By Alan Caruba
Robert E. Lee once said, “It is well that war is so terrible or we should grow too fond of it.”
War is such an integral part of human history that, despite the many appeals against it, we are drawn to it as often the best and only way to settle disputes. The history of America and most nations is a history of conflicts determined by the taking of lives. Were it not for the American Revolution, a long guerrilla conflict waged against one of the greatest powers of its time, we would not be celebrating our Bill of Rights and other achievements in self-rule.
Citing Robert E. Lee reminds us, too, of the horrendous losses of life associated with our own Civil War, but the libraries of the world are filled with books about wars and this new century began with one declared in 1996 by Osama bin Laden against America and Israel. His, too, has largely been a guerrilla conflict and one fought ostensibly to impose a new Islamic Caliphate on the whole of the world.
Americans know we are engaged in a war, but beyond the homeland horror we experienced on September 11, 2001 when three thousand of our countrymen died in New York City and at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., this war has been fought at a great distance and is oddly antiseptic in that civilian life here has been unaffected. What was the advice given to defeat the enemy? Go out and shop.
David Livingston Smith has written “The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War.” A philosopher by trade—he teaches at the University of New England—Smith has pulled together an amalgam of philosophy, biology, history, anthropology, sociology and psychology in an exploration of a question that many others have examined: why do we make war?
The title of his book encompasses his answer, but a brief conclusion is that humans are hard-wired for war going all the way back when our species branched off to become homo sapiens, leaving the other primates to ponder where to find some tasty bananas. Early on, humans expanded beyond their immediate family members to create communities working together to hunt and gather food. That put us in conflict with other communities.
“Right now, as you read this,” wrote Smith, “somebody, somewhere, is planning a war. It may be a genocide, an invasion, a revolution, or even the detonation of a nuclear weapon, but whichever it is, you can be certain that it will destroy bodies, wreck lives, and breed misery for generations to come. Almost 200 million human beings, mostly civilians, have died in wars over the last century, and there is no end of the slaughter in sight. The threat hangs over all of us, constant and unrelenting.”
The survival of America and other Western nations—indeed of any nation—is predicated on victory in war. The present conflicts in which we are actively engaged, in Afghanistan and in Iraq, have been virtually antiseptic in that that are experienced by our population via print news and carefully edited televised reports. We rarely see the true carnage of war. Instead, Americans have been engaged in debates over various legal questions concerning the waging of these wars. Can we hold “enemy combatants” who are not part of a formal military organization? Should we use torture to secure information that would protect civilians and soldiers alike?
But wars are not fought by lawyers, even if military tribunals or courts may play a small role in a conflict. Instead, men—and now women—are recruited to engage the enemy and kill him. In a society whose popular culture is saturated via sports like football and movies that depict symbolic or actual conflict, Americans recoil from the realities of war, while watching public television documentaries of past victories.
“Looking at forty-one modern nation-states between 1800 and 1945, we find that they average 1.4 wars per generation and 18.5 years of war per generation,” wrote Smith. As the world’s Christians prepare to celebrate the birth of the “prince of peace”, Smith reminds us that Jesus said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” The spread of Christianity in Europe was “accomplished in large measure under the shadow of the threat of death.”
This reflects Islam, the latest arrival among the major religions, whose holy book, the Koran, is one long battle plan to impose Islam on all non-believers. Like Christianity, it too was spread by conquest. So is anyone surprised that these two religions are still at war?
The only thing that deters the current war from expanding is either the capacity of fundamentalist Muslims to acquire weapons of mass destruction or the reluctance of nations like America to apply the ones we have to the battlefield.
To further anesthetize the civilian population and our warriors, we do not actually kill people, we “take them out” or “neutralize the target.” A panoply of such phrases underwrites one of the necessities of all wars, the ability of humans to deceive themselves against its blood-soaked realities and to provide a way to sooth our collective conscience that, yes, our military is killing our enemies.
War, said Smith, is a moral issue. “Arguably, it is the moral issue because it is difficult to envisage any activity that is of greater human consequence…Aggressors are often inspired by moral feelings.” This is especially true of the Muslims who have taken up arms against America, otherwise why would 19 Muslims sacrifice their lives to destroy the Twin Towers and attack the Pentagon?
The Bible does not forbid killing: it restricts it. The Commandment is not, “thou shalt not kill”, but translated correctly says, “thou shalt not murder.” The God we worship sanctions war.
Smith concludes that “we are extremely dangerous animals, and the balance of evidence suggests that our taste for killing is not some sort of cultural artifact, but was bred into us over millions of years by natural and sexual selection.” We may be ambivalent about killing, but we do so for a whole range of reasons, good or bad, and this new century is no different from all that have come before.
We need to get on with a successful conclusion to the current war, draw what lessons we can from it, and prepare for the next one. Surrender is not an option.
Alan Caruba writes a weekly column, “Warning Signs”, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com. He also maintains a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.
