Total War

I’ve been involved for a couple years now in preparing and teaching my online course in Armed Conflict and the Environment. That’s led me to read intensively on World War Two and the American Civil War, and to ruminate some on my own attitudes toward war.


I’d say I’m a basic pacifist and generally anti-war. But that’s probably too simple. After much thought, I can’t imagine retrospective bitching about the use of atomic weapons in World War Two. The horrific nature of that conflict, and the intensity of Japanese resistance in the Marianas and at Iwo Jima and Okinawa make it clear that ending the war via conventional arms was going to take a long time and yield terrible casualties. The Japanese butchered civilians and prisoners alike throughout Asia. Using all available weaponry at the ass-end of World War Two wasn’t then, and isn’t now, I think, worth much of a moral second look at all. A no brainer. 


Nor, having actually seen the Iraqi hardware that was on the receiving end along with the aftermath in Kuwait, do I have much complaint about the destruction of the remaining Iraqi armor on the “highway of death” during their retreat from Kuwait. I mean, the invasion of Kuwait, and the pointless destruction the Iraqis wreaked, was so totally brutal that making sure their war machine was hammered on the way out of town only made sense. Retrospective hand wringing really isn’t meaningful.


So when Jesse called Cathy and me together the other night to announce that he intended to join the army when he graduates from St. Mary’s in June, I had mixed feelings. I think our present incursion in Iraq is just an idiotic outcome of Cheney and Rumsfeld’s childish macho posturing despite both of their ex post facto attempts to blame the intelligence community. And our having gotten bogged down in Afghanistan, after the lesson the Soviets provided only a few years prior, sure as hell seems like the wrong approach to battling Al Qaeda to a standstill. 


Still, as I told Jess, among the many things I resented about Vietnam was that it took away MY option to join the military. I was an overweight, self-centered kid who could have used a good ass-kicking when I graduated high school, although football in high school and the transition of college seemed to do a pretty good job.


One of the reasons the present state of political discourse is so fucked up in this country is the complete lack of shared effort. We don’t share the day-to-day of living in a complex democracy, no wonder we don’t share any vision of how it should be conducted. One way to remedy that might be to revive the draft. But make it 100% universal, no deferments or exceptions. Everyone at the age of 18 has a two-year commitment to public service, no questions asked. Everyone should have basic military training. Then we could let people sort themselves by preference. Rebuilding infrastructure; assisting in schools, filling the military, bulking up NGOs like Habitat for Humanity, Red Cross, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, etc. Yeah, it’ll cost a shitload. Yeah, it’ll be logistically and administratively difficult. Yeah, there’ll be a lot of whining. But we really need some kind of shared future, or we’re not going anywhere coherent.


I’m proud that Jesse is at the cutting edge!


There’s a fun new post over at http://endoftheworldpartdeux.blogspot.com/ , the other sites— http://docviper.livejournal.com/ and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ I’ll update later in the week. Thanks for stopping by!