Friday, November 07, 2008
Our Hearts of Darkness
The next few days are going to be pretty hectic so I thought I'd do my Remembrance Day post early.
Remembrance Day calls on us to reflect on war and those who have sacrificed for our country. I've been doing quite a bit of thinking about the nature of war lately and I've coming to a rather surprising conclusion.
The cause of most war is morality.
It's true. For starters, it's part of the standard playbook of every politician and general in time of war. From Sun Tzu onward, strategists have advised that the first preparation for war is to create a moral cause to get the general public on your side.
In this context, things that we would normally think of as "pure" emotions - things like sympathy, compassion, moral outrage, righteous anger - become simply tools of the war machine and can become the root causes of some of the most monstrous behaviour in human history.
Just take a look at Hitler. In the adjustable lens of history, Hitler is usually viewed as an ultra-right wing dictator, but he didn't start off positioning himself that way. Remember the full name of the Nazi Party: the National Socialist German Workers Party.
And remember the context of 1930s Germany. The economy was in collapse. Hyperinflation was rampant. Working people not only saw their life savings vanish, they saw their daily earnings vanish. It was in this environment that Hitler made his original sales pitch: "I will defend working German people from being exploited by those evil rich people who own all the banks."
Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot... over and over again, we see the most profound evil arising from those who presented themselves as (and perhaps even believed themselves to be) great defenders of the common people.
But these monsters did not achieve absolute power on their own. They were popular leaders who were originally raised up on the shoulders of millions of people who were inspired... people who believed, fervently and absolutely, that this leader would transform society, change the world and make life better for everyone, the whole human race. Once people believe this... really believe it... it becomes so much easier to convince them with arguments about the ends justifying the means.
No, I'm not making any sort of veiled reference. OK, well, maybe a little bit. I just don't care for excess and hype in politics, in any form.
I'm certainly not suggesting any direct comparisons, but I want to make a point about the great dangers of moral certainty. Let me leave you with this thought: When George Bush said America had to go to war with Iraq to stop the terrorist threat, the chest-thumping patriots, social conservatives and rednecks of America happily supplied their sons and their noisy blind loyalty, at least at first. Will America's liberals act any differently if and when Obama (like Clinton) orders a military intervention in some other part of the world?
If any of us are to make progress in building peace in the world, it is worth our time to take a close look at the beam in our own eye, as well as the mote in our brother's.
posted by Mentok @ 12:53 p.m.,
3 Comments:
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At 8:53 p.m.,
Natsthename said...
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"Will America's liberals act any differently if and when Obama (like Clinton) orders a military intervention in some other part of the world?" Oh no. They will make excuses for him, since it will be for the greater good of the US and the world. Mark my words.
He said in July: "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." I've seen the video. A powerful, strong national police force. I suppose they're just going to keep our borders safe. Right? -
At 6:34 p.m.,
said...
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i get your point about not being slavishly loyal to someone and overlooking their faults and following them to the end of the earth, but at the same time i think our society is fundamentally different than it was back in the days of hitler and stalin. we have an active press whose job it is to point out when things seems to be getting out of whack and we have so much more access to information that i can't imagine the u.s. getting carried away like the people in germany and russia did 60+ years ago.
now, that is not to say that the press always does their job (as evidenced in the run-up to the iraq war--although even then there were massive protests by citizens, the government just wouldn't listen), but even if the "official" media is not asking the hard questions, citizen journalists certainly are. and the moral justification for the iraq war has so clearly been shown to be a sham that i don't think americans will stand for being fooled twice in a row.
i hope if you see any such dangerous moral certainty coming from the obama administration that you will sound the warning. i think, and i may be wrong about this but i don't think i am, that he is a deliberative, big-picture type of thinker who is not going to govern like george bush did, which is to say from the standpoint of "i'm right, i don't have to listen to any other opinions, god told me so." unless of course obama has sold us a huge bag of horse shit. time will tell. -
At 10:16 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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I completely agree with you that this administration should be much more deliberate and less "gunslinger" than the last... although that's not too high a bar, is it ;-) I think this administration will be positive in a whole bunch of ways, not least of which that it will inspire more unity and loyalty fr. the rest of the democratic world. All of a sudden Europeans can't feel snidely superior anymore now that America has made a more progressive choice for leader than any of them could.
My only point is that people shouldn't get carried away with feelings of moral certainty. That point applies equally to both ends of the political spectrum, but of course each side only sees that fault in their opponents and not themselves.
