The Terrible Truth of War

 

Statue of nurse and soldier, next to the Vietnam War Memorial

 by OZinOH under CC BY-NC 2.0 license.

Another war, another debacle, egged on by the usual suspects: the military-industrial complex who got rich from it;  the news media who gained readership from it;  Republicans who flaunted their manhood with it, and Democrats who feared being called ‘wussies’ if they opposed it.

What sheep! Three days after the U.S was attacked on 9/11, Congress adopted a knee-jerk, open-ended authorization to attack terrorists that is still in effect. Barbara Lee was the only lawmaker who dared to vote no, which subjected her to almost universal verbal venom, even physical threats. “People were calling me a traitor, she said, “But I knew then that it was going to set the stage for perpetual war.” And that’s exactly what happened.^⁠1 We will go to our graves calling them ‘forever wars.’

Despite spending more on the military than the next 11 countries combined, what good has it done us? We’ve ended up like a carpenter with only a hammer, mistaking every problem as a nail to smash. A day of reckoning is coming. Just look at the last two countries that attempted to maintain an empire through military might. England and The Soviet Union exhausted themselves financially, and worse, their one-pointed obsession with military power depleted their creativity vitality as a nation.

Already pundits are debating “how can we pivot from our fight in Afghanistan to our next war?” 

To break this cycle, we first must recognize what war really is. For a fresh perspective , let’s consult the late, legendary, Jungian psychologist, James Hillman. He said, in essence, war is an aphrodisiac: “where else in human experience, except in the throes of ardor – that strange coupling of love with war – do we find ourselves transported’ to such a mythical place.^⁠2

The first step in resisting the rush to war is to understand the irrational nature of this ‘terrible truth:” Because war erupts from a primal state of passion, we must use our cognitive facilities of reason to counteract it. It has worked in the past. Hillman was ‘encouraged by the courage of culture, even in the dark ages, to withstand war…to work to understand it better, delay it longer…”^⁠3

How do we build such cultural courage? In other areas, we’ve established a long track record of controlling our passions. All societies, for instance, have learned to establish norms, customs, rituals, and laws to restrain unbridled sexual passion. In our own country, in the last 50 years alone, we have made major strides by passing laws and raising public awareness to reduce sexual victimization by broadening the definition of what constitutes rape, abuse, and sexual harassment.

Yet when it comes to war, our politicians and mass media have done the opposite: loosening prohibitions, even becoming cheerleaders for war. As Hillman observed, ‘War’ is becoming more normalized every day. 

The Afghanistan War is a good example: Things could have been much different if calmer heads had prevailed. Within weeks of starting our intensive bombing campaign in November of 2001, the Taliban’s bravado faded: they became “a spent force” as they fled from Kabul into the mountains. At that point, “[t]he Taliban were completely defeated, they had no demands, except amnesty,” recalled Barnett Rubin, who worked with the United Nations’ political team in Afghanistan at the time.^⁠4

Mission accomplished, right? Al Qaeda had been driven out and the Taliban defeated. 

Not quite. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, still in the heat of war lust – rather than negotiating a surrender –went in for the kill, vowing to exterminate the Taliban. Toward that end, over the last 20 years, it has cost us over 2 trillion dollars, killed 2400 of our young American servicemen and women, and wounded another 20,000.  To say nothing of countless civilian casualties.

Now we are witnessing, The Taliban – far from being destroyed – marching triumphantly back into Kabul, without a shot being fired. I think there is a lesson in this somehow.

xxx

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/22/us/as-afghanistan-collapses-a-lament-for-repeating-the-same-mistakes.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20210823&instance_id=38584&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=30753738&segment_id=66983&user_id=273ae8c1ede4fde7d59a2b0627accb92

² A Terrible Love of War by James Hillman, page 9

³ Ibid, page 22

⁴ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/23/world/middleeast/afghanistan-taliban-deal-united-states.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20210823&instance_id=38584&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=30753738&segment_id=66983&user_id=273ae8c1ede4fde7d59a2b0627accb92