Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
America has two war parties, Republican and Democratic, ensuring the death of democracy since war is the most insidious enemy of freedom and liberty.
When I wrote recently about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a longtime reader sent me this insight:
People just don’t realize how ugly war really is and how ugly everyone at war gets to be, and that goes for us as well as the Japanese.
How true! Ugliness is everywhere in war because war actuates the very worst impulses of the (in)human condition.
Consider these insights from Caitlin Johnstone’s latest article:
One thing I think about sometimes is the absolute certainty that undiagnosed psychopaths and sociopaths enlist to serve in conflict zones for the purpose of acting out their sadistic fantasies. I’m sure most of the abuses we see in places like Gaza have mundane systemic explanations like the fact that Zionists are indoctrinated from birth to see Palestinians as less than human, but I’m also sure there are people who’ve volunteered to participate in this genocide because they just want to inflict pain and death on other human beings.
I’m sure this is happening in Gaza, and I’m sure this happens in all instances of mass military violence. A war zone is a collapse in law and order where might makes right and whoever has the guns makes the rules. People who normally wouldn’t risk imprisonment for acting out their fantasies of torture and murder have the opportunity during wartime to become one of the people with the guns who make the rules. They have a helpless population at their fingertips to whom they can do anything they like.
War is the worst thing in the world. It’s the most insane thing humans do. So, so much of the trauma and dysfunction of our species are the lingering reverberations from wars which ended decades ago, passed down from generation to generation by soldiers returning home and by civilians who’ve been subjected to unfathomable abuse by those who found themselves free to do anything they want to them.
War is bloody awful. It enables the very worst impulses and appetites. Yet it’s lustily defended by so many armchair warriors. It’s funny how these same armchair warriors aren’t volunteering for frontline combat duty …
During World War II, the Nazis attempted to justify the mass murder of innocents, including the killing of German “undesirables” in the T4 euthanasia program, because of the “emergency” of war. In fact, the order to start the T4 program was backdated to September 1, 1939, the Nazi invasion of Poland, to give a veneer of “legality” and necessity to the murder of innocents.
Right now, Israel is engaged in what its leaders are calling a war against Hamas, and that war is being used as the justification for the most heinous crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. In the name of war, humans can justify anything, which is why war is the worst enemy of humanity and indeed all life on this earth of ours.
Consider this article by Daniel Larison, where he notes Israel (using American bombs and shells) has bombed Gaza into 42 million tons of rubble, destroying that region’s ability to support human life. Here’s an excerpt from his article:
The Israeli government has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and injured many tens of thousands more. Gaza’s civilian infrastructure has been destroyed, its health care system is in ruins, and the people are living in unsafe, unsanitary conditions. Almost everyone in Gaza faces acute food insecurity, and at least half a million people live in man-made famine conditions. Disease is rampant, and even polio has returned to paralyze Palestinian children. Virtually the entire population of Gaza has been displaced from their homes, and the majority of those homes has been destroyed. Bloomberg reported on the extent of the devastation in terms of sheer tonnage of rubble left behind:
So far, Israeli air strikes have left more than 42 million tonnes of debris across the Strip, according to the UN. That’s enough rubble to fill a line of dump trucks stretching from New York to Singapore. Removing it all may take years and cost as much as $700 million. The task will be complicated by unexploded bombs, dangerous contaminants and human remains under the rubble.
The majority of the debris is destroyed housing, and its distribution across the Strip roughly mimics Gaza’s population density before the war.
Even when the fighting stops, there will be no safe place for millions of people to go. The process of clearing the rubble will be long and dangerous. It will be even longer before rebuilding can begin, and that is assuming that there will be sufficient funding for reconstruction. In the meantime, sheer amount of debris threatens the health and safety of the surviving civilian population. There is already widespread environmental contamination at a time when normal sanitation and hygiene have also collapsed.
It is impossible to overstate how completely the Israeli government has devastated Gaza in the last ten months. Israel has reduced Gaza to rubble, and it has driven its people into one of the worst modern famines on record.
It’s remarkable what we humans can achieve in the name of war, isn’t it?
Since World War II, if not before, America has been led by various war parties. It’s high time we empowered a peace party.
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views.