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?