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For the week of January 8 - 14, 2003

Opinion Columns

In spite of the
dangers evident

Commentary by DICK DORWORTH


"In spite of the dangers evident in modern forms of war, a revolt from boredom has had much to do with the fact that it is possible to launch these wars. Man was designed by nature to hunt, to struggle, to endure, and to achieve on a personal physical plane; all his glands and hormones are integrated for such dangerous and exciting affairs. It is not normal for the creature to immolate himself for eight or ten hours a day, five or six days a week, in the acrid din of factories, where he is fairly secure but where he does the same one thing forever."

— Philip Wylie, "Generation of Vipers" 1942


This quote found its way into my journals in 1963, and I have often referred to it and thought about its implications for my country and my countrymen during the past 40 years. History is nothing if not repetitive, as evidenced in George Santayana’s well known observation about both history and mankind: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." As the United States readies itself to launch a war it does not need, cannot justify and that a significant number of its more patriotic and thoughtful citizens neither want nor support, it is worth remembering these words of Philip Wylie’s. (It is also worth emphasizing that patriotism is not the purview of only the hawk, the flag waver and the overly obeisant.)

"In spite of the dangers of modern forms of war…" These words were written in 1942, when the technology of waging war was far less dangerous (though no less brutal) than the weapons of "modern" warfare. But they are timeless words that could just as well have been uttered in 30,000 B.C., when man the hunter was developing the first primitive bow, in 8000 B.C. when the walls of Jericho were built to protect the city from marauders, or in 3000 B.C., when the Romans began using oval shields in war, and in Mesopotania where the first helmets for warriors were made of copper, arsenic and bronze. Mesopotania is often referred to as the cradle of the first known human "civilization," as evidenced by the fact that those helmets of war were padded. Interestingly enough, the cradle of the first civilization encompassed what is now the country of Iraq, part of George Bush’s "axis of evil."

How things change, and, yet, the dangers of modern war are only different in scale from what they were in the cradle of civilization in 3000 B.C. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, a war is a war is a war.

"… a revolt from boredom has had much to do with the fact that it is possible to launch these wars." Think of lives so empty that a revolt from boredom into the barbarity that is war is seen as a preferable or at least viable option, keeping in mind that wars are always launched by old men and fought by young ones. Old men using young ones as weapons and cannon fodder are, of course, the practical mechanics of war. The young men who flew the planes of September 11 were put there by old men, just as the young men who would be launched into Iraq will be put there by old men, though there is no evidence the two events are connected. To revolt against boredom is, of course, healthy and honorable, but to replace boredom with war is unconscionable and really unimaginative. And, according to Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., only one member of Congress who voted for giving George Bush the power to launch war on Iraq has a child in the enlisted ranks of the U.S. military, and only a few have children who are officers. This war would be fought neither by the old men who would launch it nor by their children, but, rather, by someone else’s children. That, too, has much to do with the fact that it is possible to launch this war.

"Man was designed by nature to hunt, to struggle, to endure, and to achieve on a personal physical plane … " That man is deeply out of touch with nature’s designs, including his own, is evidenced in the state of the world’s environment, the state of man’s cities, the obesity rates in the U.S. and the malnutrition rates in all too much of the rest of the world, the rates of antidepressant use in the developed nations, the rates of species extinction, ozone holes in the southern hemisphere, acid rain in the northern hemisphere, the mad science of cloning, the atomic bomb, snowmobiles and the SUV, among other things.

"It is not normal for the creature to immolate himself for eight or ten hours a day, five or six days a week, in the acrid din of factories, where he is fairly secure … " It is not normal, but how many people reading this think that it is? An office is only a sophisticated factory, and if the price of being fairly secure is the acceptance of the not normal then the price is too high. Despite its lofty reputation, security is not worth freedom or the design of nature.

"… but where he does the same one thing forever." Who wants to do that? Such a fate would be enough to make a man revolt. Despite the dangers, some are determined to launch a preemptive war against Iraq. War should be a last resort, not the precautionary slaughter a war in Iraq will be.

In his Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech last month, former President Jimmy Carter observed, "War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good."

If war is never a good, always an evil, sometimes a necessary evil, what does that make an unnecessary war? What does it reveal about those who would launch such a war?

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