What is war good for? Absolutely nothing.
“Stupid is as stupid does.” – Forrest Gump
“The very first essential for success is a perpetually constant and regular employment of violence.” – Adolf Hitler
“War does not determine who is right — only who is left.” – Bertrand Russell
“I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Focus on the last three descriptive words by Eisenhower – brutal, futile, and stupid. Even with that knowledge, world leaders seem very inclined to continue to propagate the concept that war will result in good things for their citizenry.
In 1 AD, the Roman Empire was in constant conflict, expanding its territories and control. Then the Byzantine Empire battled the Persians, Slavs and Islam.
The Medieval era had Christians attempting to reclaim the Holy Land from Muslim rule in the Crusades, while the Mongols under Genghis Khan created the largest land empire in history.
The Thirty Years War in the 1600s arose from religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, and in the 18th and 19th centuries the Napoleonic Wars spread conflict across Europe.
At the same time, to the extreme detriment of indigenous peoples, colonial wars were waged in Africa, Asia and the Americas.
The 20th Century saw two world wars which resulted in nearly 90 million deaths between the two and ended with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Then came the Korean, Vietnam, the Balkan conflicts, Afghanistan and Iraq, and now we have war in Gaza and the Ukraine.
Susie Moore wrote the book, “The 1% Difference: Small Change-Big Impact” about the genetic differences between chimpanzees and humans. I’m not sure it’s that big of an impact.
Why do humans continue to wage war? What is it in our nature that encourages this deep-seated propensity for aggression? Is it a leftover remnant from our evolutionary past where our survival depended upon competition for resources? Or is it simply to feed the desire for power and control?
We are currently hearing words like nationalism, ideological rigidity, and religious passion being used to describe reasons for war, but we also know that plenty of our world leaders have learned to exploit these sentiments as a means of manipulating our fear and ambitions and to consolidate their power in order to serve their own goals.
Be it for land, minerals, strategic advantages or simply greed, nations continue to engage in wars by cloaking their greed in a verbiage of progress for civilization. How do we begin to transcend these primal instincts to cultivate things like empathy, cooperation, and understanding on a global level?
The answer? We have to want to do it.
Conflict resolution and mediation, cultural awareness and inclusivity, critical thinking, peace education, global citizenship, emotional intelligence and mindfulness, moral and ethical education, and community building would all be a good start to this end.
Or are we assuming the role of pawns in a global chessboard where our leaders play us time after time to achieve their goals?
Some schools do encourage community service, reading diverse literature, and learning to share in the feelings of others. Some of our churches teach compassion, emphasize the importance of caring for others, and encourage participation in charitable giving.
Unfortunately, it always seems to come back to a binary perspective of winning or losing, but who are the real losers?
Many of our leaders purposefully ignore the ethical and moral teaching required to make our world a better place to inflame our passions and breed hatred and distrust between us. This vicious cycle of aggression will continue until there is a conscious effort to end it.
In the next several months, we will be pushed into our respective corners and encouraged to vote our team into a winning situation. What we need, instead, is to assess what winning really means, because conflicts here or abroad are a losing proposition.
Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.