GOOD WARS: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecies of Statists by Russell Madden Consider the following situation.
Suppose there is an average Joe. He goes to the dog pound and picks out a relatively placid canine as his pet. He takes the dog home and installs it in his back yard. Over time, he feeds and waters the dog, provides it with a reasonably comfortable house, gives it toys to play with, and generally teaches it to obey him.
Then Joe's play gets a bit rougher. He teases the dog, yells at it, and removes some of the dog's favorite toys. Next, he chains the dog to a stake and starts prodding and poking the dog with sticks. He yells at the dog and torments the beast until it barks and strains at its leash, eager to attack its master.
One morning, while the dog is sleeping, Joe slips off the leash. He wakens the dog, then works his once-docile pet into a frothing-at-the-mouth frenzy. He opens the gate in the fence as a group of strangers walk past. He steps behind a concealing tree as the dog leaps free onto the sidewalk. The dog spots the bystanders and tears into them, ripping and scratching and biting at the now-screaming men, women, and children.
Shouting in alarm, Joe jumps into the open and, smiling, uses a club, beats the dog into submission, and breaks its bones as he renders the animal unconscious.
Joe goes up to the bleeding and crying victims of the dog-attack. "This is horrible," he says. "I'm glad I was nearby to save you from this thoroughly evil and vicious dog. What a nasty creature. I'm sure you'll want to thank me for saving you. It looks like the dog may die, but he brought this on himself by attacking you. I had no choice but to do what I did."
... Now. Joe did save these people from a very real and immediate threat. Should the victims of the dog attack thank Joe? Should they admire him and sing his praises for his compassion and bravery? Should we evaluate his actions as moral and justified?
No? No.
In its short, two-and-a-quarter centuries of existence, the United States has been involved in over forty armed conflicts and wars. (See the list at the end of this article.) Nearly every single one of those wars, large and small, has been thought of by someone as a "good" war, i.e., that it was justified and necessary.
The ultimate "good" war of modern times, of course, was World War II. Even to suggest that the people of these United States should not have been involved in this wasteful conflict is to elicit a firestorm of protest: Hitler! Pearl Harbor! Hitler! Jews! Hitler! England! Pearl Harbor! Hitler!
The mere mention of "Hitler" and "Pearl Harbor" is designed to intimate any heretic into remorseful and shameful silence. The backers of World War II as a "good" war are "sickened" by any doubts as to the moral worth of America's four-year military involvement in Europe and the Pacific.
Hmm.
Economists long ago demonstrated that State interference in the marketplace degrades the situation that the initial intervention was nominally intended to correct. Then the new, worse conditions � brought about by the State's own actions � are used as an excuse for even more interference, while the original causes are buried in the muck of State-approved and -disseminated history. This downward spiral continues until something � like a massive depression � breaks the cycle. The State then might brazenly claim responsibility for any improvement that arises even though it had nothing to do with the change for the better. Throughout the entire process, the State claims moral rectitude and expects the gratitude of those whose lives it has helped ruin.
This same shameless routine is evident in regard to most of the wars and conflicts that have embroiled the United States. The number of truly justified conflicts could probably be counted on one hand: the Revolutionary War, the War with the Barbary Pirates, the War of 1812, perhaps the Texas War for Independence. But most assuredly not the big ones always held aloft as sterling examples of "good" wars: the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, or World War II. The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and other modern conflicts are even farther back in the pack.
Statists screw things up, create a danger, then use the danger they helped spawn to justify even more wars that generate still more problems that lead to additional wars. This applies whether the "wars" are against foreigners or the American people themselves. The Drug War, the War on Poverty, the War on Whatever, these State-initiated and -sponsored conflicts destroy neighborhoods, obliterate individual lives, inflict massive financial costs on the citizenry, weaken freedom...and are used to drive the stakes ever deeper into our hearts, all the while making the problems of drug addicts, poor people, and whatever worse than they were in the beginning.
The ultimate moral inversion: failure as the definition of success. The more the State messes up, the more it is rewarded: more power, more control, more wealth.
Many immediate threats that were used to "justify" wars would not even have been threats or dangers but for the inappropriate actions taken earlier by the American government. Lies and deceptions were and are par for the course:
Lincoln maneuvered the South into the Civil War via his stand on tariffs and his denial of the right of states to secede from the Union. As for the issue of slavery, a far better way peacefully to end that gross violation of rights would have been to rescind the Fugitive Slave Act and emulate various South American nations that halted the abominable practice of slavery without killing hundreds-of-thousands of people � both military and civilians � in total war.
The Spanish-American War was based on the lie of an attack by the Spanish against the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor.
WW I was prolonged by the unnecessary U.S. entry into the war, providing fresh troops to be slaughtered during trench warfare. The actions of the U.S. also killed chances for an early negotiated peace and helped set up the conditions for WW II via the excessive reparations levied against those the Allies defeated. The German hyper-inflation of the Twenties and prohibitions against rearmament provided fertile soil for Hitler and his ultra-nationalist followers.
Before WW II began, FDR admired Mussolini, and Hitler admired FDR. But that did not prevent FDR and others from maneuvering us into WW II via lies and illegal actions. WW II also saw the "good" guys "save" half of Europe from one dictator/mass murderer and hand it over to a worse dictator/mass murderer. Poland � whose attack by the Nazis provided the British their rationale for declaring war � was handed over to the Soviets for the next forty years. The "good" guys sold out Russians who fought against Stalin and sent them back to Russia after the war to be murdered. The "good" guys refused to consider a negotiated peace, so the Japanese and Germans fought to the bitter end. The "good guys" then used that intransigence as an excuse to atomize hundreds of thousands of Japanese noncombatants. In order to "preserve" freedom, the "good" guys drafted, i.e., enslaved, tens-of-thousands of unwilling civilians to fight and also created regimented societies emulating � in kind, if not degree � those of the nations they were battling.
Korea is still technically at war, with U.S. troops in the south a half century after active hostilities ceased.
Vietnam accomplished nothing of value for the U.S.
The U.S. helped create the conditions that turned Iran against us; that set up Saddam Hussein with nerve and tear gas; that propped up dictators all over the world; that kept those dictators in power as they starved and enslaved their people.
On and on and on.
Worse than those who promote a particular war's ends as "good" are those who claim that war in-and-of-itself is "good," i.e., is a valuable state of existence. These souls tell us that war teaches us responsibility, builds character (if you survive!), and promotes the welfare of society by giving us a sense of unity and "purpose." As far as the soldiers who actually have to fight, however, war is more likely to screw them up � either physically or psychically � for life.
For comparison, most of us would agree that surgery to remove a malignant cancer is an unpleasant experience necessary for saving a person's life. But imagine someone who actually enjoyed the process of surgery itself, who thought each citizen should experience surgery � regardless of the reasons � so he could "benefit" from the experience of having parts of his body cut out...
The only justified wars or conflicts that our government should wage are those designed to protect and defend the freedom and rights of American citizens, not those of the citizens of other nations, no matter how sad or dire their plight might be. Let individual American citizens lend their aid to those others who suffer, yes, but keep our own State within its proscribed bounds.
If we do not, we will all go the route of General Philip H. Sheridan's "good" Indians ...
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I find the following list sobering. Some of these wars and conflicts I had not heard of or had forgotten about. War does seem to be the norm: people are far too eager to invade other nations and kill people of no real threat to them. But then, bullies and "do-gooders" are always ready to spill blood for their "good" causes, especially if that blood belongs to other people.
I compiled this list from the following sources:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~rwguide/lesson14.htm http://www.dean.usma.edu/history/dhistorymaps/WC1958Pages/wc1958toc.htm http://www.historyguy.com/american_military_history.html
American Wars and Conflicts
2001-? Afghanistan
1999 Kosovo
1994 Haiti
1994-? Bosnia
1992-1994 Somalia
1991-? Iraq/Persian Gulf
1990 Panama
1983 Grenada
1982-1984, U. S. Intervention in Lebanon
1981, 1986, U.S. Libya Conflict
1961-1973 Vietnam War
1965 Dominican Republic
1958 USMC in Beirut, Lebanon
1950-1953 Korean War
1941-1945 World War II
1919-1921 Allied Intervention in Russian Civil War
1917-1918 World War I
1916-1917 Mexican Punitive Expedition
1914 Tampico and Vera Cruz Incidents in Mexico
1903 U.S. Intervention in Panamanian Revolution
1901-1913 The Moro Wars
1900 Boxer Revolt (China)
1899-1902 Philippine Insurrection
1898-1899 U.S. Intervention in Samoan Civil War
1898 Spanish-American War
1893 U.S. Intervention in Hawaiian Revolution
1861-1865 American Civil War
1857-1858 Utah War
1848-1858 Third Seminole War
1846-1848 Mexican War
1841 Door Rebellion (Rhode Island)
1836 Texas War of Independence
1839 Aroostook War
1835-1842 Florida War; also known as the Second Seminole War
1831-1832 Black Hawk War
1780s-1890s Indian Wars (includes in addition to those listed separately, Battle of Tippecanoe, Indiana in 1811; Navajo Wars in New Mexico and Arizona, 1846-1868; and Yakima Wars in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, 1855-1858; Sioux and Cheyenne Wars in the Dakotas and Montana, 1866-1890; Apache Wars in Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico in 1870-1886; Modoc War in California in 1872-1873; and the Nez Perce Wars in Idaho and Montana in 1877)
1817-1819 Seminole War
1812-1815 War of 1812
1801-1805 War with the Barbary Pirates
1799 Fries Rebellion "The Hot Water War"
1798-1800 Quasi-war with France (Atlantic Coast and West Indies)
1794 Whiskey Rebellion (Pennsylvania)
1786-1787 Shays Rebellion (Massachusetts)
1775-1783 Revolutionary War
http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/good_wars.htm
