WAR WITHOUT BLOOD

At a recent party, with the influence of a few drinks, I got pretty riled up by a discussion of Obama and his announcement that he would be sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. I invoked the names of Dr. King, Gandhi and Howard Zinn. I yelled a bit unnecessarily, considering I was only amongst fellow left-leaners; not hard-core pacifist-folk, but loudness was out of order. A bit ironic that mankind’s bloodlust inspired my own rage – a subtle reminder that peace has human nature for an adversary.

I am not opposed to finding bin Laden, or seeking Justice. But I don’t believe Justice comes in the shape of bombs and bullets. Furthermore, I find the idea that the US can stamp out terrorism delusional – terrorism is a tactic, not a belief system in and of itself. And trying to end terrorism by imposing democracy at gunpoint shows even greater misunderstanding: while terrorism is not a belief system, democracy is, and not just a method of governance. Being a government for and by the people, it only comes when people want the way of life that it brings.

But these are problems merely of contemporary United States foreign policy, and though our dealings in this field are a persistent blemish of shame, exacerbated by such crimes as those in Latin America (banana republics, the war on drugs), and Vietnam, it is but a brief chapter in the history of warfare. And I have come to the opinion that we cannot force an end to that history in one single act of grace. Protestors and pacifists, please, carry on. But I would like to ponder how we might progress in the present, begin the next chapter on the way to finishing the story of war.

First we must attack our perception of war. For instance, prominent in the media over the last couple of years has been the issue of torture. It is an insidious practice and I would stand with those who have called for prosecuting those involved under the Bush administration. But we need to recognize the hypocrisy of the usual outcry against torture. If I may, I will us John McCain here as an example. He was an outspoken critic of torture, understandable given his own personal experience, but has been a supporter for the Iraq War, championing the 2008 troop surge. So, why would someone consider it inexcusable to inflict pain and distress on an individual to get what they want and yet desirable to destroy a nation, sacrifice 4,000 countrymen and between 100,000 to 1,000,000 civilians (depending on your source) to achieve a vague goal in a far off desert. I see both scenarios as inhumane, but we must look at this stark comparison. A solitary scared man with no hope of escape is subjected to prolonged pain. We don’t know the questions he is asked, but we may guess they amount to “Where are the terrorists?” And on the other side of the scale, over one million souls are sent to their graves; essentially offerings to the same dark alter for that same question, “Where are the terrorists?” (Never mind that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11… But the equation, with different statistics, still applies to Afghanistan or with a different question or desire to anywhere). In a strictly utilitarian sense, torture seems the less evil option. And yet our politicians have chosen BOTH (in recent past) when many of us would prefer neither.

Here we segue to my next point. We often forget that politicians speak for us. And it is easy to forget. They often don’t act in our best interest. They often don’t listen to the public and instead carry out the desires of a few rich and powerful elite. But their failings do not break the bond between us. If we are to end the violent spread of democracy and instead inspire that spread, we must really believe in it and fully absorb the concept. This is our country, and everyday we choose to live here and not under monarchy, not under dictatorship. That means that we all represent the nation, and the nation represents us all. The carnage our politicians inflict is on all our hands. It is easy to dismiss this or even celebrate it (for some) from the armchair and frankly, I don’t know how to make a person really meditate on the notion that innocent people have been and will be killed in their name, on their behalf, and with weapons they PAID for (you pay taxes, don’t you?). Others more capable than I have given proper weight to the gore factor of war and I won’t rehash that here. It is a tragedy that requires sanctity in it’s telling to give due respect to the sacrifice of the soldiers and their families. Those stories are out there and I leave you to find them as recounting them is not my function.

Still, there will remain those who are married to their idea of patriotism, enthusiastic about the military aesthetic. Even I will admit to a life long fascination with warplanes, to having played with GI Joe action figures and toted toy guns as a child. Laser tag, paintball, video games, museums, memorials, and camouflage underwear: we have draped our society in countless tributes to military glory. And we hammer home flag worship in our schools, nudge children into team sports, all creating an atmosphere conducive to “support for the troops.” And here it seems a good moment to restate the old saw that old men make war for their own ends, but send young men to do the actual killing and dying. We tell ourselves that our enemies are evil, but that is rarely true. It is tiresome to keep letting hawks point to Hitler to justify all of our subsequent misdeeds (due credit here goes to Howard Zinn for making this point in a recent Bill Moyers interview). I don’t dispute he was a cruel mad man, but he never would have come to power had it not been for the hardship and humiliation Germany experienced from the demands of the Versailles Treaty – the result of WWI, the blame for which could be easily spread around. As Tolstoy philosophized in War and Peace, the course of history is not shaped by the will of individual men, but by the swell of circumstances that make their names and the unconscious will of the masses. It is the masses that allow the spilling of so much blood and it is the masses that do all the dying. So yes, sometimes a devil comes to power, but the soldiers on the ground are at worst only misguided, and more likely conscripted by law or herd behavior. But the usual war is either a power struggle or a clash of culture. Vietnam and the Korean War for example (proxies to the Cold War) were fought because of shared hatred of opposing political and economic beliefs. Such a dispute is more suitable for an undergraduate political-science class. If we recognize this weakness for conflict, we might be able to harness that propensity.

What I propose will seem radical, and yet it is more compatible with the current norm than to just give up war completely. As Eisenhower warned, the military-industrial-complex is too ingrained in the structure of our society, government and economy so that even if our leaders were blessed with a moment of enlightenment, it would be almost catastrophic to end war. Because to truly end it would mean disarmament; the jobs lost alone would have a devastating impact: factories and science research shutting down, military bases closing, entire towns dependent on said facilities left destitute and soldiers suddenly unemployed. We are not ready for the final phase of peace. And we must remember how much conflict is part of our nature. Rather, the next logical step is not to end war, but end killing. If we cannot muster a devotion to diplomacy then let us strive toward a devotion to the value of life. Perhaps you are confused. But as a country that claims the moral high ground, it is surprising that the police doctrine of not shooting unless shot at does not extend to the military. More relevant to my plan is that in law enforcement we already have forms of non-lethal weapons including tasers, rubber bullets, and rock-salt or bean bag cartridges for shotguns. These are rudimentary and perhaps inefficient for military scale. But they show us that the concept is possible. So it will call on our human ingenuity that we are so smugly proud of to develop new technology. Imagine turning to the minds that have given us sniper rifles accurate to 2,000 meters and laser-guided bombs and demanding they churn out non-lethal equivalents? At this point, you might cry out that the enemy will not give up his bullets, his bombs. Well, first, I say, this is another job for our scientists, set them to work on better body armor and better ways of deterring bombs or missiles. Second, I say that a soldier is no less vulnerable to gunfire and explosives because he has a gun in his own hands. The devastation of IEDs in the current wars has demonstrated this too well. Third I point out that the US being the primo super-power at this time would have an excellent chance at persuading Europe and parts of Asia to follow these new guidelines and in doing so we would be turning off the main spigots of weapons production. Insurgents might be making their own car bombs, but they can’t build a tank or an M-16. Non-lethal warfare aspires to be an ideology, a cultural construct so that it could spread, so that if today’s friends are tomorrow’s enemies, we would fight with equal footing, much as the Geneva conventions put limits on us at present (though I concede not everyone follows them). It also comes with the precedence of domestic law-enforcement that I mentioned before. Of course, police have prisons, and while “prisoners of war exist”, the military is not in the business of taking prisoners. This would be difficult in non-lethal warfare and I won’t pretend to have a solution. But I would call on our greater minds to consider this and other problems. My goal here is not to provide the answer to world peace, rather to change the conversation since w have been stuck for the last 10,000 year history of civilization.

We know what we are, at least when we look honestly. We are violent, we like to root for the home team and we are ingenious. Knowing what we are doesn’t mean we can or must change, but we should make a moral choice to channel our instincts. We like to root for the home team: then let us take pride in our unwillingness to kill. We are violent: then let us lay down our guns, because we can’t be trusted with them. We are ingenious: then let us devise technology to foil our inclinations to fight mortal wars. We must be self aware and realize that our reasons for waging war are always foolish. Why meet this foolishness with the seriousness of death? It’s wonderful to take up picket signs, march and shout against atrocity, and I hope that continues, even escalates. But we need to have something tangible happening at the functional level so we can progress to a pacifist society at the pace most digestible for the average human and for the corporate giants that profit from the arms trade. That means incremental change. So I have suggested such a change, broad in scope, but when broken down in chunks, something that can be executed. Calling it practical would be both insensitive to the gravity of our condition and naïve when accounting for the stubbornness of politics. But it is an idea for a different kind of peace that allows for human ego until this trait has been bred out of our species.