Thoughts on War

This afternoon I spent my time watching the performances at the Chicago Air show. It was a fun even with lots of incredible stunts performed ranging from antique World War II fighter planes to the Blue Angels. One thing struck me though and stuck in my mind. At one point, the announcers were saying, nearly boasting, about how the C-5 cost about $400,000 dollars just to refuel. What is the role of the C-5? To transport military material to war zones to use in causing mass destruction. How could $400,000 be better used for the people of this country? I can think of a myriad of ways.

I am a pacifist, and damn proud of it. I believe that war is a terrible thing and should be avoided at all costs and that rarely is there such a thing as a just war. I read in one of Kurt Vonnegut’s books (don’t remember which) that he believed that there has been no just American war since World War II, a war which he himself proudly fought in. Thinking about it further, this is a sentiment that I believe as well. Now this country has betrayed the very foundation of its democratic ideals by starting a preemptive war against a nation and its people that faced no danger to us.

War is a terrible, dirty, destructive event. It destroys lives and tears apart families. It kills young men, women, and children and physically destroys their communities. It poisons the environment beyond repair and leaves behind a scar that can take generations to heal over. And all for what? To show which nation’s men have bigger penises? It appears to me no mystery why all or our guns, bombs, planes, rockets, and missiles are all shaped like penises. How is a soldier shown to be more important? By having more penises on his uniform.

There has never been a “clean” war where civilians weren’t affected. A “precision” bomb may take out its intended target, but why do we need 2000 kg. of explosives to do so? An artillery piece may help keep our soldiers on the ground safe by taking out the enemy from afar, but can we say indiscriminate shelling is an honest, clean way of fighting? I’d like to think that we fight cleaner wars than they did hundreds and thousands of years ago when they used to burn down entire cities and wipe out entire populations, but we’re not really. Cities in Vietnam and Iraq with nearly their entire populations had been decimated and destroyed in our unclear efforts against an unclear enemy.

Chicken hawks control our country and send our young men and women off to die for purposes that are not clear to the very citizens they are supposed to represent. These people have not been in war and seen its traumatic and destructive results, and yet they so easily push for armed conflict around the world in their own interests. Rarely do you find an experienced combat veteran of a prior war (Iraq I, Vietnam, Korea, and WWII) lead its people so enthusiastically to conflict. A warrior is not an offensive or deplorable person to be, but the noblest kind of warrior is one who understands his power and is reluctant to use it. He understands his responsibilities and the results of his actions and therefore strives to use his power to bring peace and understanding between conflicting parties. The easy path for a warrior to take, the one that lacks courage, is to resort to violence as a first solution or to decide ahead of time that violent action will be the ultimate answer to a crisis.

Dwight Eisenhower was a great warrior for our country during World War II and later became president. He said the following:

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."

and...

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

And...

"All of us have heard this term 'preventative war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time... I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing."

AND...

“We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Its saddens me to see how clairvoyant he was. Half of our current budget goes towards “Defense” while people starve, lose their jobs, and remain sick without any hope. Is this what our great country has become?

I will say that I have an exception to what I said above, and that is concerning the war in the Balkans. It may have been too late, but by fighting that war as part of an international community, we probably saved thousands of lives in the ethnic cleansing that was already occurring. This should have been done in Rwanda, it should be done in Darfur, and it should be done in any other country where genocide and wholesale slaughter of civilians is happening. Especially as a Jew, I find it troubling when good people stand by and do nothing as thousands upon thousands of people are murdered when their only “transgression” was being born onto this earth.