Reflections on the limitless resources and ingenuity devoted to killing, and how little is devoted to conflict resolution.
John Leake
When I was a kid I had a friend who was obsessed with the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, and one of his favorites was the carro armato con falci — scythed chariot, sometimes referred to as a man harvester.
“Isn’t
it cool?” my friend said. “You get a couple of guys mounted on really
strong horses and then plough across the battlefield, chopping the enemy
soldiers to pieces.”
“Yeah, that’s awesome!” I agreed.
The older I get, the more I realize that we humans exult in killing other humans.
The
psychological drama begins with imagining all the vices and depravity
of the enemy, at least as he is portrayed to us by our governments. This
psychological drama has enormous cathartic and therapeutical value for
people who are—whether they admit it to themselves or not—troubled by
their own vices or those that are pervasive in their community. Carl
Jung called this projection. Closely related to projection is
scapegoating, in which the vices and sins of a community are transferred
to a purported enemy.
After our minds are thus primed, we are
treated to the spectacle of the enemy being destroyed. We find it
thrilling and cathartic, and we triumph in the feeling that “we are
killing the bad guys!”
A couple of years ago I listened to an
interview with the British author Peter Hitchens in which he talked
about World War I and its total catastrophe for the Christian
civilization of Europe.
Most disturbing was the fact that the
purportedly Christian clergy on both sides of the infernal war claimed
that Jesus Christ was on their side. In Hitchens’s view, this was a
total perversion of Christ’s teachings, and the despair the war
ultimately created from millions of dead and disfigured was a massive
blow to the Christian faith.
At one point in the interview, he
made the startling statement that the Great Powers waged war not because
conflict resolution was so hard, but because the men running the
belligerent countries simply wanted war. Regarding his native Britain
and its leaders, he said, “Churchill loved war. He didn’t look for ways
to avoid it. He sought it.”
One positive thing that can be
said about British and European war up until young Winston’s day is that
the ruling class that started wars was expected to send their young
sons to fight them. My favorite aristocratic warlord in history was James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan. He not only used his influence to push hard for the Crimean War, he served on the front line of it.
Notorious
for his haughtiness and extravagance, he achieved legendary status for
leading the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava,
immortalized in Tennyson’s poem.
Watching Cardigan charge directly into a Russian battery, the French commander, Pierre Bosquet remarked: “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre: c’est de la folie (”It is magnificent, but it is not war: it is madness.”)
Prominent
members of our warmonger class in Washington could do much to redeem
themselves if they would, like Lord Cardigan, serve on the front line.