War – What is it Good For War – What is it Good ForI am a bit slow so this has taken me a while to figure out. I also beat around the bush -- please follow the hops -- but then again you may no interest at all in my thoughts on war.
The other day a friend of mine stated that I am opposed to all war and that he believes that war is actually a good thing. This battering me on both sides catches me off-guard. First off, my friend is incorrect: I am not opposed to all war. Second off, I do not accept that war is a good thing although I will accept it as a necessary thing.
Let’s get another thing straight: I am an analytical person with very low self-esteem. You know that. I want to over analyze anything that falls into my belief system or world view. Some things about this. I really want to have my bases covered if I am to have an opinion on anything.
I believe it was Von Clausowitz who said: “War is the extension of diplomacy by force.”
The problem with war is that it kills and maims people. I am against killing and maiming people. I am against hurting people both physically and emotionally. I wish for world peace (I have little interest in beauty pageant queens but they have the right idea). I wish for everyone to be happy and free. As I have discovered in life, some people are only happy when they are hurting other people. This is one basis for war: forcing such persons to change their attitude after they have attempted to impose their beliefs by force upon others.
When I was very young, I had little interest in global wars. I saw people being treated unfairly. I saw myself being treated unfairly. Another friend of mine insists that one of the reasons that I am unhappy is that I believe that somewhere buried within humanity is the concept of ‘fair’. I have learned that this is true: I inherently believe in fair. Analytically I understand that there is no ‘fair’. For example: our tax code. Our tax code specifically discriminates against single fathers. But there are many people, many voting people, who think that reducing the tax for married people would improve fairness. If we try to be analytical, and restrain our concept to relative tax rates, it is easy to see that the married people are making out like bandits compared to the single father. If the single father does not have custody of his children, he gets no exemptions at all and pays the single tax rate along with child support (a tax for not keeping the marriage intact regardless of fault). If the father has custody of his children, he may claim them as dependents and he gets a reduced tax rate from single but not even close to the married tax rate. He has more expenses than the married couple. He has less time to spend with his kids than the married couple. He has much greater expenses than the married couple. But he pays a higher tax rate. The easiest way to look at this is to fill out the tax forms as head of household with, say, 2 kids. Then fill out the same tax forms as married with one spouse and one kid. The second tax bill is almost 50% less than the first. And these married people bitch about tax rates? ‘Fair’ is in the eye of the beholder. So ‘fair’ is not a good basis for war.
As I entered college, one semester of Army Reserve Officers Training Corps a requirement. I not only joined ROTC but I signed up for Pershing Rifles and the second semester. Pershing Rifles is the drill-team-gung-ho group of potential Army officers. Moreover, I went down and signed up for Marine Officer Training. I stopped short of signing the contract when I discovered that I was signing a contract for life, or at least 20 years. The standing contract was for 7 years but at the government's discretion I could be extended up until 20 years. This was in 1963. The man said that this was never done except in time of war and the last time was in 1951 in the Korean ‘War’. I pointed out that that was within my memory frame and that I would not sign this. He pointed out that the Army ROTC contract that I would sign in two years had the same clause. I checked. It did. I quit Army ROTC. That was the only reason. It had nothing to do with the concept of war.
I transferred to Madison in the fall of 1964. That was the year that Barry Goldwater was running for President. I liked the man and sat on his platform when spoke in Madison that fall. I also sat in on the 3-day administration building occupation protesting the university giving class standing information to the Selective Service but not giving it to the student himself. This violated my sense of ‘fair’ and needed to be protested. Against war? No. Against the unfair implementation of war. Yes.
Then there was my father who believed that fighting and dying in a
war at the age of 18 had nothing to do with being able to vote for the
war at the age of 21. Alcohol at 21 was also irrelevant. He
lost: they changed the voting and drinking ages to 18 so that you vote
in a cause that would take your life. I think he was wrong but at
the age of 61, this is probably
irrelevant. I do think that dying for a republic but being
ineligible to vote is wrong. Not having enough sense to not kill
yourself and others by driving and drinking caused them to raise the
drinking age back to 21.
I took the University Contemporary Foreign Policy course in the
history department. I was to discover of the over 100 persons in
the class that I was the only non-history
major. I wanted to learn about the concept of foreign policy and
the wars that the US had gotten itself into. Again, overly
analytical but I started to have real opinions on war and wanted
to have some foundation for them. My paper for the semester: "The
United States of America is the most militarily aggressive power in the
history of the World". The prof stated that this opinion was
shared by others.
I carry this analysis to radical extremes because of so little faith in myself. For example, I discussed with a woman friend many years ago a problem I had with my marriage. I really wanted to love my wife. She was then, I thought, a good person but there was this wall between us that I could not get past. I did not understand the wall and the wall might be part or entirely my fault. Maybe I could not love. Love is such a hard word. A woman who worked for me was available to love. I believed we could have had a sexual affair if I were so inclined. So I started in and fell in love with this woman. No sexual affair but extremely intimate. I decided that I could indeed love. The problem was learning to love my wife. Stopping the love for my co-worker tore me apart but that was one price of this lesson. It ended up costing me my job and other things but I determined that I could love. The problem was learning to love my wife. I set about doing this but it never happened. It takes two to make a marriage work and at this point my wife had ideas that did not match mine. Did they ever? I shall never know. Could it have worked? I shall never know. Should I worry about it now? No. But this narration shows how determined, even if misdirected, I am to analyze a situation. Analysis is not always the answer.
There is also not always a right or wrong. There can be two sides. My ex-wife would love for me to admit this and I already have: up the point of the divorce. After that, she was malicious and I tried to minimize the differences. There are not two valid opinions here: she is wrong and I am right but we shall get to that at another time and another place.
The problem here is that analysis always brings baggage. To be a philosopher such as Plato or Descartes requires a tremendous ability to remove yourself from unreasonable assumptions and logically tear apart and put together huge structures of logic dealing with the nature of the world or people. I know of few who can do this and know of none who desire to. I have worked hard for my life’s set of assumptions and have no reason to discard them in favor of totally neutral analysis. I want to analyze how I view the world and how that relates to others’ viewpoints.
I try to give weight to my baggage to know how it impacts my analysis but then I run into the Heisenberg principal: you cannot measure a process without interfering with the process itself. But I try. Always try.
These are easy words. Good is what God wants. Bad is what God does not want. God wants all people to live up to the potential He has given them. People who have other plans for themselves or to impose their will upon others are bad.
Ugly is the absence of beauty. Beauty is the world with everyone living the best life that God has made possible for them in a universe full of wonders and opportunities.
We must then ask: “Who speaks for God?” There is so much literature claiming to be the word of God that we must pick and choose. Lucky for us, much of this literature says the same thing: Love your neighbor and do not be a hypocrite. Many have said this: Janis Joplin, William Shakespeare, Thoreau, Jesus, Siddhartha, and many whom I do not need to list. Take your choice.
I have read the two English translations of the Koran. Sorry, Amy, it is a book of war. The Koran explains Mohammed's reasons for war and how to execute it, including dealing with the survivors. It is the story of an angry God needing retribution. I need a God who loves me when I fall down and holds my hand like a good father when I am slipping.
I believe that the Reformation was necessary as the Catholic Church was killing people who disagreed with its restrictions on education from the Bible. Even still, the Reformation did not go far enough. As a teenager wanting to understand what God wanted of me, my local parish priest told me that I should not read the bible myself but accept the Church’s cut and paste job. He also told me that taking a philosophy of religion course at a non-Catholic University was at best a sin. I liked Father Murphy but he was wrong.
We have had many wars over exactly this question. I resent these wars. I resent the Irish fighting each other. I resent the Jews and the Palestinians fighting. I see no way to end either war since both believe that they are following God and want the same parcel of land.
What does God say to people who die fighting for what they believe
God wants? Are they so stupid that they really believe that God
wants them to kill other people? Are they afraid that if they do
not kill the other person first that they will be killed? Do they
really believe that killing will make a better world? It must be
so since so may are willing
to do this. We obviously have an education problem here. I
can only hope that we start to address the basic problem: education,
education, education. Killing people only makes the
problem worse. If you have a religion that believes in
retribution, the cycle cannot end. Jesus had the right handle:
“Revenge is the Lord’s.”
I did not like my father. He is now dead. Do I want him in
Hell? Give me a break. My father had his own relationship
with God. How they work things out after he dies is between him
and God. I wish him the best and hope they are happy
together. Wanting God to settle debts is not very practical.
So. War. What makes a real war necessary? I'll give my opinion on a couple of wars close to home.
This is a tough one. This war was not over civil rights. It was not over people dying. It was over political concepts for which diplomacy had failed. The people on one continent desired to not be ruled by people on another continent. They wanted to rule themselves. I can take either side of this as a necessary war but remember that Canada established freedom without a war. It just took longer. The American Revolutionary war started events which made the United States of America the greatest military and political power in the history of the world. Is this good? Most Americans think so. Sometimes I think the power is grossly abused – mostly by a psychotic government more than by evil intentions.
Necessary war: free the people.
The American Civil War was a necessary war. Persons because of color were not given rights as citizens. This was a flaw in the original document founding our Government. These persons were legally treated as property by one very large segment of the country. The other segment liked neither the idea of slavery nor the idea of having two countries. Even if the North had accepted the idea of two countries there was still the problem of freeing these people. When unending attempts to change laws (diplomacy) failed, the slave-holding group formed their own country and then attacked the original country. This started a war. It was a bloody war carried out most ineptly by the winning side. But freedom for all people won and the country was re-united. Because the winning leader was assassinated, it took another 100 years to actually end the war. It will take another 100 years to treat people equally. Maybe more than that.
An example of absolutely blatant military aggression. The USA placed a defective battleship into a foreign harbor, blew it up (maybe accidentally), blamed the then current rulers of that country (another country) and categorically refused to resolve the issue diplomatically.
In fact, in most respects this was not a war: most of the Spanish territories immediately capitulated after being assaulted by the US military. What followed is an example of how really bad military aggression is. The USA placed each of the territories it stole from Spain under a military dictatorship. Any freedoms that the people had under Spain were lost. The Philippines warred against the new ownership to the point that many colonies were released from this dictatorship. Cuba was released to a USA-friendly dictator. He eventually was overthrown by a person claiming to want freedom but turning to Communism as it opposed the original USA military dictatorship. Many wars are the exchange of one evil for another.
This was pure aggression from one European country to another with the intent of the first dominating a great portion of the western world. The war was necessary because this type of aggression if not freedom for people. It is enslavement of people. The originators of the war lost. The world lost a lot of good people. It lost some bad people.
Same as World War I: freedom won over tyranny.
This was won by the Communists to overthrow the invasion western
imperialists. Communism is not freedom. It would have been
better if there had been a warring side which advocated freedom.
Again the result was worse than the original government.
This war to overthrew a kingdom in favor of freedom. The
problem is that the winners also did not give freedom but had a
perverse social concept that kept rulers in control
of the ruled. Instead of one king/czar, there was now a committee
of kings/czars. The result may have been different if the United
States had not attempted to intervene by the 1917 invasion at
Archangel. This attack helped establish the Communists over the
Bolsheviks.
later, the overthrow of the Communists was a war for freedom carried out by the various countries that had been engulfed in this perverse sociology. This war will continue for years more as it is not a war on a battle field with a winner or loser but the evolution of a society for which freedom has never been a choice. Freedom requires the education of the populace to understand the concept. If you have no concept of freedom, you cannot be free.
The Chinese form of Communism would have stopped at the end of the
Korean Peninsula without this war. Necessary? Ask anyone
south of the line. Look at the disaster north of the line.
The Vietnam War had gone on for centuries before the United States decided to make the war its own. China and France had discovered what happened to interlopers: they were beaten back. The entrance by the United States as advocated to President Eisenhower by George F. Kennon to contain Communism was a very bad mistake and poorly executed. The USA violated the Versailles Treaty signed by the Vietnamese and the French: the USA declared that the treaty line delineated two separate countries. The USA then established the southern as a dictatorship by appointing a religious maniac who believed in the Moslem concept: become one of us or die. Treating the Buddhists as enemies, he made himself and the USA unwelcome. The Vietnamese fought to expel the USA and were eventually successful. The mightiest military power in the world, cannot force a dictatorship on people who want to be free – even if they have to accept a poor alternative to freedom.
You can see by my remarks that I am not necessarily politically correct. The USA has always accepted its concept of might makes right and had attempted to impose this upon other parts of the world. The question is always: “Better than what?” We have promulgated wars that resulted in the exact opposite of what we desired. Or then, what is it that we desired?
I believe that the USA has had the best of intentions. The problem is the schizophrenic nature of the imposition of its beliefs upon other cultures. We wanted the Vietnamese to be free by imposing such a disastrous dictatorship upon them that Russian Communism was seen as a better alternative. I think that this carries through to the Spanish-American War and other attempts by the USA to ‘free’ people.
I hope that given our total history of such mistakes that our
current policies will eventually free the people that we are placing
under military law. Those countries have
every reason to not believe that we are there to free them.
We must prove them wrong or go down in history as the most
militaristically aggressive country in the history of the world.
Do you wonder why the Iraqi dissidents can spread the word that the
US is here to stay unless we can drive them out? That is the
history of our country. I really do hope that this time we set a
new example. We gave back Germany earlier than promised.
We worship George Washington for his inept defeat of the British. There are others who are more deserving of this attention.
James Monroe had the real vision of the American Republic. He
first told the rest of the world to keep its mitts off of the Western
Hemisphere. This was a very strong
statement to make from the new guy on the block but make it he
did. Then there was the Louisiana Territory purchase to make our
country the single owner of land
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We still had to
deal with the Southwest but James Monroe had the vision.
By the way, did you know that the Southern States really believed
that the US would eventually own all of Central and South
America. Given the Mason-Dixon line as the slavery border, this
southern expansion would have made them by far the majority and slavery
would have prevailed by popular vote. When the South discovered
the eminent domain concept ended at the Pacific with no intention of
going south, they felt betrayed.
He recognized the US Constitution as flawed by not giving equal
rights to all persons. This recognition was so obvious that the
war actually started with his election –
before his inauguration. He was willing to put the entire country
on the line so that the United States of America could become the great
bastion of freedom that
he envisioned.
The Gettysburg Address was not written on an envelope. Lincoln
worked very hard on this speech to accomplish two things. First,
he stated that we were a single nation and not a collection of
states. Second, he established July 4, 1776 as the birth of our
country rather than the signing of the constitution. Why?
The Constitution was flawed as it established legal slavery. His
concepts have held to this day.
Why did the north have such a problem with its military? Most of the leadership of the US Military Academy went to fight with the South.
He fought the Mexican bandits and government to establish the line between the countries. I am not sure that I admire the man but he had a vision of greatness for the USA and was willing to back his ‘diplomacy’ with battleships. If you read carefully, it was his command that started the Spanish-American war. He personally fought for the Mexican Territories. He helped steal the Panama Canal which he saw as necessary for world trade and leadership. ‘Steal’ is the correct word: read the history. Shoot, we stole the entire country from Columbia, renamed it Panama, and declared its independence. Columbia backed down when they saw the battleships arrive.
From the above you know where I stand on history. I fought to not go to war in Vietnam. As I grew up, I was against all wars. I was an idealist. I had learned from my father that protecting myself physically from him or anyone else was wrong. If I had a fight with someone at school, I was made to apologize. When one student attacked me with a knife, the teacher's comment was that it was about time that I defended myself. I was glad my father did not find out about this or I would have had to apologize for this also. Any attempt to defend my opinions against my fathers was stomped on hard. I cannot count the number of times I was declared stupid or not able to think. I learned to not attempt to defend my opinions: I was not worthy to have an opinion.
This carries forth to this day: I will do anything to avoid a fight either physically or verbally.
When I was drafted I discussed my problems with the Army
doctor. I
pointed out that it would be impossible for me to fight in a military
situation. If I were forced to take
another person’s life, I would also be forced to take my own.
This was not a result of serious religious training. This was a
result of believing that I was less valuable than any
other person and therefore, killing that person would be such a grave
sin that shedding my own blood would be necessary to absolve it.
I was sent home. This was in 1964.
In 1967, I discovered the concept of ‘family’. I moved in with a family near Detroit: the Borsos. I would drive down after work on Friday exhausted from 16-hour days at Chrysler. Mom would send the little girl, Tina, out by the willow tree to wait for me. As I came around the corner, Tina would jump up and down and yell ‘Chuckie Kelly’s coming. Chuckie Kelly’s coming.” You have no idea how this made me feel. I was loved. I was loved by a mother and a daughter and a family. This had never happened to me before. Close maybe by the Haeselichs in Milwaukee, but here was total acceptance and love. I would go to sleep upstairs and wake up a few times on Saturday only to return to bed. Sunday I would enjoy dinner with the family, play with the kids, mostly Tina and Margie, and return to Detroit for another week of 16-hour days. I rarely saw my apartment other than to shower or sleep.
I learned that I would fight in a war to defend my family. I would die to preserve the right of Tina to yell and jump up and down and play. I would do so for other such children. I understood the need for war.
So if, Chuck Borso or David Borso or Karen Borso or Margie Borso or Bill Borso or Tina Borso happens to read this, know that your family showed me a love that I would wish upon my family and others for all of my life.
There are multiple references in the bible for pacifists. I had been one. I no longer was. There is a section in Daniel where he states that the women, children, and the men who will not fight, stay in the village. I understand there are men who will not fight. I left a Baptist church in Boca Raton after arguing with the pastor that calling these men ‘cowards’ was inappropriate. I have never accepted the title of ‘coward’. If I had refused to fight, I would have never obtained my college degree. If I had refused to fight, my children would have been raised in an abusive home with their mother and continued to meet the public with scrapes and bruises and worse psychological problems. I must apologize to both of my children for supporting their fight but refusing to make it my own.
In 1969 after the Mifflin Street Party I understood why my sister Kathie had fought in the streets of Berkeley for the rights of citizens to represent their beliefs against an illegal war: ”Our country, right the wrongs!” I was ready to take on the Madison Police and Mayor in a similar effort when I was calmed down by my friend Connie, who told me that the next battle was for people who did not have to go home the next day. She was right. I skipped that battle but people know where I stand: I am against all forms of oppression and I do not let the claim of ‘freedom’ while imposing a military dictatorship get in the way of wanting real freedom.
I have not fought hard enough and for freedom. I shall always apologize to my children for both not supporting them strongly enough and for setting an insufficient example. I shall apologize to God for not fighting strongly enough in the same regard when we meet for His decision on how I shall spend eternity.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I pray that my actions have exceeded my intentions.