Why Study War, Indeed

On By JonathanIn Culture, History, WarLeave a comment

Via Arts & Letters, two articles on City Journal came to my attention, both- one explicitly, one somewhat less so- extolling the virtues of war against the naysaying of ignorant and probably subversive peaceniks. I shall deal with one below, and, Lord willing, examine the other later this week.

First, Victor David Hanson describes in Why Study War? the lack of knowledge about things military amongst college students- and most other Americans for that matter. He spends a considerably amount of time detailing a percieved lack of attention in academia to war: as proof he offers the dearth of military historians in contemporary academia. Herein lies my first quibble. Being a college student, and a student of history at that, I have spent a little time in and around academia listening to peopel talk about history and reading book after book about history. My particular area of interest is things medieval: which means a great deal of war, and a great deal of religion. My library- which includes some quite contemporary titles amongst the older dustier ones- has plenty of volumes overflowing with gore and battle. My classes- albiet so far mostly at a small private, more-conservative-than-many college- have had a great bit of battle and bloodshed, and I have spent many enjoyable hours discussing long-gone military campaings with both my professors and fellow students.

Perhaps my experience is the exception; perhaps modern academia really has insulated itself from the real world of combat and warfare. However, I doubt whether this is Mr Hanson’s true concern- rather, as he reveals further into his article, it isn’t that academia ignores warfare, but it doesn’t talk about it correctly. He complains of the focus by historians on silly things like Japanese internment camps, refugee issues, and gender and race roles in war. Such things distract from the real business of military history, which should, as we gather later in the article, be concerned merely with winning wars for the right side, and encouraging the citizens of the republic in their support of war. If historians keep up the business of looking deeper into war and its consequences they will probably only discourage the war-planners. Moving into the heart of the article- where Mr Hanson lays forth what we would be learning from military history, were we to study it- we are treated to the following gem:

Affluent Western societies have often proved reluctant to use force to prevent greater future violence. “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things,” observed the British philosopher John Stuart Mill. “The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”

No examples of these affluent societies are given- perhaps we are meant to think of those degenerate Swiss in their mountain hideouts eating chocolate and eschewing taking up the White Man’s Burden? One is hard pressed to think of modern Western nations who have ever expressed a great deal of genuine reservation towards massive displays of force against their neighbors, their own people, and the rest of the world.

Hanson continues with the tired attempt at linking the current occupation of Iraq to World War II- the good war, don’t you know- and mouthing off platitudes about appeasement and such. It would seem that the only lessons we are to draw from the study of military history are militaristic ones, that we must go steady on, fight for our noble cause, and never ever give into appeasement. That there may be other lessons to draw from the study of human conflict does not show up on the campaign map. Yet I could think of a few, drawing upon conflicts and sources I do not think Mr Hanson could have any trouble with. From the story of Xenophon and his Ten Thousand- one of my favorites- we should have easily drawn the lesson that regime change in Mesopotamia isn’t as easy as the war salesmen make it, and one should always, always have a good exit strategy. Failing that, you’d best pray the gods you have a Xenophon or two on hand. Dusty old Thucydides could have told us a great deal about democracies that play at empire, and how real wars are much more ambiguous than good guys versus bad guys (sometimes so ambiguous one gets a headache trying to keep all the alliances and turn abouts straight). Herodotus, besides illuminating us on how Egyptian cats immolate themselves on occasion, has a great deal to say about pre-emptive wars of conquest, and how scrappy seemingly dissunited and even downright obscurantist peoples can be in the face of invasion and occupation. I could continue, up to the most recent conflicts. One should learn from Thucydides at the very beginning that war is hardly the moralistic force Mr Hanson seems to think of it- the reality is far messier and less romantic. One may also learn that the best course for the average citizen in dealing with war is to look carefully into the mass of propoganda and claims and fervor that accompanies any war, and try to discern the truth behind the conflict.

Mr Hanson does pen one line of exceeding veracity:

Some men will always prefer war to peace; and other men, we who have learned from the past, have a moral obligation to stop them.

Indeed. And since, as history teaches us, those amongst us who prefer war usually cloak their violence in appeals to freedom, nation-state, religion, pride, democracy, destiny, and heaven knows what else, it is our duty to see through the fog of war they weave, and stop them, if possible, before the bullets start flying. History hardly teaches us utter pacificism- but it isn’t really pacificism the war-mongerers- right and left, by the way- have issue with, as it’s hardly a major force in the world. Their issue is with people who’d rather not stage bloody revolutions, or subdue the natives, or spread democracy- or communism or whatever- at the point of the gun (for, as should be evident from the simplest perusal of their propoganda through the past hundred plus years, rightists and leftists diverge but little in their worship of the gun barrel). A proper study of history and its all too numerous wars teaches us the horror of war, and hence the advisability, from merely a pragmatic point, of eschewing all but defensive war. History also teaches us that one rarely needs to incite people to the defense of their homelands; it is rather more difficult to convince the average person that it is in his interest to fight and conquer an unknown people five thousand miles away, for what and for whom he never really knows.  

Remembering Hiroshima

On By JonathanIn East & West, History, WarLeave a comment

Mr. Tanimoto, fearful for his family and church, at first ran toward them by the shortest route, along Koi Highway. He was the only person making his way into the city; he met hundreds and hundreds who were fleeing, and every one of them seemed to be hurt in some way. The eyebrows of some were burned off and skin hung from their faces and hands. Others, because of the pain, held their arms up as if carrying something in both hands. Some were vomiting as they walked. Many were naked or in shreds of clothing. On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patters- of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin), the shapes of flowers they had had on their kimonos. Many, although injured themselves, supported relatives who were worse off. Almost had their heads bowed, looked straight ahead, were silent, and showed no expression whatever.

John Hersey, Hiroshima

On debunking the justifications for the use of the atomic bomb: Remembering Hiroshima, via Antiwar.com.

Today is, unfortunately, not merely occasion for remembering the callous destruction of a city and its people in the recent past; it should also be occasion to stiffen our resolve against present-day leaders who would just as readily employ the same brutal weapons again.

Hadji Murad

On By JonathanIn Books, Culture, East & West, History, WarLeave a comment

A decade or so before his death, Leo Tolstoy completed a novella (published posthumously however) derived in part from his experiences in the Russian military during Russia’s drive to conquer the various predominately Muslim tribesmen of the North Caucasus region. Titled Hadji Murad (available here for free if you don’t mind reading long on-line texts) after its protagonist, the story is tightly crafted and reflective of a mature novelist- for despite its brevity, Tolstoy manages to construct, a la War and Peace, a number of stories within the overall narrative, with several developed characters whose lives all, in some way or another, intersect with that of Hadji Murad. Hadji Murad himself is a Chechen warrior whose varying fortunes and clashes lead him to fight other Caucasus factions, then the Russian invaders, before aligning himself tenuously with the Russians in an ultimately tragic bid to save his family from a powerful Chechen imam.

While Tolstoy is careful to offer little interpretative commentary within the story, his sympathies quite clearly lie with Hadji Murad first, then the Chechen people, and finally the conscripted Russian soldiers sent into the war. The closest he comes to outright moral proclamation within the narrative itself lies in his subtle and not-so-subtle digs at Russian- and by extension, Western- society are quite evident as he describes the moral habits- or lack thereof- of various levels of Russian society, culminating in a deliciously scathing portrayal of Czar Nicholas:

Although the plan of a gradual advance into the enemy’s territory by means of felling forests and destroying the food supplies was Ermolov’s and Velyaminov’s plan, and was quite contrary to Nicholas’s own plan of seizing Shamil’s place of residence and destroying that nest of robbers — which was the plan on which the dargo expedition in 1845 (that cost so many lives) had been undertaken — Nicholas nevertheless attributed to himself also the plan of a slow advance and a systematic felling of forests and devastation of the country. It would seem that to believe the plan of a slow movement by felling forests and destroying food supplies to have been his own would have necessitated hiding the fact that he had insisted on quite contrary operations in 1845.

But he did not hide it and was proud of the plan of the 1845 expedition as well as of the plan of a slow advance — though the two were obviously contrary to one another. Continual brazen flattery from everybody round him in the teeth of obvious facts had brought him to such a state that he no longer saw his own inconsistencies or measured his actions and words by reality, logic, or even simple common sense; but was quite convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and mutually contradictory they might be, became reasonable, just, and mutually accordant simply because he gave them.

Tolstoy’s depiction of Islamic society is generally sympathetic and carries very little “Orientalistic” baggage; there is a sense of determinism throughout, but this is perhaps as much for Tolstoy an aspect of history in general as it is a mirror of “Oriental fatalism.” One of the strengths of the book lies in its depection of Chechnya and the war there as being complex, consisting of all sorts of cross-currents, as subject to change as the people making them up- an element that in some ways struggles with the theme of tragic determination. While it’s rather cliche to speak of contemporary relevance, it’s also hard not to notice it: the present conflicts raging in various parts of the Islamic world- including Chechnya- are multi-faceted, tragic affairs. Hadji Murad presents, on one level, a “clash” of East and West: but Tolstoy is far to insightful to imagine even a morally neutral clash of civilisations. Instead, he presents clashes within civilisations, across cultural lines, alongside bonds formed across cultures, as in the friendship formed between Murad and a Russian soldier, Butler:

With the arrival of Hadji Murad and his close acquaintance with him and his murids, Butler was even more captivated by the poetry of the peculiar, vigorous life led by the mountaineers. He got himself a jacket, cherkeska and leggings, and he felt he was a mountaineer too, living the same life as these people.

The narrative structure of the novel itself reflects the complexity of reality in the Caucasus: people, groups, and conflicts all collide, collude, and collide again. Certainly, Tolstoy rejects the Russian imperial project, but he does not pretend the Chechens are immaculate, quietist victims of imperialism, or even noble militant resistors of an unjust war against them. Instead a wide range of motives, tactics, and ideologies inhere in the various peoples making up the cast of Muslim characters. Yet despite a recognition of complexity, Hadji Murad emerges as a hero- a tragic (in the proper sense of the word) and flawed hero, but still a hero, struggling against fate in a convoluted world. And Tolstoy’s stance towards war is equally evident, as in this scene that comes in an interluding vignette describing the Russian campaign of “pacification”:

Sado and his family had left the aoul on the approach of the Russian detachment, and when he returned he found his saklya in ruins — the roof fallen in, the door and the posts supporting the penthouse burned, and the interior filthy. His son, the handsome bright-eyed boy who had gazed with such ecstasy at Hadji Murad, was brought dead to the mosque on a horse covered with a barka; he had been stabbed in the back with a bayonet. The dignified woman who had served Hadji Murad when he was at the house now stood over her son’s body, her smock torn in front, her withered old breasts exposed, her hair down, and she dug her hails into her face till it bled, and wailed incessantly.

Sado, taking a pick-axe and spade, had gone with his relatives to dig a grave for his son. The old grandfather sat by the wall of the ruined saklya cutting a stick and gazing stolidly in front of him. He had only just returned from the apiary. The two stacks of hay there had been burnt, the apricot and cherry trees he had planted and reared were broken and scorched, and worse still all the beehives and bees had been burnt. The wailing of the women and the little children, who cried with their mothers, mingled with the lowing of the hungry cattle for whom there was no food. The bigger children, instead of playing, followed their elders with frightened eyes. The fountain was polluted, evidently on purpose, so that the water could not be used. The mosque was polluted in the same way, and the Mullah and his assistants were cleaning it out.

Barak Obama Tries to Prove His Imperialist Creds

On By JonathanIn Politics, Satire, War4 Comments

Poor Mr Obama, having been assailed by Madame Clinton recently and accused of being “soft” or something on terrorism or rogue states or whatever, wants the world to know he is just as ready and willing to carry out destructive military policies as anyone else running around Washington:

Obama warns over Pakistan strike

In his speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, Mr Obama said General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, must do more to end terrorist operations in his country.

If not, Pakistan would risk a troop invasion and the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid during an Obama presidency, the candidate said.

Silly Musharraf- why can’t he just press a button and kick all those nasty Al-Qaeda people out- I mean, look at how quickly the US expelled them from Iraq! But since he clearly doesn’t want to anything construtctive, a new war (a new war would be fun, and an opportunity for new choices and new leaders and just general newness, which Mr Obama knows a great deal about) is probably in order. Of course, an invasion of Pakistan would go far better than the invasion of Iraq, because there aren’t that many people in Pakistan, right? And they don’t have any of those Shia people there, surely? Well, at any rate, they DO have WMD’s, and we should probably do something about that. And those madrasas- we should close them and teach them to love and drive eco-friendly vehicles.

Sigh…

It Is This Which Has Sweetened the Fragrance of Humanity

On By JonathanIn East & West, Gospel, Patristics1 Comment

The humble man approaches the wild animals, and the moment they catch sight of him their ferocity is tamed. They come up and cling to him as to their Master, wagging their tails and licking his hands and feet. They scent as coming from him the same fragrance that came from Adam before the transgression, the time when they were gathered together before him and he gave them names in Paradise. The scent was taken away from us, but Christ has renewed it and given it back to us at his coming. It is this which has sweetened the fragrance of humanity.

St. Isaac of Nineveh

A recurrent theme in Christian hagiography is the interaction between saints and animals- particularly wild animals. The saint- who is often seen going into the wilderness- encounters animals as a matter of course, since he goes to the places most associated with wild creatures. However, unlike other people, he often finds the animals to be his friends and companions, not his enemies or his prey. Often times animals aid the saint, as in this episode from the Venerable Bede’s Life of St Cuthbert:

It happened, also, that on a certain day he was going forth from the monastery to preach, with one attendant only, and when they became tired with walking, though a great part of their journey still lay before them ere they could reach the village to which they were going, Cuthbert said to his follower, “Where shall we stop to take refreshment? or do you know any one on the road to whom we may turn in?”

“I was myself thinking on the same subject,” said the boy; “for we have brought no provisions with us. and I know no one on the road who will entertain us, and we have a long journey still before us, which we cannot well accomplish without eating. ” The man of God replied, “My son, learn to have faith, and trust in God, who will never suffer to perish with hunger those who trust in Him.” Then looking up, and seeing an eagle flying in the air, he said, ” Do you perceive that eagle yonder? It is possible for God to feed us even by means of that eagle.”

As they were thus discoursing, they came near a river, and behold the eagle was standing on its bank. “Look,” said the man of God, “there is our handmaid, the eagle, that I spoke to you about. Run, and see what provision God hath sent us, and come again and tell me.” The boy ran, and found a good-sized fish, which the eagle had just caught. But the man of God reproved him, ” What have you done, my son? Why have you not given part to God’s handmaid? Cut the fish in two pieces, and give her one, as her service well deserves.”

The meaning behind such stories is not simply to demonstrate the saint’s holiness or ability to perform miracles- though obviously that is part of it. However, the more important aspect of such stories is their demonstration of the saint’s partaking in a new order of creation, as St. Isaac describes, and as Bede himself says a little later in his Vita of St Cuthbert: “For it is no wonder that every creature should obey his wishes, who so faithfully, and with his whole heart, obeyed the great Author of all creatures. But we for the most part have lost our dominion over the creation that has been subjected to us, because we neglect to obey the Lord and Creator of all things.”

In the story of the Fall of man, man is not only severed from God- he is also separated from other humans, and from the whole of creation. God is made to be a hostile Other; because of this, all of creation becomes a hostile Other to man. Even individuals find themselves at war within themselves- a war, a pattern of violence that carries itself out into the entire world. Only in Christ is this disordered humanity made right, as Christ forges a new humanity, and within it, a New World, St. Isaac says, in which the Other is no longer a hostile enemy or competitor, but a subject to be loved. This extends to all of creation, for as man is reconcilled to God he finds himself reconcilled to other humans and even to non-human creation, as his disordered relations are restored to ones of peace and love. While the full realization of the New World in Christ must wait until the Eschaton, the saints display in their lives in the world a glimpse of this New World, and encourage us to participate in it, that we might express the all-embracing compassion, peace, and love of Christ.

Real Ale, Distributivism, & Ron Paul

On By JonathanIn Culture, PoliticsLeave a comment

Via The Ochlophobist:

From the Campaign for Real Ale, a most worthy British organization devoted to some very distributist-amiable ends:

Second, via The ChestorBelloc Mandate, a newish (no pun intended here) distributist site: The New Distributist League.

Finally, via Arts & Letters, a pretty sympathetic look at Ron Paul: The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul : 

Whatever the campaign purports to be about, the main thing it has done thus far is to serve as a clearinghouse for voters who feel unrepresented by mainstream Republicans and Democrats. The antigovernment activists of the right and the antiwar activists of the left have many differences, maybe irreconcilable ones. But they have a lot of common beliefs too, and their numbers — and anger — are of a considerable magnitude. Ron Paul will not be the next president of the United States. But his candidacy gives us a good hint about the country the next president is going to have to knit back together.

Last night I noticed that the Myspace page of Hattiesburg’s finest pub/music venue, and one of the few places in Mississippi where hearing klezmer or Celtic punk or other diverse musical styles is fairly common, The Thirsty Hippo has Ron Paul up on the top tier of top friends. The Hippo’s patrons probably don’t include too many card-carrying Republicans; but then that is, as the article above notes, exactly Dr Paul’s appeal.

Doublethink in Iraq

On By JonathanIn Politics, War1 Comment

Something I’ve noticed lately: there is a newish and rather important instance of US doublethink going in regard to the war in Iraq. I’m refering to the labeling of the ‘true enemy’ in the ongoing occupation of the country. On the one hand, we hear continually of the presence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and that it is the true enemy. Invariably in both official press releases and in mainstream media coverage, ‘insurgent’ translates into Al-Qaeda. A truck bomb, a roadside bomb, anything of the sort is blamed on Al-Qaeda. Yet, as various commentators have pointed out, Al-Qaeda in Iraq is only responsible for some of these things: the conflict is terribly complex. However, blaming a group that bears the name ‘Al-Qaeda’ is on one level necessary for the Administration- it lends weight to the widely broadcast fear that ‘they will follow us home if we leave,’ and that surely fighting Al-Qaeda is something we should be doing, what with September 11 and all that- right?

 Yet at the same time the Administration is committed to blaming its troubles on an entirely different actor: Iran (and to a lesser extent, Syria, but even then mainly as some sort of vector for Iran, the true enemy). Resolutions are passed, condemnations issued, indignant press releases released- Iran is supplying the insurgents with all manner of perdiferous armaments, and it is these arms that are killing US troops! Such an allegation is a tacit admission that perhaps other groups than Al-Qaeda are involved, including, say, Shi’a militias. But the focus is upon Iran: Iran is in essence killing US troops. If Iran could be eliminated as a threat in Iraq, all would be well in Iraq. 

Yet this is an immediate contradiction: Al-Qaeda and Iran cannot both be ‘the true enemy,’ the prime cause of all that ails the US in Iraq (and elsewhere: Al-Qaeda is the global threat; Iran seeks regional if not world domination). A possible resolution might be that in fact Iran is supplying Al-Qaeda, and there are signs that this tack is being taken- witness allegations that Iran is arming the Taliban (something strenuously denied by military personel on the ground in Afghanistan). There is still the problem that no one can, right now anyway, seriously deny that the bulk of alleged Iranian support, military and otherwise, is going to Shi’a groups, not Al-Qaeda (a group that likes to kill Shi’a). Hence two Enemies Number One, both of which must be sustained in their current narrative positions- not for the sake of understanding the actual situation, but for the sake of fielding justifications for the Administration.

Eros and Ideas

On By JonathanIn Culture, Philosophy, University LifeLeave a comment

If there’s one god our culture worships as piously as sex, it’s children. But sex and children, sexual intimacy and familial intimacy, have something in common — beyond the fact that one leads to the other: both belong to us as creatures of nature, not as creators in culture. After Rousseau and Darwin and Freud, and with evolutionary psychology preaching the new moral gospel, we’ve become convinced that our natural self is our truest one. To be natural, we believe, is to be healthy and free. Culture is confinement and deformation. But the Greeks thought otherwise. To them, our highest good is not what we share with the animals, but what we don’t share with them, not the nature we’re born with, but the culture we make from it — make, indeed, against it.

From Love On Campus, via Arts & Letters Daily.

Imperialism Is Destructive On Both Sides

On By JonathanIn Culture, War1 Comment

“I guess while I was there, the general attitude was, ‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’… [Only when we got home] in… meeting other veterans, it seems like the guilt really takes place, takes root, then.”

Specialist Jeff Englehart, 26, of Grand Junction, Colorado, 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry. In Baquba for a year beginning February 2004

“I felt like there was this enormous reduction in my compassion for people. The only thing that wound up mattering is myself and the guys that I was with, and everybody else be damned.”

Sergeant Ben Flanders, 28, National Guardsman from Concord, New Hampshire, 172nd Mountain Infantry. In Balad for 11 months beginning March 2004

Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq  

(Via Antiwar.com)

* 

“With one part of my mind I thought the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like there are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.”

George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant