War and Peace

It was recently Memorial Day and an excellent blog called “The Big Picture” at the boston.com website features an array of photographs from prominent world events. It featured a piece on the Memorial Day and I recommend you all check out these amazing photos.

Some videos are planned and written over a span of a couple of weeks and some videos are written on the spur of the moment in a couple of hours. This is the latter. When I read some of the comments at the bottom of the Boston article I felt that at this point in the world nothing is more deserving of deconstruction than the foolish things I have read regarding the nature of war and peace.

Sebastian Munich said:

no war, no death

Hiram said:

Support the troops. Bring them home.

David says:

War is stupid.

Lin said:

WAR=DEATH

NO WAR

PEACE

Al Curtis said:

when will we learn???

Elisabeth said:

Stand for peace.

You get the image. To be sure, most people did not make such foolish statements but the attitude that these people have demonstrated can be seen in society, sometimes in a more elegant form, sometimes not.

For me, this kind of mentality is hard to understand since even a couple of seconds of light thinking can turn up problems with this simplistic way of thinking.

The book I have on my desk beside me is called “Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty” by Roy Baumeister. It has 431 pages and is only one of many books one can buy on the subject of human cruelty. Do you think that when you open it up it has “WAR=DEATH, NO WAR, PEACE” on the first page followed by 430 pages of blank paper? Hardly.

Life is frequently confusing and distressing but saying things like “no war, peace for everyone” is the lazy way to feel good about yourself, such trite sayings are not a respectable moral or intellectual position for a person to take.

War stems from the human animal, I am sure that for as long as there have been humans there has been war, and it is not a simple thing to turn off a fundamental part of us all. To merely suggest that “no war” is your solution and then to sit back and feel morally superior at the “solution” you have just proposed is to announce to the world that you are more comfortable in a fantasy world of your own creation as opposed to seeing the world as it really is.

To suggest that the elimination of war is the vehicle to achieving peace is to be morally muddle headed over the nature of humanity and evil, not fighting human evil does not guarantee peace but merely allows that evil to conquer us all when it goes unchecked. To be sure, the state of not being in war is the state that comes naturally once we have achieved peace. Not the other way around.

Was “no war” an admirable position to have taken in response to Hitler? How many Jews would still be alive if the pacifist crowd had their way back then? Would European Jewry exist in any form today?

This problem is characteristic of a lot of what I see and hear from the left, the lack of ability to think beyond the first stage leads them to the conclusions of being anti-war because of their simple mindedness. After all, war involves killing and death so since those are bad things then the moral path surely exists in avoiding war. But to allow the evil to exist may be worse in the long run than the death toll incurred from fighting a war.

Take, as an example, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These events led to the surrender of the Japanese in the pacific war and thus ending World War 2. Approximately two hundred and twenty thousand Japanese, who were mostly citizens, died in the bombings combined.

A simple mind will merely look at these deaths and conclude that this was a horrific crime to be avoided, and whilst I agree that it was indeed horrific you need to look deeper. This tactical action led to the surrender of Japan, an action that caused War Minister Korechika Anami to attempt to commit seppuku after signing the surrender document. The Japanese were a people who would have fought longer against odds that would have caused another people to surrender to. The mainland invasion of Japan would have been a bloody episode in the history of the world. But, by a display of superior firepower it was avoided.

Therefore it is accurate to talk about the moral clarity of the event, or even the moral mathematics of it. But this concept is reprehensible to those who lack moral clarity. Since people were killed therefore it is an act to be shunned. Thinking in this way makes these people feel happy with themselves as they pursue the path of least resistance to the opiate of mind numbing righteousness, by simply following nice feelings and words like “LOVE”, “ACCEPTANCE”, “PEACE” and “LIFE” and they can feel happy with themselves, even if their way results in more death and misery, because surely there can be nothing wrong with following your heart and loving unequivocally. I don’t pretend to have all the answers in life but at least I know that it’s just not as simple as that.

Let’s translate this to modern events. North Korea is basically a gigantic concentration camp, a backward isolationist fascist state emulating communist Russia from decades ago. Their own people are starving as they rush to bigger and better militarization, the most worrying of which is their recent nuclear tests.

The beaurocrats around the world aid North Korea by giving them time by constantly calling for peace talks that the North Korean fascists continually show no regard for being compliant with, they have abandoned the armistice that ended their war with South Korea and are aching for war. North Korea is an echo chamber of festering paranoia and hatred, and now they have nuclear weapons. I say this now that I think there will be war with North Korea.

There have been many people who have recognised the reality of the situation. General Douglas Mac Carther said the following to the US senate in 1951 on the US withdrawal from Korea.

“history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier wars. It points to no single instance where this end has justified the means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace.”

Gen Douglas Mac Carther to US Senate 1951 on US Withdrawal from Korea

Another person who had wise words on thus subject is a much maligned figure, who I will probably be criticised for featuring. George W. Bush.

[See Video]

Denial of the harshness of life can be one of the worse things that a human being can do because for their own narcissistic sake they enable evil to proliferate on earth. The price of present reticence could well be future massacre. The reason why America is the greatest country in the history of the world is for no other reason that it has done the most to fight evil, to die for the sake of others.

History tells us that human evil will exist forever, and that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Sources & articles of interest

Joe Biden Calls President Bush’s Speech to Israel Bullshit
http://americaswatchtower.com/2008/05/15/joe-biden-calls-president-bushs-speech-to-israel-bullshit/

Memorial Day, 2009 – The big picture @ boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/memorial_day_2009.html

Peering into North Korea – The big picture @ boston.com
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/peering_into_north_korea.html

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Battle of Iwo Jima
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima

What would you have done?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jul/30/japan.secondworldwar

North Korea threatens war as it tears up 50-year armistice
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6369797.ece