Category: War

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I guess we are at war although Trump and company say otherwise. There are war like things going on — the occasional missile falling on the UAE, the Straight of Hormuz being closed to commercial shipping (Sorry if it is open, the status changes so quickly I can’t keep track) and there is war like rhetoric flowing from both sides.

Who knows? There is no consistent trustworthy source of information. By that, I mean every one agrees that these people are supplying the facts as they are. So as far as I can see we are in a range of the war is already won to the war will go forever. The truth is somewhere in between those two mutually exclusive points. But where it is in this range I haven’t a clue.

I do know that the general feeling that comes from a nation at war, the rally around the flag feeling, is glaringly missing. Young men aren’t signing up at the recruiting stations. There is no grandmotherly figure urging us to grow victory gardens. People aren’t glued to their television sets watching the progress of the war — although this may be more a result of there being so little progress (either way) in this war.

Think World War II — everybody (this includes the Allies and the Axis, Democrats and Republicans, British and Americans, I mean everybody) knew it would end when the Germans and Japanese surrendered or vice versa. The finish line was apparent.

What will mark the end of the Iranian War is both a mystery and dependent on who you are talking with. Iranians say one thing. The Trump Administration says another. There are negotiations sometimes going on and sometimes stalled. Trump says nothing short of an Iranian unconditional surrender is unacceptable. Except that he is negotiating terms with the Iranian government and they are bring terms which are far from unconditional surrender.

Which begs the question when does a defeated enemy negotiate terms. If you lost the war, you take the terms that the winner gives you and hope for the best. This isn’t happening here so Trump’s victory claims are hollow.

There is very little, if any, personal investment in winning the war. The only consistent sentiment I can see is that everybody wants the war over as fast as humanly possible. Oddly missing is any idea of what victory actually looks like — just end the fucker. Hardly a war cry to rally the nation.

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The recent recopening of war in the Middle East also reopened discussions on what is morally acceptable behavior during a war. It is a difficult topic because people’s opinions shift depending upon what war you are fighting, who is fighting it and whether you are winning. In the Catholic School I attended I received two very different messages about war from the same teacher. Sister Mira thought the Viet Cong were cowards because they hid among the Vietnamese people and fought a guerrilla war. They should fight on a battlefield like good soldiers instead of engaging in guerrilla tactics. She alao admired the ingenuity of the Minute Men during the American Revolutionary War because they avoided open warfare with the better armed British forces. They would attack the British were they could and then retreat into the vast American countryside to avoid being caught. Which sounds very much like the Viet Cong were doing. So your moral decisions about war depends on which side you are on — rebels you like can use guerrilla warfare, rebels you don’t like shouldn’t.

War is a problem ethically. War is violent. War kills innocent people. It is hard to justify killing a small child but, if there is a war going on, there is a pretty good chance that a small child is dying somewhere because of it. It is unavoidable. Now these killings can come in different ways with varying degrees of culpability. There is a difference between killing a child through dropping a bomb on his house and slitting the child’s throat in his bed. But still the child is dead in both cases. An innocent died because of the war you are waging. How do you stop someone like Hitler without killing innocent children. The truth is you can’t.

No matter how just the war is in the general sense, specific acts are going to go wrong. Should you stop fighting Hitler because you want to limit your fighting to actions that won’t kill children? Morally speaking — how many children will die if I fight Hitler and how many children will die if I fail to fight Hitler. It is a horrible choice but one that has to be made.

This is why war is to be avoided it if at all possible. It is a moral quagmire. Perhaps when a nation is considering war, instead of demonizing the future enemy, people should consider the question is this worth killing innocents to get what we want? And if the answer is yes then go into it accepting your soldiers will face this dilemma. Possibly this will make people act better but I doubt it.