It is forbidden to kill; therefore, all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
–Voltaire
I still remember leading the junior high school debate team more than 50 ago, arguing for the necessity for war… and winning. Those were the days of blissful ignorance.
These days, promoters of war would have to be either a politician or a warmonger who stands to benefit financially, or both. Anyone else not fitting these profiles but advocates for war surely has severe psychological predicaments.
I can’t remember how exactly I led my team to a position that successfully defended the indefensible. Still, it must have been a time when war appeased primitive urges like patriotism and boosted macho egos. Clearly it is not very difficult to rationalize yourself into an unacceptable position, while ignoring the wisdom of many intellectuals who reasoned against it.
It is not known precisely when an enlightened Thomas Mann, the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate, famously observed, “War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.” Strangely, he was once a conservative German Weimar Republic patriot who criticised liberalism and supported the First World War, describing it as “… a purification, a liberation, an enormous hope,” before shifting left and becoming a war critic.
While author John Steinbeck reflected, “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal,” Ernest Hemingway warned, “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime,” it has made no impact on those instigating war or engaging in it, to justify their heinous actions in crude, condescending, disingenuous and hypocritical fashions. Right now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shockingly defending an 18-month genocide in Gaza, replete with mounting war crimes, as a “right to defend themselves,” with full military and diplomatic support from the Western world.
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?
While the great pacifist, Mahatma Gandhi, raises questions on behalf of the dead, the orphaned and the homeless, the so-called leaders of our time have no such concerns. Theirs is only profit and power, while for others like Netanyahu, it is sweetened by vengeance.
Even as the late, great Bob Marley laments some of the trivial reasons leading to war in his popular song, I fear any optimism he has for ending war is sadly misplaced while imperialist Western leaders and depraved lunatics like Netanyahu continue to darken the halls of power.
But it will ultimately be the fault of ordinary people, desirous of selfish things, who ensure that a never-ending supply of warmongers continues leading the world astray.
lenny unencumbered 