Issue 47.14
Part 2
In our continuing discussion of war, today we focus on the “lesser wars” of the last century. These include Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars and Afghanistan along with a few other armed conflicts. As with the larger wars, these too were created and fought because of fear and anger. We got involved in Korea and Vietnam because our leaders feared Communism would assimilate so much of the world that it would become unstoppable.
For the first time, we dedicated massive resources and many lives to fighting in a country far away when our own country had not been attacked. There were some provocations, but we were probably as responsible for them with our sabre rattling as were the other countries. As with the blockade of Japan, we created fear in the leaders of those countries by our actions. The nations that funded and encouraged those small countries to become a problem for us (USSR and China) created fear in us with their expansions and threats of nuclear war, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis – which came within a hair’s breadth of starting a nuclear holocaust that may have damaged or destroyed all of humanity.
In that crisis, fear worked against war as much as it created the possibility of war. When people and especially their leaders realized that all-out war would likely mean the end of life or at least the end of life as we know it on earth, they decided to take a step back. That choice is central to the question this series asks – Is War Necessary? When they counted the likely cost, leaders of all three nations involved decided the cost and the risk were too great and they found another way to solve the problem.
Since that time, we have seen a series of limited wars. Even counting the Korean “conflict” and the Vietnam war, none of the wars we have fought have been fully engaged in and none have really been “won” by anyone. Yes, we have sacrificed lives and well-being of our soldiers. Yes, we have spent money and developed more expensive and more deadly conventional weapons. Yes, we have moved and removed boundaries or removed leaders. But we have not materially improved the lives of either our citizens or the citizens of those foreign lands. In fact we have been involved in the deaths and injury of countless soldiers and civilians on both sides of those conflicts, but more particularly the people and infrastructure of those in the lands where we wage the wars.
Is it not time that we again count the costs and decide if we really want to continue to feed the cycle of fear and anger? Why are the terrorists we fear and are angry with so committed to creating fear and anger in us? If we kill them and especially their non-combatant loved ones, do we not create the climate that encourages more of them to become terrorists who will then kill us and our non-combatant loved ones? In his farewell address, George Washington made a number of points about involving ourselves in foreign conflicts, including the following. “The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.” If we are to make good decisions, we must consider the costs and morality of our actions, then take military action if and only if we deem it truly necessary for the survival and well-being of our nation.
Lynn West is a thinker, a teacher and a patriot. You can reach him through email at forgingthefuture2021@gmail.com or through this newspaper. Liberty is a state of being which must be continually created. These articles can help all of us discover the ways we can contribute to that outcome.