{"id":48416,"date":"2024-07-04T08:22:04","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T16:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=48416"},"modified":"2024-07-04T08:22:12","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T16:22:12","slug":"declaring-our-independence-from-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/04\/declaring-our-independence-from-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Declaring Our Independence From War"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

It\u2019s Independence Day in America, so it seems like a good day to declare our independence from the insanity of war.<\/p>\n

Sadly, since the presidency of George W. Bush if not before, it\u2019s become routine for U.S. commanders-in-chief to boast of having the world\u2019s finest military in all of history. Obama did it routinely, and Biden recently said the same during his disastrous debate with Trump. Few Americans stop to think about the implications of boasting about having the world\u2019s greatest military \u2013 is such a boast truly consistent with democracy, liberty, and freedom?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Certainly, empires rely on strong militaries. Think of the Roman Empire or the Mongol Empire, or the Third Reich (Empire) of Nazi Germany. Do we want to be like them?<\/p>\n

Those empires lived by the sword (quite literally so with the Roman Empire) and died by it as well. Their militaries, I would argue, were also more effective than the U.S. one, which hasn\u2019t won a major war since 1945, the latter with a lot of help from our \u201cfriends\u201d like the Soviet Union. The Roman, Mongol, and German empires are no more, worn down in part through the constant costs and demands of war. We need to learn more from history than the \u201cfact\u201d that America\u2019s military is supposedly the world\u2019s best since forever and a day ago.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading Oriana Fallaci\u2019s<\/a> Nothing, and So Be It<\/em>, in which she recounted her time reporting on the Vietnam War. Two conversations with U.S. troops in Vietnam caught my attention. On pages 22-23, she recounts a conversation with Army Captain Scher, during which Scher confesses his disgust with war:<\/p>\n

God, how disgusting war is. Let me say it \u2013 I\u2019m a soldier. People who enjoy making war, who find it glorious and exciting, must have twisted minds. There\u2019s nothing glorious, nothing exciting; it\u2019s just a filthy tragedy you can only cry over. You cry for the man you refused a cigarette to and who didn\u2019t come back with the patrol. You cry for the man you bawled out and who is blown to pieces in front of you. You cry for the man who killed your friends\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Later in the book, she interviews a Marine Lieutenant whose surname is Teanek (pages 174-75). Here\u2019s what he had to say:<\/p>\n

Teanek: \u201cMen have been saying that [we should abolish war] for thousands of years, and with the justification that they\u2019re abolishing war, they\u2019ve soaked the greatest periods of their civilization in blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fallaci: \u201cThat\u2019s no good reason to keep on doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teanek: \u201cTheoretically, you\u2019re right, but in practice what you\u2019re saying is very silly. It\u2019s like convincing yourself \u2013 as I bet you do \u2013 that when you describe people dying in war you\u2019re helping to abolish war. On the contrary. The more you see people who\u2019ve been killed in war, the more you want to go on fighting wars: it\u2019s a mystery of the human soul.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is indeed \u201ca mystery of the human soul\u201d why we humans persist in killing each other in such vast numbers through war. Of course, it\u2019s partly because we glorify it, when we should recognize, as Fallaci does on page 187, that \u201cWar is a madhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n