WAR IS . . . ?
an introduction by Patty Campbell
WAR IS . . .
CRAZY. Looked at without its veil of noble causes and glory, waris insanity, as Mark Twain so deftly observes in "The War Prayer," astory that was deemed so controversial that it was not published untilthirteen years after his death. For the people of one country to try tokill as many of the people of another country as possible makes nosense at all, in terms of our common humanity. Yet . . .
WAR IS . . .
HISTORY. The story of civilization has always been told in terms ofa progression of wars. We have always waged war against oneanother, and the leaders of those wars are the people who are praisedor deplored in our memories. The artists, the composers, the architects,the actors and dancers, the women and children, daily lifeand religion -- these matters we leave to the archaeologists and theanthropologists to record. But it is the kings and warriors who areremembered in the history books.
WAR IS . . .
DECEPTION. Even in conventional warfare, the first thing thatmust happen before a nation can be led to war is to demonize theenemy, to portray those others as less than human. Stories begin to beshared about their dreadful deeds, and derogatory terms replacetheir true names. Soldiers cannot be allowed to remember that thepeople they will be sent to kill feel pain and fear and love theirspouses and children, just as they do. And even the U.S. governmentsenlistment contract is shockingly deceptive, as Bill Bigelow warns in"The Recruitment Minefield," his revelation of recruitment activitieswith high-school students. Nor can civilians be allowed to know thereal causes of war. Slogans like "to preserve freedom," and "to protectthe world for democracy" sometimes mask the actual economic and political incentives.
WAR IS . . .
UNBEARABLE. The ugly details of how people die in war and thebrutality of battle is often more than the psyche can endure. Peoplesee things in war that the human soul is not equipped to bear. Inevery war, many soldiers return wounded not in their bodies butin their minds. After the Civil War, this condition was referred to as"soldiers heart." Now we describe it as "post-traumatic stress disorder."Battle veterans almost invariably carry emotional and psychologicalscars.
WAR IS . . .
DELUSION. The bait that entices young people to become soldiersis glory, as we see in the reflections of students at the grave of a youngmarine in the article that opens this collection. The reward of medalsand honor and a sense of patriotic duty and loyalty to comrades coverthe ugly reality that a soldiers primary job is to kill and destroy. While it is old men who plan the wars, the dying and killing has always been done by the young, as Bob Dylan rages against in his song "Masters of War."
WAR IS . . .
MALE. Although there have been exceptions -- Joan of Arc, ElizabethI, the Celtic warrior queen Boadicea -- the leaders of war have nearly always been men. For most of history, it has been women who weep for their dead sons and husbands, women who are the victims of rape and enslavement, while men fight and die on the battlefield. Editor Marc Aronson has brought the unhappy experiences of women in the military to this anthology with Helen Benedicts "Women at War," an essay on what its like to be a female soldier in Iraq, while my own fathers World War I letters from Paris, "Letters from ‘Over There, " show the typical horsing around of young men having fun, even in the presence of war.
WAR IS . . .
LINKED WITH RELIGION. The sad fact is that throughout historyreligion has provided motivation and support for many wars. But on the other hand, some churches, like the Society of American Friends, or Quakers, find a rationale in their faith for acting out peace. And some young men, as Chaplain Lyn Brown describes in his interview with me, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," move to become conscientious objectors when confronted with the realities of battle.
WAR IS . . .
WORSE FOR CIVILIANS. The devastation of war is always harder on civilians than it is on soldiers, and civilian casualties vastly outnumber those suffered by the military. For instance, while the U.S. lost 58,000 soldiers in Vietnam, it is estimated that more than three million Vietnamese civilians died from war-related causes. And at this present writing, U.S. deaths in Iraq number exceed 4,000, while Iraqi civilian deaths exceed 78,000 (although a recent study by Johns Hopkins University published in the respected medical journal The Lancet estimates the number at 655,000). War also often destroys a societys most basic means of survival, its ability to provide food and shelter, water and electricity, as well as the delicate psychological and moral structures that hold a civilization together with the authority of law and the expectation of safetyand mutual dependency, as we see in Margo Lanagans stunningstory "Heads" and Fumiko Miuras memoir of the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
WAR IS . . .
IMPOSSIBLE TO WIN Modern warfare takes the form of terrorism, and this is a type of war we dont know how to fight. The insurgent army wears no uniforms and are indistinguishable from the general population -- until they shoot. There are no battlefields, no occupied territory, no visible enemy, and no possibility of victory. Yet we continue to fight this new kind of war as if all these features from the past were still in place, a failed strategy that makes it inevitable that there will be no endpoint for hostilities.