The Nature of War

The Nature of War

More and more people are beginning to question whether the war in Iraq should continue. It seems to have developed problems peculiar to Iraq. Some people say the administration conducted it poorly. But maybe the real problem lies in the very nature of war itself. Maybe war always turns bad, and perhaps the reason this happens is because war just doesn’t work.

Military force may well be necessary for defense. And it does seem true that the best defense is a strong offense. Yet there also seems to be some invisible threshold beyond which wars begin to assume a life of their own and are no longer under the control of those who started them.

Wars develop a “patriotic sacredness” and become a nation’s holy mission. The nation must “stay the course,” even if that course has not yet been found. War grows to dominate whole economies, it makes religion avert its pious eyes, it drives politics, reshapes nations and totally destroys its own environment (which is really the economic base of the world).

War glorifies killing, it honors the wasting of innocent children. War encourages surreptitious torture, as long as it can be kept secret, and it too often turns its own citizens against each other. Maybe the real problem with war is not just the war we happen to be in at the moment, but the very nature of war itself.

War is uneven in its seizure and redistribution of a nation’s resources. It authorizes, even “requires” suspension of certain rights, regulations and laws. War always rewards a few already powerful people in certain industries and it punishes the nation’s poorest citizens who must fight in the war because they need a little money or education or any way at all to get out of the mess into which they were born. Too often they return after their duty to the same place they left, but now they are injured, sometimes damaged deeply in their souls. Too often they are abandoned after a patriotic pat on the back and a small pitch of money. Too many veterans soon find their way into the prisons they had gone to war to avoid, or they wander the streets, hiding from authorities.

War generates blame. It blames its leaders who always are proven to be wrong about important points that led into the war. War always blames the “intelligence” which was always wrong. Often it seems that intelligence was “wrong on purpose” such as the Gulf of Tonkin “attack”, or the Iraqi WMD. War makes a nation blame its allies who always fail to provide adequate support or who want too much in recompense for that support. One's native country becomes “friends” with strange nations, and it offends many of its old friends. It even blames the enemies who never fight “fairly”, especially after you invade their country and destroy their women and children and their homeland. Sometimes they provide “unwarranted” insurrection and even call for terrorists to come help them fight the invad So maybe the real problem with the war in Iraq is not really Iraq, perhaps not even the administration, maybe it is the very nature of war itself.

Can we do anything? Of course we can. I have some ideas, and so do you, but the purpose of this letter is simply to frame the following proposition: That war in its very nature is evil, it cannot bring forth good results and it will always corrupt all that it encounters - therefore we must solve our problems in another way.

John Womack