War?

They were two postal workers.  When the Ayatollah Khomeiny flexed his muscles in Iran they bravely declared that they would be among the first volunteers to teach `that fakir' a lesson, should their government decide to join the USA in any bellicose action.  The underlying issues mattered little; the Ayatollah's enormous popular support in Iran seemed of no consequence.  They eagerly swallowed the slanted news broadcasts.  The Ayatollah instantly became the personification of evil.  It was as if the tribal warriors within were chomping at the bit, ready to use any excuse to rush out in the next available bayonet charge. 

Amoral, restless, lascivious, and brutal man^[1] is kept in check year after year by the straitjacket of socialisation and the ameliorating influence of women^[2].  The tensions build.  There are releases: domestic violence, crime, cut and thrust at work, sport, prostitutes.  But it has never been enough.  Periodically war has been required to blow the tubes thoroughly, to clear that hard dark mass of waste that sits in the pit of the social gut, and that the ordinary bowel motions of life^[3] won't shift. 

War is an enema.  It is also a cause greater than ourselves to lift us out of our pedestrian lives.  It satisfies the need for faith^[4]; it builds pyramids in the wastelands of our hearts.  A predisposition to warfare courses deep in the veins of man.  It is an aspect of our inherent tribalism^[5] - how can you have a tribe without an enemy tribe to rape and plunder? 

Unfortunately there will probably always be wars^[6].  Hopefully they will not be much more than localised skirmishes between cretinous clans armed with conventional weapons.  Let the former Yugoslavs brutalise each other each generation; let Arabs and Jews engage each other pathetically in interminable conflict; let the Hutus and Tutsis of Rwanda periodically hatchet their neighbours; let Sunni and Shia suffer the consequences of their tedious mutual hatred - in the name of the same God and prophet.  There is nothing that we can do^[7] for these people.  So deep is their hate, and their intrasigence.  Generation upon generation of cumulative ugly ugly vengeance.

The risk we must manage is escalation - geographic escalation and escalation of damage: damage to the biosphere, and damage to the global infrastructure of civilisation^[8]. 

We must act continuously to stop the production and distribution of weapons of mass destruction.  We^[9] need to do this by entering the minds and hearts of the technologists who are indispensable to the maintenance of the technology of war.  We need to offer these technologists alternative livelihoods and outlets for their skills and creativity - the exploration and colonisation of Space in particular^[10].  We also need to do it by knowing who the individuals and families are that most directly benefit from the commerce of war, and by acting directly^[11] upon them.

Any one of our nations may in the future be faced with the prospect of war, a war we did not provoke, a war we did not want.  War may be delivered to our doorstep, and it may enter unbidden through the front door threatening and harming our loved ones, our lives, and our societies.  In such a circumstance pacifism is dysfunctional.  There are times when a military response  is warranted^[12], when killing fellow human beings is your inescapable duty to life and love. 

But such times need to be avoided, almost at any cost; they must truly be times of last resort.  Too often the posturing and publicity that precedes warfare generates a momentum of its own, creating a just cause where there was none.  Too often political and economic agendas at home magnify acts by other nations into justifications for armed intervention.  WWI was outageously unjustified; in WWII there was true evil that needed to be stopped.  Were the Gulf Wars^[13] truly necessary?  What did the world gain from them? 

Committing a nation to war should be an act that constitutionally requires the agreement of at least two truly independent branches of the State.  Often the power to declare war is the preserve of the Executive - a President, for example.  This is so ostensibly because expeditious decision making may be required to save the Nation, decision making that should not be encumbered with the requirement to obtain the agreement of another party.  But war is far too serious a matter to be left to the judgment of one person, or one group of related people^[14].  Moreover, war rarely comes out of the blue; usually the portents gather years beforehand, though not all choose to interpret them as such^[15]. 

Active participation in war should also be a matter of personal choice.  Those not convinced by the propaganda should have the option of not enlisting, without the threat of imprisonment or worse.  In war people's lives are at stake, and their lives are their own to give^[16], not the State's to take.  Conscription is immoral. 

During the anti-Vietnam war protests there was a lovely little flower power poster that asked: `What if they gave a war, and nobody came?'  Regrettably, there will always be many men who will willingly go to the party.  They will be answering a call of nature.  But freedom from conscription and ostracism will allow those of us not ruled by the warrior within to decide whether this is indeed one of those rare occasions when war is truly unavoidable.

Starting a war preemptively because those in control of your nation claim to be certain that your enemy will otherwise strike with weapons of mass destruction rings of self-interested duplicity.  Striking first is prima-facie proof that you have not fully explored all peaceful options, and invoking the name of God for your war is sacrilegious.

Once the unavoidable war has started the force you use should not be out of proportion to that employed by your enemy; your efforts to make the peace should never cease; and the commandment to be kind^[17] is not temporarily suspended.  Torture, rape, and deliberate cruelty are never excusable - not even in war.