In the evolving context of warfare, the moral calculus requires the philosopher to account not only for military personnel and civilians, but also for justifiable targets, strategies, and the use of weapons. One of the best examples of this type of ‘moral dilemma’ was Truman’s decision to incinerate a few hundred thousand obstinate Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, his decision considerably shortened the war and undoubtedly, saved countless American and Japanese lives but, you can bet he had a terrible time reaching that decision and over the remainder of his life could never escape the terrible responsibility and consequences.

Of course, the answers to these questions lead to more specific and applied ethical and political questions. Overall, the philosophy of war is complex and requires one to articulate consistent thought across the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy, human nature, morality and ethics. Thus, this book- it is not at all possible to condense the story of war into any kind of Readers Digest simplistic story. The subject is highly complex and delves into the inner mechanism of the human psyche. To treat it lightly is not to treat it at all. The study of war disserves a great deal of depth and consideration, not just from me but from you, the reader, who must read, consider and question carefully what is presented here.

The Just war; if, and when, one is attacked, either one defends oneself or one gives up without a fight and suffers the consequences. This can and has meant death or imprisonment, slavery and the loss of ones possessions, homes and land. Under such circumstances, it is no surprise that men have fought and are still fighting today in defense of liberty and property.

Of course, under the banner of the just war, we must also consider pre-emptive war. In this, the determination of who exactly is the initiator of the conflict, meaning who attacks whom, can involve a rather complicated calculus. On one side, there must be a perceived real and pending threat wherein the future actions and consequences of those actions by the ‘threatening’ side are so imminent and so profound that the one initiating the attack is compelled to eliminate the threat before it can be manifested.

We have seen examples of this when, on September 6th, 2007, the Israelis attacked and destroyed Syria's al-Kibar nuclear weapons facility, surprising the world and Syria most of all. When ( some might argue if) the Israelis do the same in Iran it won’t be as great a surprise but, again, it would appear that they have little choice.

The first question is what is war and how is it recognized, categorized and defined? The student of war needs carefully consider the definitions of war for, like any social phenomena, definitions are vary and often the proposed definition masks a particular political or philosophical stance held by its author. This is as true of dictionary definitions as well as of articles on military or political history.

In our above example, Syria and Iran had already declared war on Israel through their words and actions. To sit back and wait until they carried out their threats was and remains completely unacceptable, irresponsible, unconscionable and quite impossible. America, and indeed, the entire civilized world, faces the same choice. Islamic Terrorists cannot be allowed to carry out their destructive actions and must, if at all possible, be stopped first. Thus, nations and states can be forced into initiating preventative measures against perceived threats. The advent of global Islamic terrorism and the necessary pre-emptive warfare response sadly moves the hands of the atomic clock just a little closer to the point of human annihilation. The fact that Pakistan, a nervous and typically unstable Islamic country, already has an arsenal of atomic weapons has to be seen as a chilling reality and one that must somehow, at all costs, be contained.

Cicero defines war broadly as a contention by force; Hugo Grotius adds that war is the state of contending parties, considered as such; Thomas Hobbes notes that war is also an attitude: By war, is meant a state of affairs, which may exist even while its operations are not continued; Denis Diderot comments that war is a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic; for Karl von Clausewitz, war is the continuation of politics by other means, and so on. Each definition has its strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writer’s broader philosophical positions.

For example, the notion that wars only involve states, as Clausewitz implies, belies the assumption that politics can only involve states and that war is, in some manner or form, a reflection of ‘political activity.’ ‘War,’ defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is a state of open and declared, hostile armed conflict between states or nations, or a period of such conflict. This definition captures a particularly political-rationalistic account of war and warfare, i.e., that war needs to be explicitly declared and to be between states to be a war.

We find Rousseau also arguing this position: "War is constituted by a relation between things, and not between persons. War then, under this definition, is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State, a social contract. Of course, this definition was once perhaps useful but clearly, today, in light of the Islamic terrorist, a non-state actor, no longer retains total validity. In any case, wars clearly must take on human form as they are fought by humans and humans die.

Here’s the crux of this discussion; If we, as a species, are to survive, (perhaps we should say disserve to survive) war must and has to be permanently (and forever) eliminated from all human behavior! Think about this carefully. Let us posit this statement as a given; war, (meaning the murder of another human being, singular or plural) on the part of the one causing it, is manifestly purely an evil act of insanity and an admission of intellectual and human inadequacy on the part of the aggressor.

Further, let us say that man, if nothing else, is a rational being, endowed by God with superior intellect with which to construct and maintain civil society. Then, further, for evil men to instigate murder, for any reason, is an admission of the failure of reason to resolve dispute and therefore a stupid and evil act of insanity. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?

If a man attacks another, the man being attacked, just as the state, has the right to defend against the attacker. Thus, by any definition, be it one man against another, or entire armies, war exists and a crime committed. It is here we must look into the mindset of the attacker for surely he is truly mentally inadequate and sick. Hitler is a very real example. His rage is caused by his sickness and therefore, he can rightly be judged insane. At the end, quivering in his bunker and frothing in range, he was well and truly insane. Equally, anyone who advocates or defends anyone strapping a bomb on a kid and sending him out to blow up a bus load of other kids is a sick individual and, just as a rabid dog, must be destroyed, there is no argument or rationale on this sad old earth to treat him in any other way! Thank God, the Israelis understand this as well as they do. Jail is far to kind for these mad-dogs!

Palestinian arguments in defense of suicide bombings are absurd, irrational and pathetic in every possible respect! Anyone seriously making such an argument is as sick as the bomb-maker and all those involved. Ghandi, by contrast, forced the colonizing Brits to leave India using non-violent techniques. The Palestinians (whoever they are) if they were not so genetically unstable and prone to violence, can do the same- with worldwide social media, even easier. Today, the Israeli, Palestinian problem dispute is so filled with historical hatred and blood feuds such that simple solutions defies reason.

One who is attacked however, like the Israelis, ( and America after 9/11) is reacting in a perfectly sane and just manner by defending himself and attacking his attacker. It is obvious that the act of attacking, in and of itself, must be adjudged by rational humans an act of mental instability. By this reasoning, all who, without warning, negotiation or provocation, initiate attacks and wars, are likely, at a minimum, insane. The side starting the war, in pursuing violence vs. reason and negotiation, is acting insanely and I hope, that some day, they will be adjudged to be acting inhumanly, rendering themselves as pariahs and outcasts. Clearly, the crazed, murderous and angry Muslims who drove our lovely aircraft into our remarkable buildings were purely and simply insane!

If humanity is to survive, we all must declare war to be unacceptable and insane. We must work to weed out those prone to this particular type of mental sickness, meaning those with a proclivity to engage in aggression against others. These diseased individuals and anti-social animals must be isolated and kept far away from normal humanity and far from positions of influence and power wherein they might have a opportunity to engage in that behavior. Today, the principal culprits are obviously those whose minds and bodies are infected with the incurable disease of radical Islam.

To say that war is merely the continuation of diplomacy by other means is, in itself, purely insane and stupid. War is not the sport of kings nor is there anything noble, grand or honorable to be gained in war. All war is horror, dirty, bloody, ugly and vicious. War exhibits the very worst of human nature, if humanity is to survive, war, be it personal, civil or international, must be permanently eliminated from the repertoire of human behavior.

In any conflict between groups, individuals or countries, those unable to resolve differences using their collective intellects, resulting in one side physically attacking the other, are demonstrating a clear lack of imagination and intellect and the victory of evil over good. The side initiating hostilities is demonstrating that they are incapable of exercising reason and, to that extent, are irrational and acting insanely.

Do we need to differentiate between the murder of an individual and a war resulting in the murder of millions? Can we make a distinction between the word ‘killing’ and ‘murder,’ should we? In both cases, the results are the same, dead bodies!

The military uses the term killing and much prefers this to ‘murder,’ which carries the connotation of ‘criminal’ behavior. I submit that if we all could agree to use the term ‘murder’ for all conflict related deaths we might be more mindful of the horror and perhaps less willing to engage in such acts. Perhaps, a rational solution regarding war terminology would be to refer to those killed by the aggressor as ‘murdered’ while reserving the term killing for those terminated by the party who was attacked.

The military historian, John Keegan offers a dated but interesting characterization of the political-rationalist theory of war in his A History of War. He says, It is assumed to be an orderly affair in which states are involved, in which there are declared beginnings and expected ends, easily identifiable combatants, and high levels of obedience by subordinates. This form of rational war is narrowly defined, and distinguished by the expectation of sieges, pitched battles, skirmishes, raids, reconnaissance, patrol and outpost duties, with each possessing their own conventions. As such, Keegan notes the rationalist theory does not deal well with pre-state or non-state peoples and their warfare.

There are other schools of thought on war’s nature other than the political-rationalist account. The student of war must be careful, as noted above, not to incorporate a too-narrow or normative account of war. If war is stupidly defined as only something that occurs only between states, then wars between nomadic groups or attacks by stateless terrorists can not be mentioned, nor would hostilities on the part of a displaced, non-state group against a state be considered war. Clearly, this definition is far to narrow to be of any practical use in the modern world.

A fatalistic and, to me, idiotic alternative definition of war is that it is an all-pervasive phenomenon of the universe. Accordingly, battles are mere symptoms of the underlying belligerent nature of the universe; such a description corresponds with a Heraclitean or Hegelian philosophy in which change (physical, social, political, economical, etc) can only arise out of war or violent conflict. Heraclitus stupidly decries that war is the father of all things, and Hegel, with equally limited imagination, echoes his sentiments. It is surprising to me that such so called great minds fail to comprehend the sickening reality of war and roundly condemn it as a barbarous act illustrative of the greatest of all human failures..

Interestingly, even Voltaire, the so-called embodiment of enlightenment, followed this line: Famine, plague, and war are the three most famous ingredients of this wretched world…Some animals are perpetually at war with each other…Air, earth and water can be arenas of destruction. These surprising ‘declarations of despair’ leave one empty and entirely without hope of uplifting and changing human nature.

Surely, all these definitions are of limited value. We have stated that any behavior resulting in the murder of a person or persons is purely evil. Those of us sufficiently prescient to understand and to know that evil exists because good exists understand that one without the other would result in us having no useful concept of good or evil. This then is the state of mind of the secular rationalist- they, having no true knowledge, belief or comprehension of right and wrong, see everything through the clouded lens of moral relativity. For them, Islam is the same as Christianity, which is entirely wrong and exhibits their extraordinary ignorance of either. These poor fools live their limited joyless and sad little lives without a moral compass. They stumble through life, finally dying with no idea what’s next! They hope nothing!

Alternatively, the Oxford Dictionary expands wars definition to include any active hostility or struggle between living beings; a conflict between opposing forces or principles. This is a little; better and avoids the narrowness of the political-rationalist conception by admitting the possibility of metaphorical, non-violent clashes between systems of thought, such as of religious doctrines or of trading companies. This perhaps indicates a too-broad definition. Trade is certainly a different kind of activity than war, although trade occurs in war and trade often motivates wars. (Greed) The O.E.D. definition also seems to echo Heraclitean metaphysics, in which opposing forces act on each other to generate change and in which war is the product of such metaphysics. We have, from two popular and influential dictionaries, definitions that connote particular philosophical positions. Here it is left to you, dear reader, to make your own determination. Of course, if you are one who has actually experienced the hideous nature of war, you already have a clear set of feelings and nothing more need be said!

The plasticity and history of the English language also means that commonly used definitions of war may incorporate and subsume meanings borrowed and derived from other, older languages: the relevant root systems being Germanic, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Such descriptions may linger in oral and literary depictions of war, for we read of war in poems, stories, anecdotes and histories that may encompass older conceptions of war. Nonetheless, war’s descriptions residing in the literature left by various writers and orators often possess similarities to modern conceptions.

My three years in Vietnam however leave me convinced that those who wax metaphysical over war have never been in a war and know nothing of which they speak. There in no nobility in any war- there is only insanity and ugliness- massive stupidity and ultimately, for many on both sides, mass death with rotting corpses littering the land... Show me anything good in such things!

The differences arise from the writer’s, poets, or orator’s judgments and experience of war, which attempt to suggest that the Ancient Greek conception of war is not so different from our own. Both could recognize the presence or absence of war. However, etymologically war’s definition does refer to conceptions of war that have either been discarded or been imputed to the present definition. A cursory review of the roots of the word ‘war’ provides the philosopher with a glimpse into its conceptual status within communities and over time.

For example, the root of the English word ‘war’, werra, is Frankish-German, meaning confusion, discord, or strife, and the verb ‘werran’ meaning to confuse or perplex. War certainly generates confusion, as Clausewitz noted calling it the fog of war, but that does not discredit the notion that war is ‘organized’ to begin with.

The Latin root of ‘bellum’ gives us the word belligerent, and duel, an archaic form of bellum; the Greek root of war is ‘polemos,’ which gives us polemical, implying an aggressive controversy. The Frankish-Germanic definition hints at a vague enterprise, a confusion or strife, which could equally apply to many social problems besetting a group; arguably it is of a lower order sociological concept than the Greek, which draws the mind’s attention to suggestions of violence and conflict, or the Latin, which captures the possibility of two sides doing the fighting.

The present employment of ‘war’ may imply the clash and confusion embedded in early definitions and roots, but it may also, as we have noted, unwittingly incorporate conceptions derived from particular political schools. An alternative definition that the author has worked on is that ‘ war is a ‘state of organized, open-ended collective conflict or hostility engaged in by individuals, groups, states or nature resulting in human death.’

This definition is derived from contextual common denominators that are elements that are common to all wars, and which provide a useful and robust definition of the concept. This working definition has the benefit of permitting more flexibility than the O.E.D. version, a flexibility that I believe crucial if we are to examine and comprehend war not merely a conflict between states (that is, the rationalist position), but also a conflict between non-state peoples, non-declared actions, and highly organized, politically controlled wars as well as culturally evolved, ritualistic wars and guerrilla uprisings, that appear to have no centrally controlling body and may perhaps be described as emerging spontaneously. Perhaps the drug wars motivated by a kind of ‘trade’ and the wars of liberation waged by rebels in Colombia are valid examples?

The political issue of defining war poses the first philosophical problem, but once that is acknowledged, a definition that captures the clash of arms, the state of mutual tension and threat of violence between groups, the authorized declaration by a sovereign body, and so on, can be drawn upon to distinguish some wars from riots and rebellions, collective violence from personal violence, metaphorical clashes of values from actual or threatened clashes of arms.

Actually, war once fully engaged in, always descends into semi-organized chaos and bedlam with death the only true winner. All plans go to hell with the first shot! In every case, throughout man’s bloody history, wars serve only to demonstrate and underscore the failure of reason and intellect over whatever evil force motivated the aggressor. There is no philosophic metaphors allegories, poetry, songs, books or plays that can mask the ‘stink of death’ when the subject is seeking to glorify war. Of course, it is only those whose hearts have been burned by the fires of war who can truly comprehend the horror of the battlefield.

CHAPTER 2

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity. DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, speech, Jan. 10, 1946

WAR AND ITS CAUSES

What causes war? Various sub-disciplines have grappled with war’s etiology, but each in turn, as with definitions of war, often reflects a tacit or explicit acceptance of broader philosophical issues on the nature of determinism and freedom.

For example, if it is claimed that man is not free to choose his actions (strong determinism) then war becomes a fated fact of the universe, one that humanity has no power to challenge. Again, the range of opinions under this banner is broad, from those who claim war to be a necessary and ineluctable event, one that man can never shirk from, to those who, while accepting war’s inevitability, claim that man has the power to minimize its ravages, just as prescriptive medicines may minimize the risk of disease or lightning rods the risk of storm damage.

The implication is that man is not responsible for his actions and hence not responsible for war. Wherein lies its cause then becomes the intellectual quest: in the medieval understanding of the universe, the stars, planets and combinations of the four substances (earth, air, water, fire) were understood as providing the key to examining human acts and dispositions. While the modern mind has increased the complexity of the nature of the university, many still refer to the universe’s material nature or its laws for examining why war arises. Some seek more complicated versions of the astrological vision of the medieval mind (e.g., Kondratieff cycle theories), whereas others delve into the newer sciences of molecular and genetic biology for explanations.

In a weaker form of determinism, theorists claim that man is a product of his environment-however that is defined-but he also possesses the power to change that environment. Arguments from this perspective become quite intricate, for they often presume that ‘mankind’ as a whole is subject to inexorable forces that prompt him to wage war, but that some people’s acts-those of the observers, philosophers, scientists-are not as determined, for they possess the intellectual ability to perceive what changes are required to alter man’s martial predispositions. Again, the paradoxes and intricacies of opinions here are curiously intriguing, for it may be asked what permits some to stand outside the laws that everybody else is subject to?

Others, who emphasize man’s freedom to choose, claim that war is a product of his choice and hence is completely his responsibility. But thinkers here spread out into various schools of thought on the nature of choice and responsibility. By its very collective nature, considerations of war’s causation must encroach into political philosophy and into discussions on a citizen’s and a government’s responsibility for a war.

Such concerns obviously trip into moral issues (to what extent is the citizen morally responsible for war?), but with regards war’s causation, if man is responsible for the actual initiation of war it must be asked on whose authority is war enacted? Descriptive and normative problems arise here, for one may inquire who is the legal authority to declare war, then move to issues of whether that authority has or should have legitimacy.

For example, one may consider whether that authority reflects what ‘the people’ want (or should want), or whether the authority informs them of what they want (or should want). Are the masses easily swayed by the ideas of the élite, or do the élite ultimately pursue what the majority seeks? Here, some blame aristocracies for war (e.g., Nietzsche, who actually extols their virtues in this regard) and others blame the masses for inciting a reluctant aristocracy to fight.

Those who thus emphasize war as a product of man’s choices bring to the fore his political and ethical nature, but once the broad philosophical territory of metaphysics has been addressed other particular actual causes of traditional and most non-traditional war can be noted. These can be divided into three principal groupings: those who seek to blame war’s causation on man’s biology, those that look to his culture, and those who, like me, who find causative factors in his inadequate faculty of reason.

Some claim war to be a product of man’s inherited biology, with disagreements raging on the ensuing determinist implications. Examples of this include those that claim man to be ‘naturally aggressive’ like a mad dog, or driven by natural sense of territorial defense. A more complex analyses incorporates ‘game theory’ and ‘genetic evolution’ to explain the occurrence of violence and war.

Within this broad school of thought, some accept that man’s belligerent drives can be channeled into more peaceful pursuits (William James), some worry about man’s lack of inherited inhibitions to fight with increasingly dangerous weapons (Konrad Lorenz), and others claim the natural process of evolution will sustain peaceful modes of behavior over violent (Richard Dawkins). Dawkins is a man with whom we agree wholeheartedly.

Rejecting biological determinism, culturalists seek to explain war’s causation in terms of particular ‘cultural institutions.’ Again determinism is implied when proponents claim that war is solely a product of man’s culture or society, with different opinions arising as