Reviews for War Is Passe - FictionPress.com

Lorendiac
2007-12-09
ch 1,

abuseI'll start with a couple of general reactions, and then move on to nitpicking about specific things you said, later on in this review.

I once read a claim (I don't know how accurate) that for the last couple of thousand years, every few centuries there's been another flurry of essays by "great philosophers" asserting that all-out warfare is something that "modern civilization" is FINALLY outgrowing!

In other words, MANY other people, in several different centuries, have said, in effect, "war is so last century." (Even if they didn't use that exact choice of words.) So far, warfare is still with us. I for one have never been in the middle of a war zone, and I'll be just as happy if I can maintain that tradition of not being in one, but I'm not making any bets on just when warfare as we know it will become "something in the dusty old history books" instead of "a perpetual risk to us all."

Incidentally, I have read several books that were written or co-written by a man named James Dunnigan, a military historian. In one of his books about modern warfare in general (not just a look at any specific war), he said something you might like on the topic of "winning" modern wars. As I recall, his words were:

"WHO WINS? Nobody wins, but this is usually forgotten."

Then he explained his meaning in a bit more detail.

So Dunnigan, an expert on military history, freely admits that the outbreak of war usually means that at least one side's leaders are FOOLING themselves about whether or not all this bloodshed and property damage will be "cost-effective" from a neutral observer's standpoint, in the long run, compared to all the other things that the same money and manpower and other resources could have been used to achieve in their economies, et cetera.

I grant you that if a nice peaceable nation is suddenly attacked, it's likely to want to defend itself and even counterattack, even if its leaders and ordinary citizens know darn well that there will be a huge price tag attached to their new "war effort." Dunnigan wasn't suggesting that anyone who is attacked should just lie down and surrender. He was only pointing out that "winning" a war isn't nearly as satisfying and profitable an experience as one might think!

Now for some reactions to specific details of what you said, how you expressed yourself, etc.

You said:

* More civilians are killed in war than soldiers. *

Are they? I don't remember seeing any statistics on that sort of thing, lately. It would certainly help your case if you provided a source, perhaps with specific numbers regarding one or two of the more recent wars in the world.

About the only example I can remember offhand is a statement I once read that an outbreak of the Spanish Flu in the early 20th century, apparently triggered by the crowded and unsanitary conditions many people were in during World War I, caused more deaths from disease than "enemy fire" had ever caused during the four years of warfare. But whether or not wars in the modern day, fought by armies with vastly better medical knowledge and resources, still kill "more civilians than soldiers" is something I simply don't know about, one way or the other. If you want to "sell" this idea to the typical reader, you ought to back it up with some specific details to illustrate your general point!

I notice that right after you wrote that sentence I quoted, you talked a bit about nuclear weapons, but as far as I know, those haven't actually been USED in a warfare since 1945. If you're just trying to say that "a hypothetical nuclear war would kill FAR MORE civilians than soldiers," that's one thing. I can agree that in theory a nuke that wiped out the heart of a big city would kill huge numbers of civilians. But if you're trying to say that "modern wars, the way they are actually being fought right now, without nukes, kill more civilians than soldiers," then you really need to prove your point! It's quite possible that you CAN prove your point -- I don't claim to know if you're right or wrong -- but you can't count on all your readers to simply take your word for it if you don't offer details!

* Beyond the soldiers a the millions of ordinary citizens.*

Is that supposed to say "Beyond the soldiers ARE," etc.?

* Modern military is fundamentally undemocratic in its follow-orders-without-question mentality. *

If it's any comfort to you, I've heard that some senior military officers have complained that the troops are a lot more independent-minded today, more prone to disagree with authority from time to time, than they used to be in previous generations. Although in GENERAL they are still expected to follow orders in the end -- but then, unhappy troops in the USA or other hi-tech cultures are also MUCH likelier to give media interviews later in which they say "I don't know why I received such dumb orders." That didn't used to be such a problem -- back in the days when there hardly was any "news media," for instance.

* The nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan are still remembered with a shutter, despite Japan’ amazing revitalization following the war. *

"Shudder," not "shutter." And that should be "Japan's amazing" instead of "Japan' amazing."

* The nationalist mindset doesn’t hold water when one can go on Myspace or Facebook and make friends in France or India. *

It doesn't hold water? That depends. Just what IS the nationalist mindset, as you see it? I'm serious in asking this question. A quick definition of that mindset would be very helpful here, so I (and other readers, I should think) could understand your point better. Does a person with the nationalist mindset AUTOMATICALLY say "It is absolutely impossible for me to ever be friends with anybody in another nation, such as France or India"? (If that's what "nationalist" really means, then I hadn't heard that definition of it before, but I am no great student of "nationalism" in the first place.)

* This means that democracy doesn’t end with the election, it means that no democracy should have a “decider guy,” and it means that the ultimate faith needs to be in people not governments. It’s a simple truth that if enough people demand it, a country is democratic (note the lowercase d) because no one is beyond human. Leaders have only the power that people give them. *

I'm really not sure what you're trying to say here about "the ultimate faith" and so forth, as it applies to warfare in the modern world. In your view of things, how would a country that was a "perfect democracy" (for the sake of argument) make the decision to go to war, if the decision to do it (or not) just had to be made? As opposed to the ways in which such decisions are made today in "representative democracies" such as the USA or the UK?

I'm also not absolutely sure what you were trying to say (in stuff I didn't quote here) about resisting dictatorships by less violent means. I grant that some groups have managed to unseat dictators without shooting everybody the dictator previously had taking orders from him in the military and police forces of his homeland. But are you saying that everybody, in every possible situation, is morally obligated to keep trying to do it that way? In other words: Is it your belief that in this day and age, a person living in a dictatorship NEVER has any business trying to use lethal weapons to resist the tyranny in his homeland? He should just keep plugging away at nonlethal methods of protest and resistance until either A) the dictator's thugs kill him, or B) his movement is finally successful after years of hard work? Or if that wasn't quite what you meant about which methods of resistance to a dictator are moral and which are never moral, then what did you mean?

truthordeal
2007-12-09
ch 1,

abuseFirst of all, you are not alone in disagreeing with the war in Iraq.

It was a well thought out essay, but allow me to disagree with you for a moment.

Communication and compromise are good ideas, and they have worked a lot in the past, I will admit. But it is more or less like talking to the psycho with the gun about to shoot people. Sometimes it will work and no one will get hurt. But there is always the person that it will not work on. The only way to deal with these people is to tackle them and disarm them. The latter seems to work the most often and is usually the safest course of action. It does sometimes backfire, I will admit again. There will be people like Milosevic who you can talk down. But there will also always be others like Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who won't relinquish their gun and will use it on innocent people.

If you want to talk to these maniacs while the gun is pointed at your head, be my guest. But I'm gonna take the low road and knock them out before they can hurt me or anyone else.

Ok, now my disagreement is over.

I appreciate the fact that you may not support the war, but that you still support the troops. That is my main problem with most people that don't support the war. They seem to say that war sucks and so do the people who wage it. I'm an American before a human being in most occasions, so I really do appreciate that.

There was one sentence that said that civil disobedience was the best course of action. Now being that my hero, Henry David Thoreau, literally wrote the book on civil disobedience I agree with you. But for the sake of playing devil's advocate, wasn't Hitler committing civil disobedience about the time he wrote Mein Kampf?

Like I said, I still agree with you on that point, but that is an argument you will hear often against civil disobedience.

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