Tyranny and Oppression and Evil, Oh My!

My cousin Kev Koski, now in China on his bike trip around the world, doesn’t think war is inevitable, as he wrote in answer to my excogitation entitled “Gettysburg” a couple weeks back. Consequently, I feel inclined to keep excogitating upon this topic, or it may be that I just can’t stop. It is always fun jawing with Kev, though. I agree on a few comments he makes, but not on the matter of war IN GENERAL. War is pretty much inevitable for the reasons I pointed out in my comment that follows the post “Gettysburg.” Kev made no attempt to dispute my reasons, so I don’t see any need to defend them further. But perhaps what bothers Kev and others is that I spoke of only one side of my imaginary Bell Curve of conflict and war-making. On the other side of the curve from total war is the condition of perfect peace. Yes, I believe that peace also, inevitably, prevails at times. Though there will always come times of war, there will also always come times of peace -- and much more and much longer times of peace than of war, as history teaches us. After all, wars can and do come to an end and are comparatively short. Violent conflicts are settled. People form agreements and treaties and contracts. Peace reigns, even a great majority of the time in all of human history.

Pausing in this discussion, I want to point out that the photo is of Cemetery Ridge (the Union position) from Seminary Ridge (the Confederate position) on the Gettysburg battlefield. Logan and I had climbed a tall viewing tower that gave us this view. I have pointed out a couple of the mythical locations on the battlefield in the distance, which I refer to in earlier excogitations. The "Cyclorama" is now closed, though for more than a century it contained a massive and largely mythical mural of the battle. The PA Memorial was much debated at the time it was designed and constructed. I also tried my hand at some photo alteration by plopping Logan’s head in the photo. It was taken from another shot of him on the tower.

Now, back to peace. The average, typical peace is a slightly uneasy, wary, negotiated, carefully guarded social condition. In some few of those cases of guarded peace, it becomes a lasting and strong peace, broadly cherished and sustained. In some few of those cases of lasting peace, way out at the edge of the Bell Curve reaching from war to peace, peace becomes an era of perfect peace, in which people and the groups that they inevitably form develop very stable and friendly associations with other people and groups. Such associations are not easily drawn into conflict. Thus, peace is inevitable, and sometimes perfect peace comes, as it always will come. But this does not imply that war is not inevitable -– once again, because of the nature of grouping. To put this very simply, the forming of groups leads inevitably to conflicts, and some few of those conflicts, inevitably, will escalate into war. It just the way things work.

But let me make this clear. I’m NOT saying that each and every specific war is inevitable. Yes, almost all specific wars can be prevented, weakened, or stopped. (Though, there are, I would venture, some very few specific wars that were and will be inevitable.) But wars will always keep coming along. That’s what I mean by stating that war in general is inevitable. There will never be an end to the possibility or potentiality of war, for the reasons I have outlined. This claim is similar to saying that there will always be car accidents. Almost no specific car accident is inevitable. Yet the car accident is inevitable. It’s just the socioeconomic-physical nature of automobile traffic systems. This analogous situation is almost exactly what I mean by saying war is inevitable. Perhaps the more pertinent issue, which I won’t go into now, is how probable war is. How probable is the car accident? You can quantify that quite easily. War would be a lot harder to pin down on probabilities.

Now, as to Kev’s specific contentions, I agree that if ever more people resisted their governments in specific times of war, particular wars can be prevented or their intensity lessened. In history, many wars have been prevented or weakened, just as many millions of car accidents have been avoided by earnest, intelligent, and caring drivers. We should work toward ending wars at all times, for, obviously, war is a terrible occurrence -- though not always a terrible evil. Sometimes resistance works. But sometimes as well resistance does not work. Sometimes, further, we know that resistance should not work, and people and their governments resist resistance. Sometimes many people believe they know that groups must go to war, that it is good and just to fight, though resisters think they are dupes of their governments. It takes great wisdom to know when it is good to join in war.

Now, is there any danger to thinking as Kev does, that every specific war can and should be prevented or stopped? Some people -- many people, in fact -- have thought all through human history that it is morally wrong and dangerous to oneself and others, to groups, to think that war can be prevented or stopped, because such thinking, to summarize, leads one not to do enough to get ready to fight a specific war successfully, to prevail by organized violence for the sake of a just cause when no other way to prevail presents itself. If one is always thinking peace can be had, so the argument has often gone, one will sometimes accept, or be forced to accept, tyranny or oppression or the defeat of a just cause because one didn’t get ready quickly or well enough to stop the tyrant or the oppressor. I agree to an extent that it CAN, at times, be dangerous to think only of peace. It takes great, Great, GREAT! wisdom to see when peace has no chance and that striving for peace has become morally wrong and dangerous and that one must go to war to prevent or overturn oppression or tyranny or other evils.

Obviously, many millions in the U.S., including many people much better, more thoughtful, and more intelligent than I am (and plenty of others who are stupider than I am as well), believe that we reached that point concerning Iraq under the rule of Saddam Hussein. They think we were wise in going to war against Saddam. I disagree. But the debate goes on. Should we have gone to war to stop Saddam? When is it just to go to war to stop those who oppress or who have gone to war? This is not an idle question. It is a question that haunts the mercilessly bloody 20th century. It is the subject of Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker’s morally disturbing book on the injustice of World War II that was recently published.

I guess the wisest principle of war-making, in my judgment, comes down to this. We must always work for peace as long as peace can be had without permitting or fostering tyranny, oppression, or unjust suffering (however those very complex concepts might be defined -– hoo boy, there’s another tortuous issue). But as war looms, and sometimes war will come, we must prepare, in advance and in ways appropriate to the nature of the threat, to kill and die to keep our families, our cities, our states, our country (in other words, the defined groups we have aligned ourselves with), and even other countries from suffering under tyranny or oppression or other evils (however those might be delineated, an issue so hoary, so thorny, that I can’t bring myself to start excogitating upon it).