Four

In Defense of War

A PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATION of political affairs has the disadvantage of being incapable, in and of itself, of implying any specific practical action or policy. It would, then, seem useless except for the accompanying reflection that specific policy undertaken without any attention to principles is mindless; and mindless action can have no expectation either of practical effect or of intellectual defense. No doubt the relation of principles to action is complex indeed; but at least it can be said that practical principles without reference to possible action are vacuous, and action that cannot be clarified by principle is aimless commotion. Principled action offers us, then, the best that can be hoped for. That, however, is the work not of philosophy but of statesmanship, a faculty which is as theoretically clear as it need be but also skilled by experience in reading the existing political scene. Accordingly my present remarks aim only at some principles involved in the understanding of war, focusing on those that seem conspicuously absent in contemporary discussion, and not at defending any specific judgments about the Vietnam war. Examples of incoherent principles will be drawn from recent discussions; but any other war might have served equally well. No judgment about that particular can be derived from these remarks on principles; and if most of the false principles are quoted from the antiwar side, it is only because that side has been more vocal.

The villain of the present essay is pacifism, by which I mean a principled opposition to all war. Since it is a principled opposition, any appropriate opposition to pacifism must itself be a matter of principles. That pacifism is a principle and not a specific opposition to this war is sufficiently indicated by the suffix “ism,” as well as by the arguments it mounts to make its principle plausible: it is war itself that is evil, and peace itself good, under no matter what terms. Pacifists think it is enough to declare these ideals to win all hearts and minds; and if to some people these pacifist principles seem impractical or indeed immoral, that can only be because the unconverted are hard of heart, slow of comprehension, or the world itself not yet ready for such a glory. That pacifism itself is practically absurd and morally deplorable is the chief burden of my remarks. The argument will be by way of excavating the presuppositions and tracing the consequences of pacifism, and exhibiting them to the reader for his free choice. That pacifism itself is evil does not, needless to say, imply that the persons who hold that view are evil; a radical distinction between the character of persons and the character of their articulated views is the very basis of this or any other civilized discussion. If human beings could not be decent while their views are absurd, then all of us would fall into the abyss.

In any event, the first casualty of the Vietnam war seems to have been philosophy itself. The transition was easy: from an opposition to the war on whatever ground, a portion of the public mind rose to what it thought was the proper principle of that opposition: pacifism, the sentiment that war was itself evil. And its arguments proceeded down from that height. Flattering themselves for their “idealism,” pacifists could only survey the home reality they had left with high indignation: we were killing! Children were trotted forth on TV to ask: why must men kill one another? Can we not all love one another, the child asks, having immediately forgotten his fight with his brother off-screen. Having been illuminated by the purity and innocence of children, the new pacifist can but flagellate himself in public remorse. Not merely must this war be stopped at once, but all war and forever; we must recompense our enemies for the damage wrought upon them; we must ask their forgiveness, for are they not really our friends and our friends our enemies? And as the confusion multiplies and moral passion inflames itself, nothing appears as too severe a punishment for ourselves; impeachment of our leaders and finally the impeachment of ourselves and our history seem too gentle. These public outbursts of moral self-hatred are, of course, not unknown in history; let Savonarola stand for them all. Today the uproar is orchestrated by retired baby doctors, neurotic poets and novelists, psychoanalysts, ministers, and confused philosophers, each of whom, armed with the authority of his special “insight,” seeks to speak for suffering humanity. The message to be read through the tear-stained faces is the same: we must stop killing! Regardless of how one reads the Vietnam war, what is said publicly for or most usually against it presents something like the eclipse of political thought. And with the eclipse of thought, we are left with some of the most preposterous slogans ever to find utterance. When supported by high passion, parades and demonstrations, insults in loud voices, we find ourselves once again in the theater of the absurd.

Why War?

Why indeed, asks the child? Why cannot everyone love one another? Settle all disputes “rationally,” so that all men could live as brothers, already having forgotten the first brothers, Cain and Abel? Thrashing around for explanations of the horrid fact that people can indeed be hostile to one another, the sloganeer with a smattering of popculture finds some answers ready to hand. War has a biological origin; it arises from an excess of testosterone in the male; maybe there is a biological solution, something like castration? That Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir have conducted their wars very successfully is already forgotten. Or maybe they are men in disguise? Or the impulse to fight arises from some distorted family history, a son conditioned by a father who in turn was conditioned by his father to conceive war as particularly masculine, an expression of machismo; but that could be remedied by “treatment.” Perhaps drugs, suggested a recent president of the American Psychological Society. Or perhaps war arises from selfishness, a moral flaw that could be remedied by the sort of turn of the heart hoped for by a Quaker who during WW II looked Hitler straight in the eye and said: “Thou art an evil man!” If there is a warlike “instinct,” maybe it could be diverted into harmless games like chess or the Olympics. And then maybe there is no such instinct? Animals may be found like the gazelle or lamb, which are not particularly aggressive; why not take them for our / ideal? Or, if not an animal “instinct,” then surely it is generated by the capitalist society, which, as everyone knows, fosters aggression, competition, acquisitiveness, and imperialism. But then even the most casual glance sees that Communist societies are even more imperialist and aggressive than capitalist. And does not the stock market fall with each new bombing? Or, finally, it is all caused by presidents, who wish to be mentioned in the history books, or be reelected by the V.F.W. The presidency should accordingly be abolished; policy should be turned over to the people. But which people? Those people who have been treated, have had a change of heart, who take flowers and gentle animals for their ideal, in a word, the remnant who through their dictatorship will save the world from every war except that against themselves.

The generating assumption of this system of explanations is of course that there can be no moral justification for war at all. It is simply an evil; and since man is “naturally good,” one must look for a cause of his distorted conduct. If war were morally justifiable, then that justification would remove any occasion for looking for pathological explanations. If one does not seek causes for a man doing good works other than the goodness of the work itself, neither need one seek biological, psychological, cultural, sociopolitical causes for a justifiable war. The justification is the cause in this case.

And so then the question Why war? would be answered if any moral justification for it were forthcoming. A “justifiable war”? Is that not a contradiction in terms, or is it the pacifist who represents a living contradiction in terms?

This first answer to the question Why war? assumes at the start that it is evil, assumes that men are or could be “naturally good,” meaning “peaceful,” but since in point of fact they are not, the “explanation” is to be found in an artificial distortion of their passionate nature. The elimination of war will result from a correction of that passionate nature, through treatment, whether physiological, psychological, social, or rhetorical. Either their bodies or their characters must be changed by whatever treatment promises success. The lion will lie down with the lamb, indeed will be indistinguishable from him. He will abandon pride, greed, egotism, the desire to display power, to intimidate, to coerce; he will at the end of history at last be good. But, of course, absolutely all men must be good; for if even a few are left who do not so envisage the good, our “good” men will be, of course, good-for-nothing, and their peace will be the peace determined by the wicked. Unwilling to fight for their lives or ideals, they are suppressed and at that point the whole of human history recommences as if there had been no interlude, or at best an interlude within common sense. The lamb who lies down with the lion may indeed be good for the lion when his appetites return; and if he is good in any other sense, it could only be on a mystic plane not exactly pertinent to the practical moral plane of existence. It is not surprising, then, that advocates in the church of the kingdom of heaven do indeed place it in heaven, but never advocate it as political policy. After all, by definition heaven has already expelled or refused admittance to the wicked, hence is hardly faced with problems commensurate with ours on earth. What does a lion eat in heaven? Men, needless to say, are not animals simpliciter, but rational or spirited animals; but neither reasons nor spirit so long as they remain living can contradict animal needs.

That rational animals engage in hostilities unto death has always seemed a scandal to those philosophers who neglect existence. If one stamp of moralist finds both the cause and solution to war in some alteration in body or character, many philosophers of abstractions find both the cause and solution to war in thought, to be corrected by right reasoning. If rational men still fight, and if war is irrational, then there must be a rational solution to it. The medium of reason is the word, so we can expect this stamp of pacifist to praise the verbal solution to hostilities: the treaty. Would it not be reasonable to prevent or terminate hostilities by calculation, agreements, and solemnly pledged words? It is easy to forgive philosophers and the educated in general for their touching confidence in the power of words; they exercise a magical power in and over the mind; but perhaps that is their proper place. However, it is an outrageous neglect to fancy that they have any power except that over the mind, mind, moreover, which itself has the obligation to superintend the very existential conditions of its own life. Who then is surprised when he reads that in the last three hundred and fifty years, something like eighty-five percent of the treaties signed in the Western world have been broken? But the treaty theory of peace can then congratulate itself on the fact that now a culprit can be identified, declared to be an aggressor, and, while the aggressor is condemned by the “enlightened good will of mankind,” he nevertheless proceeds to enjoy his dinner, and later may be celebrated as a benefactor of mankind; he will certainly not hesitate to sign new treaties. Our question is what to do: wring one’s hands over men’s irrationality or rethink the meaning of war? In all of this, one can easily agree that treaties exercise some slight restraining power over the more rapacious inclinations; but would it not be criminal neglect to entrust the security of one’s country to treaties? And, in fact, does any responsible leader ever do it? No doubt, the lambs, since they have nothing better to work with.

And eventually, as the final rational solution to the problem of war, there is the idea of a single super state, whether an enlargement of one of those now extant—such as the U.S.A., Russia, or China—or conceived as a super United Nations. This convulsive, “final solution” to the war problem particularly appeals to those who have little “negative capability,” as Keats put it, little tolerance for the uncertain, for risk, for in fact the most fundamental characteristics of free human life. When put in the form of a super United Nations, it almost looks harmless, mostly because its prototype, the present United Nations, is harmless. But it can more properly be put in uglier terms; if it were indeed to be a super state, it could be nothing short of a super totalitarianism. The historical totalitarianisms we have all witnessed would be as nothing compared with this monstrosity; and, as has often been remarked, they grew in precisely the same spiritual soil, a certain inability to face risk, death, war, or confusion, to face the existential conditions of a free life with dignity. Everything must be put in order! And if it is not now in order and never has been, then the order will be imposed, imposed in fact by that very Force which once seemed so odious. A new order of the World; but now its dissidents become World enemies and where are they to flee? Do they have a right to life itself? Are they not enemies of the World? In this abstract fantasia, the first thing lost sight of is a small annoying matter, a point of logic: any Order is also only itself a specific order. Law and Order, of course, are only universal abstractions, whose proper medium of existence is the word. In existence itself, it is always this or that order, that is, somebody’s order; and then there is always somebody else who believes honestly in another order, one perhaps more favorable to himself or his ideal. Again the eternal hostilities break out, now, however, with a difference: hostilities between nations have not been eliminated, but only redubbed: each is now a civil war within the World State. Perhaps the candid observer will be excused if he fails to perceive the difference, except in the new savagery now morally permitted. And as for the individual? He has been forgotten for a long time in his prison or madhouse. He must be given therapy.

Many serious persons, of course, are sensitive to these paradoxes, and yet finally in desperation cling to the solution of a world state or world dictatorship as the only preventative of world destruction through nuclear holocaust. It is one thing to be willing to give one’s own life for one’s nation, but it is qualitatively different to destroy the habitable parts of the globe for “nothing but” freedom and dignity. For our present discussion we shall assume that some such thing is possible now or in the not too distant future. The possibility raises questions, obviously, of an ultimate order. But I do not think it unambiguously true that some such possible world catastrophe compels assent to world totalitarianism. In any event, for the moment, it might seem that here, at last, pacifism becomes sanity; and that any acceptance of world destruction is the very essence of evil and immorality. I shall revert to this question at the end and I touch upon it now only to complete this first part that surveys various sentiments which find war as such and in principle intolerable and which make efforts to formulate a solution or eliminate the cause.

The Justification of War

The attitudes so far considered begin, as we have seen, by assuming war to be unjustifiable; if it is unjustifiable, then its cause must be found in biological, psychological, social, or moral distortions of an inherently peace-loving human nature; the cure is always some form of therapy. Or those who conduct war must have reasoned badly or given up the hope that rational discussion with its eventual treaty would be effective. Wars are “irrational,” no philosophical justification of any is possible; thought will find the rational “solution.” But on the other hand, if war is justifiable, then the search for its causes either in distortions of the passionate nature of man or in errors or failures of reason is downright foolish. The justification removes the premise of the search for causes and cures. The justification of war as a form of moral and rational excellence may seem scandalous to the pacifist, and yet it is that scandal I should like to defend. And as for talk about the greater or lesser of two evils, I shall try to avoid this ambiguous, slippery, and ultimately meaningless effort to calculate the incalculable. The justification of war aims at showing both its morality and its rationality; if, therefore, there are occasions when a moral and rational man must fight, then a proscription of war in principle must be itself irrational and ethically deplorable.

The justification of war is existence; to will to exist is to affirm war as its means and condition. But perhaps the term “existence” puts the matter too abstractly. In the present context, and in its most abstract sense, existence is a synonym for life, and nonexistence for death. Wars, then, are justified as means taken to assure life and death. And yet little has been said; the life and death of what? Bare life measured by the beating of the heart is hardly life at all; it would be prized only as the supporter and condition of a life worth living. Obviously men have always thought it justifiable to fight not merely to preserve their physical being, but also for those additional things that make that life worth living: fertile lands, access to the sea, minerals, a government of their choice, laws and customs and religions, and finally peace itself. Existence, then, is hardly bare survival but an existence in the service of all those concrete values which illuminate and glorify existence. They too must exist; it is almost by definition that values, in and of their intrinsic meaning, demand existence. Justice would misunderstand itself if it were content to remain abstract and merely ideal.

So much might easily be granted until another reflection arises, that perhaps the goods of existence could be shared by all men. This utopian notion is much beloved of philosophers and art critics who look upon the diversities of thought and cultural style as so many advantages and opportunities for spiritual growth. As indeed they are; but then those values are not exactly what war is about. If the library can house every book in peaceful coexistence, or if the museum can calmly exhibit the styles of the world, why must men themselves fight? Could the world not be like an international congress of philosophy or perhaps a quieter meeting of UNESCO: would this not be the civilized thing? Would it not be better if nations conducted themselves according to the model of a genteel conversation, where views are advanced and withdrawn without anger, and where men say “excuse me for interrupting”?

But elementary reflection is enough to dispel these dreams. Existence or life individuates itself; when it can speak, it says “I,” and when it possesses, “mine.” Nothing is changed logically in this respect when the I becomes a we, and the mine, ours. That I am not you, or we are not they, is the ineluctable ground of war; individuation is essential to existenee. That which is not individuated does not exist, but subsists as a universal or abstract meaning. Consequently the meaning of a book or cultural artifact can be shared by all; but the existent book or existent painting cannot, and could supply a ground for conflict. No wonder philosophers or scientists or critics, accustomed to living in the domain of abstractions and ideal meanings that are not, like quantities of matter, diminished progressively by each man who partakes of them, find something scandalous and primitive about war or anything else appropriate in the domain of existence and life. Nothing is easier than for the spirit to neglect the conditions of its own existence, or indeed be outraged by them.

I have used the term “existential” intentionally in spite of its abstractness to avoid at all costs what might seem to be its more common equivalent, “material.” Some sentimental pacifists think it sufficient to prove that a nation has gone to war for “material” interests to conclude, with cheers from their audience, that such a war is immoral. That idealism should find itself opposed to “matter,” or its equivalent, life and existence, would certainly not have surprised the Buddha or Nietzsche, both of whom accurately perceived that the only surcease of war and public sorrow is in nothingness, Nirvana, or eternity. And, as President Truman remarked, those who cannot stand the heat should get out of the kitchen.

But, of course, what the sentimental pacifist wants is nothing so radical as the genuine alternative of a Buddha; he wants an existent heaven, perpetual peace-on־earth, a mishmash which has never been or never will be seen, violating as it does patent ontological differences subsisting between existence and the abstract. The exposure of this error is not difficult. At what precise point do material interests become ideal? Is the health of a nation “material” or “ideal”? But its health depends, of course, upon its wealth; is the pursuit of that wealth ideal or materialistic and crass? Is the culture of a nation an ideal or a material value? And is its culture dependent or not upon the wealth available for education and leisure? Is the wealth devoted to such tasks materialistic or idealistic? Money versus human life! All these false contrasts need not be multiplied to perceive the vacuity of any argument against war based upon “idealistic” as opposed to “materialistic” principles.

Functioning according to the same false logic is another simplistic contrast, also beloved of pacifists: that thought to exist between egoism and altruism. The high-minded rhetoric poured out against “selfishness” is laughable indeed when not taken seriously. Is it “selfish” for me to protect my own life, or those of my family, friends, or compatriots? And, moreover, not merely our physical existence, but our human life with its wealth, customs, laws, institutions, languages, religions, our autonomy? Or to protect the “material,” i.e., economic conditions that support all these values? To affirm any form of life at all is at the same time to affirm the means to it; what could be more confused than to will our life and also to will the life opposed to it? The ultimate pacifist who would do nothing even to protect his own life for fear of killing another is simply a case of self-hatred; but both nature and logic combine to guarantee that this particular illness never becomes widespread. Has there been or could there ever be a defense for the idea that everyone else’s life is preferable to my own, particularly when adopted in turn by everyone else? Being bound together in friendship is certainly preferable to being torn apart by hostility; but is it not clear that neither the friendship of all nor the hostility of all is possible; the line to be drawn that assures the provisional existence of any state is to be drawn by practical statesmanship judging in its time for its time, and not by abstract, would-be idealistic principles, which by hoping to be valid for all times are pertinent to none.

EXCURSUS ON EQUALITY

No doubt it will have been noted that war here has not been justified as a means of securing justice or equality. It has been justified as a means necessary to any nation to secure or preserve its own social good and, as such, is held to be eminently reasonable and honorable. However, the social life of a nation is not itself to be further judged by means of abstract categories such as justice or equality. Hasty thought frequently identifies justice with equality, particularly since justice is elusive and protean in its applications, whereas the notion of equality, being mathematical and abstract, is within the grasp of all. I either do or do not have as much as another; if I do not, am I not wronged? Cannot anyone see this? And indeed they can, but what cannot be so immediately seen is whether such inequality is also ipso facto unjust.

These confusions pour into those discussions which, for example, would justify any war at all against the United States; since we have more than anyone else, we could never have a right to defend that more. To have more is to be guilty before the abstract bar of Equality. But this last gasp of the French Revolution, amplified by Marxist bellows, blows against certain existential realities. Those realities are simply that the earth itself is differentiated by rivers, climates, flora and fauna, mountains, valleys, and plains. Not all can live everywhere nor is this an injustice to them. And, to belabor the obvious, men are not equal, having very different temperaments, tastes, ideals, and histories. Not merely are men not equal, they are not inequal either, the category of “equality” being quantitative, whereas a man or a nation is not a quantity of anything but rather an individual or communal person aiming at a definite form of excellent life. Since nations and men are always already in a differentiated possession of the goods of the world, differentiated forms of excellence, differentiated histories and memories, the desire to equalize all is equivalent to the desire to obliterate history as well as the individuated free choices of nations and men. Computerized thought might delight in such simplicities, but is there any a priori reason why a truly just mind must accept it?

If I have not used the notion of justice in any abstract form to justify war, again, it is for the simple reason that it leads nowhere. Wars are fought over differing notions of justice; does any party to war ever think itself unjust? Justice in the abstract therefore is useless for purposes of condemnation or justification. Victory in war equally does not decide what is abstractly just, but which form of justice will prevail.

Objections to War

WHAT THE ״PEOPLE״ THINK OF WAR

I shall use this title for a slippery mass of appeals increasingly popular in the mass media. Reporters, seemingly getting the “objective” facts, can always ask some fleeing peasants: “Do you want war?” Of course the bewildered peasant replies that he only wishes to live in peace, that war has destroyed his family, his rice fields, that it is caused by “government,” that he could live equally well under any regime, that in fact he does not know the enemy, or does, having relatives among them, etc., all of which is pathetic as much for the sufferings of the peasant as for the mindlessness of the reporter who imagines himself to be presenting an ultimate argument based upon “humanity.”

Television, since it cannot picture any thought about war, is confined to showing what can be shown: the dismembered, burned, legless, eyeless, as if to say: this is what war really is. And when the dead or wounded are little children, women, or old men, the very heart recoils; the argument is decisive. But not yet: the soldiers must be asked; have they not seen it firsthand, fought it with their lives, seen their comrades fall before their very eyes? Any number can be rounded up to swear they haven’t the faintest idea what all the killing is about, that it must be immoral or absurd, probably conducted by munitions-makers or politicians seeking reelection, in a word, by all that “establishment” in which they never participated much even during peacetime. Their own virtue is to be resigned, or, if they “think,” they wear peace symbols.

As for the ideal component in war, the honor and courage of the soldier, that too is immediately debunked. “There’s nothing heroic about war,” says the soldier who may just yesterday have risked his life to save a comrade. War is nothing but living in the mud and rain, with poor food, disease, fatigue, danger, and boredom; is that heroic? His reticence about “heroism” is admirable; but we need not believe what he says. Since heroism is doing one’s duty or going beyond it under extreme conditions, it is difficult to see how the difficulties diminish the accomplishment; without those difficulties, genuine heroism would be nothing but parade-ground heroics. But let us look in more detail at these arguments of the people.

The People: who are they? They are either citizens of their country or not; if not, they have no political right to complaint. If so, then their government is indeed theirs, and they have every political duty to observe its decisions or try to alter them legally. In any event, the people are all the people, not merely the peasants, and they are in their collective capacity already represented by their government, whose decisions they must respect as made by their legal representatives. If the people are in no way represented by their government, then the question shifts itself away from war to that of forming a representative government. In any event, war and peace are decisions that obviously fall to the national government and not to miscellaneous groups, random interests, or ad hoc political rallies. Nor, least of all, to the private opinions of reporters interviewing a few people, usually those with the least opportunity to consider and weigh what is at stake. To suggest opinion polls or referenda on these questions every month or so simply offers us the idea of another form of government altogether, an unheard-of populism which in effect negates representative government altogether and substitutes for it the ever-shifting voice of the street. And since that in turn clearly reflects the overwhelming influence of propaganda, immediate “democracy” of this order shifts the decision from government to the directors and voices of “news” media. It is hardly surprising that this prospect delights the media, but it is surprising that so many otherwise sensible citizens wish to shift their allegiance from their own duly elected representatives to the directors of news media whom they have not elected and for the most part hardly know, all the while imagining that this offers them an opportunity themselves to direct the course of events.

The truth is, unwelcome as it may be, that the People—ordinary housewives, factory workers, farmers, etc.—as fine as they may be personally, are in no position whatsoever to consider the wisdom of that very politics upon which their own lives depend. It is, naturally, for this reason that very few nations at all, and none of any importance, are run on any such scheme. It is precisely the responsibility of representatives of the people to occupy themselves with such questions, inform themselves, and circumspectly weigh the possibilities. The limits of experience and political habits of thought which more or less make the ordinary private citizen private at the same time warn us against encouraging any immediate or undue influence of his opinions on matters of state. What the people think is simply the repetition of slogans derived either from campaigning politicians or from their favorite newspaper. For some researchers the popular mind is a pool of infinite wisdom and goodness; in truth it is nothing but an ephemeral reflection of popular songs, sandwich-board slogans, newspaper headlines, and clichés. For the popular mind, “thought” is what can be written on a placard or shouted at a rally; for the reflective, thought is precisely what eludes this form of expression. Who has the wind to shout a qualified thought?

Nothing could be more dangerous than the enthusiasms of the people. Mad joy at the beginning of hostilities; and rage when the bodies are brought in, the expenses reckoned up. But of course this is precisely what is to be expected from the people, suggestible, flighty, and unused to either foresight or circumspection. As for the shallow notion that the people want only peace, that all peoples love one another as brothers, and that war therefore is imposed upon them from above—could one find any stretch of history or any segment of the world where these notions are significantly illustrated? The natural brotherhood of man? The natural goodness of the people? Indeed! One could far better argue that there is nothing whatsoever “natural” in man; the natural is exactly what man decides.

When we substitute for the people the common soldier, all the same applies. Their experience is always tempting to novelists, looking for the “reality” of war. The reality in question, it should be remembered, is the one they are best equipped to express with vividness: the day-to-day life in the foxhole or in the pouring rain, the mudholes, the terror, sickness, ambiguities of fighting life. It is easy for novelists to enter into the mind of the G.I. who is presented as seeing only what lies before his eyes: a dead friend. That is the reality of war; meanwhile at headquarters the colonels are arrogant, incompetent, not really suffering, but instead well provided with booze and whores, no doubt profiteering from the PX, and in cahoots with the government, known to be corrupt. No doubt all this is true enough from time to time, and no doubt anyone at all can sympathize with the sentiments involved. And no doubt at all, the same structure can easily be found in any civil society that ever was in peacetime as well. The question, however, concerns the exact pertinence of such considerations to the justification or lack of it for any given war. Since wars are fought in the first place not to make common soldiers comfortable, nor to make generals live the same lives as privates, nor to remove corruption in the armies involved, the only pertinence of such observations when true would be to improve the army, not to stop the war. And that a platoon leader does not know the whole strategy from his experience, that a general cannot perform his legitimate functions in the same state of exhaustion as the G.I., nor carry his maps and codes into the foxholes, nor subject himself to the same risks as the ordinary soldier are all obvious but no doubt at times escape the full approval of the G.I., which is why the G.I. is not a general.

Related is the curious popular objection that war is immoral because the soldier does not know his enemy personally. A German soldier of WW I in AW Quiet on the Western Front receives a shock when, after killing a Frenchman, he realizes he never knew him personally. However, he would have received a greater shock upon recovering his wits when he realized that if he had known him personally and acted out of personal rage, his act would be radically transformed in meaning. From being a soldier doing his duty, he would be transformed into a murderer. But no doubt this distinction is too fine for those who love to talk of war as “mass murder,” oblivious to all distinctions between on the one hand the legitimate duties of the police and soldiers, and on the other punishable murder. This essential distinction is obliterated in that higher pacifistic fog where all “taking of human life” is immoral. There could hardly be anything more obscurantist than the desire to obliterate all distinctions of roles and offices of men into that warm, personal, brotherly unity of “the personal.” Generals receive criticism for not taking a “personai” interest in each of their troops; I, for one, would demote any who did. If some such thing is the philosophy of the best-seller, it is easy to predict that of the worst-seller: the wise general and the stupid G.I. In all of this it would hardly take a Nietzsche to perceive the influence of that old, popular motive, the resentment of authority. In the present instance it feeds pacifism.

Popular thought loves to “psych” its political leaders. In this, has it not been aided and abetted by the rise of psychological novels where the plot sinks into insignificance and the psychological analysis of motives occupies the stage, usually a popular version of Freud. Psychologizing has, undoubtedly, a limited relevance to political decision; national policies are at the same time policies of leaders, whose characters and temperaments are significant factors in their actions and reactions. Both Roosevelt and Churchill considered the personalities of Hitler and Stalin in this fashion, and if their judgments left something to be desired, at least the pertinence of the question is undeniable; political personality is unquestionably a factor in objective policy. Which items in announced policy are sticking points, and which negotiable? Which remarks made to the inner constituency, and which to the outer world? Generals also try to sense the temperament of their opponents, as one factor in the whole.

On the other hand, what could be more ludicrous than the popular effort to assess policy through a judgment of the character and assumed private motives of the initiators of that policy? Antiwar finds nothing but reprehensible private motives at the root of the matter; prowar finds nothing but heroic strength; reflection finds both irrelevant. Wars are neither justifiable nor unjustifiable in terms of the private motives of the leaders; wars are not personal acts of rage and revenge, but, as von Clausewitz showed, an extension of policy by other means. Policies are measured by their probable costs and effects, and not by the motive of the agents.

The weighing of policy properly belongs in the hands of those responsible and thoughtful men who are experienced in such matters. It is not in any conspicuous sense the experience of pastors in their morality, poets with their sensitivity, the young with their idealism, psychoanalysts with their probings of emotions, or news reporters with their scoops.

The distressing thing about popular psychologizing is its confidence; it knows the black heart inside the political leader, and it is certain that anything more complex or even favorable is “naive.” All of which reflects the failure of both psychology and the psychological novel to make their point; should not popular wisdom at least be sensitive to the difficulties and ambiguities of searching out the motives of the human heart? If I can only seldom if ever be confident I know my own motives, how can I be so sure I know those of others?

I conclude that the People must take their chances in war, that they do not represent a pool of persons separate from the organized body of citizens with a government, and that their perception, judgment, and analysis of public policy is sound only by accident. Public policy is beyond the scope of private people; since it is, the common people revert to something they imagine themselves to be expert in, the psychological motives of leaders; but, alas, even that is beyond their or anyone else’s proper grasp. At which point we have nothing to do but return to what we should never have left, the objective consideration of policy by those competent to consider it.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE PEOPLE

A final set of criticisms against war again purports to rest upon humanitarian or idealistic grounds: its argument is the simple exhibition of death, injuries, disease, poverty, destruction, the ravaging of both countryside and cities. T.V. makes it as vivid as possible, and the color photographs in Life magazine are almost enough to sicken the heart of the bravest and to shake the firmest judgment. Indeed, this is their overt intention, and it is not long before they end up on pacifist posters as ultimate arguments. But of course arguments they are not, at best facts to be considered; but then who hasn’t already considered them? Is there anyone who imagines war to be anything but killing? The decision to fight is the decision to kill; such a decision, needless to say, is never easy although it may frequently be justified. If justified, what service is performed by such direct appeals to vital instinct and sentiment? At best they would enfeeble our powers of judgment, never too strong, so that we would choose the unjustifiable rather than the wise course.

These images thought to be decisive are in reality nothing but kicks below the belt and from behind; reasonable moral judgment can never be a simple reaction to our emotions and sentiments; the emotions and sentiments themselves are more than enough for that; but it is the role of policy and judgment to judge over these forces. The job is no doubt the most difficult man faces; it is hardly made easier by the daily flood of images of suffering in the media.

The image in itself is no argument against anything. It would be easy indeed by vivid color photographs accompanied by recordings of screaming, wailing, and crying to sicken anyone of the very project of living. Surgical operations would never be undertaken, women would be afraid to give birth to children; images of the old, sick, and senile would convince us that life itself is folly; and some such thing is the conclusion of transcendental ascetics. But then such an ethic, by intention, is not pertinent to public policy, necessarily committed to not merely life, but the good life.

The humanitarian argument drawn from ruins and suffering aims at a higher idealism; but with a suddenness that would have delighted Hegel, it turns into its opposite, a crass materialism. If human life is justifiable in terms of its excellence, where is the idealism in locating that excellence in a clinging to cities and fields? Or finally, in clinging to mere life itself as our highest value? The founder of Western philosophy, Socrates, disdained to use arguments resting upon such sympathies in his own defense, and did not bring his wife and children to court to plead for him. Nor did he conjure up imaginative pictures of his own suffering. No doubt, this is old-fashioned. . . .

Since one dies anyway, the sole question would seem to be how one dies, with honor or not. There is no moral obligation to live at all costs and under any conditions; there is no moral obligation to live at all; there is a moral obligation to live honorably if one lives at all. What that obligation dictates under specific historical concrete circumstances clearly cannot be decided for all and in general; but it can dictate that under some circumstances some men must find their honor in defending unto death what they take to be more valuable than sheer existence, namely a human life dedicated to excellence and dignity. Human lives whose chief moral defense is that they have kept themselves alive have at the same stroke lost all moral defense. Such is the age-old paradox of life.

Traditionally, the man who chose life and personal safety under any conditions was regarded as a coward, and his condition that of a slave. Do we now have new reasons for reversing this decision? Which is not to say that some have not tried; what other judgment could be pronounced upon the current rash of movies and novels all celebrating the antihero as a new form of excellence; sometimes it is even thought to be “authentic” or “existential”! What is it but mediocrity and cowardice? It follows that some are authentic cowards, but need we admire them? A footnote to the present confusion is the argument that war “brutalizes” the troops. The brutalization is rarely spelled out although hovering around the attack is the suspicion that troops are brutalized in their coarse speech, their terms of contempt for the enemy, their failure personally to consider the “justice” of every order, their failure to bring their superiors before the bar of their own private conscience, their fondness for booze and camp-followers above lectures and the opera. Well! But if brutalization means a willingness to kill the enemy, I for one fail to perceive the fault; that’s what they are there for in the first place, and who is closer to the brute, a man afraid to kill the enemy or one who will kill and die to preserve the freedom and dignity of himself or his compatriots?

There will always be occasions when human freedom and dignity are threatened; there will always be occasions, then, for a justifiable war, and the pacifistic argument fails. To attack the very idea of war is to attack something fundamental to the preservation of any honorable life and to offer under the flag of idealism or humanitarianism the very substance of cowardice. Having already denounced Soviet injustice, what could be a worse capitulation than Bertrand Russell’s slogan: “Better red than dead”?

What War Decides

Needless to say, victory does not always fall to the just. And if not, then victory is no measure of the justice of the cause, a truth commonly recognized by the respect accorded to the defeated. For while they were indeed defeated with regard to the immediate occasion of the dispute, they were not defeated, if they fought well, with regard to something far more important, that infinite self-respect which defines their humanity. The morale of a nation, that is, its self-respect, is certainly tested by the war, and it is that factor which nullifies the old Chinese warlord “solution” to the problem of war, much beloved of computer thinkers. Why not, the argument goes, have the leaders meet on a neutral ground, calculate their resources, and decide victory without bloodshed, as the story says the warlords did? Is this not the essence of “rationality”? If the idea seems preposterous, is it not because there remains one incalculable factor, the morale of the troops and the nations behind them? No doubt this factor was negligible when the troops in question were mercenaries without any morale whatsoever except that for their pay or “professional” reputation. And no doubt one can easily find battles when the odds are so unequal as to render armed resistance suicidal. But even such suicidal resistances win something, namely, the enacted courage unto death of the men fighting them; to think nothing of this or to regard it as pure folly is itself a judgment proceeding out of little but crass materialism. To offer it as a rational idealism is a betrayal of everything noble in the defeated. A man is not necessarily ignoble because he was defeated; but he is if there is nothing he will fight for except his own skin.

Courage then, about which little is said today without an accompanying smirk, is a virtue whose analysis quickly carries us into transcendental realms. It looks like madness or vanity or an “ego-trip” to those who imagine the issues of life settled, and settled into the values of biology, economics, or pleasure. But courage puts all those values into question, discloses that, as always, men today put to themselves a goal and destiny that has no common measure with mere life, mere well-being, or mere comfort. These things may properly be fought over, but they are not in themselves the full story of what is involved. That full story can never be told, but at very least it must include what here is called the transcendental, the domain of freedom and dignity that is never compromised by mere death, poverty, or defeat; but most certainly is compromised by a certain deafness to its claims. Wars are not fought to prove courage, but they do prove it all the same.