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The Rules of War?
Paul Weber
When, after
centuries of warfare, Rome finally managed to conquer Carthage,
the Roman
general Scipio Africanus ordered the city to be leveled such that
no stone
stood upon another and the soil be sown with salt so that nothing
might ever
grow there again. When the warrior-king Tamerlane swept out of
central Asia,
pillaging and destroying every city along the way, for a brief
moment in
time establishing the largest empire the world has known (in
terms of sheer
geography), he set up monuments along the roads his army had
traveled,
consisting of pyramids of human skulls. When Tamerlane fell into the hands
of his enemies, however, they all wanted to participate in his demise. It is
said they killed him by setting a huge board on him, then gathering around
the makeshift table. On a signal, they all leaned their weight on the
tabletop, crushing Tamerlane to death. Then, they proceeded to have a hearty
dinner on the tabletop. All's well that ends well. In most of the wars of
antiquity, the conquered
peoples were routinely butchered, and their wives and daughters sold into
slavery. The Romans, realizing this might breed a bit of resentment and
eventually weaken their empire, gave the conquered peoples the option of
joining their conquerors, even giving them the high honor of having their
own gods worshipped as part of the Roman pantheon. We must note, however,
that such gestures of magnanimity were only offered after the enemy was
decisively conquered. These gestures of magnanimity seem to be early
examples of what we now call "Rules of War"--guidelines of conduct
that are inevitably broken in the course of warfare, since victory often
goes to those who are willing to be the most brutal. The German word for
war--Krieg--comes from the verb meaning "to acquire," reflecting the old view of war
that you waged it in order to
get something, or steal a bunch of loot from the tribe on the other side of
the hill. Well, John-Boy, things were a lot simpler--and honest--back then.
If you asked Tamerlane or Genghis Khan why they went to war, they would probably
had thought you awfully dull-witted. They went to war to get stuff! To rape, to
pillage, to enjoy some spectacular arson, and then move
on. The
Romans undoubtedly invented some fine fictions to explain why they went to
war--the greater glory of the empire, the service of the god-emperor, the
spreading of culture to the far corners of the world--but if we really cut
to the chase, Roman war was all about getting a bunch of stuff, mainly for
the pleasure of the ruling classes, but also for the entertainment and
mollification of the proletarians. You see, we human beings secretly love war.
Now, don’t get all huffy on me with denials. Face it: we love it! Why else would any
species engage in deliberate self-destruction on such
an awe-inspiring level, unless, to some degree, we loved it? Oh, I know--people claim
to hate war when they experience the aftermath, like a drunkard bemoaning his
hangover, but still, most people love it. Why else do yo
u go to the bookstore, and find shelf after shelf filled with books rehashing, over
and over again, the history of wars, in every nauseating detail? In response to the
atrocity of September 11, several commentators, left
and right, have been whooping it up for war, almost as though they’ve been waiting for
an opportunity like this for years. There is definitely
some weird, twisted aspect of the human psyche that we need to explore regarding
war: people who were otherwise normal human beings suddenly start
ranting like schoolboys, fairly drooling about how bad we’re gonna hurt bin Laden,
the convenient Hitler of the moment. Then come the demands that
everyone in the entire country think exactly the same way. Seriously, folks--read
the recent columns by Michael Kelly in the Wall Street
Journal in which he says that anyone who is for peace is on the side of bin Laden.
I’m
sure Mr. Kelly, when he strips off his editorial tunic and goes home, is otherwise
a normal human being. But something about the prospect of war turns him into a
megalomaniac. Surely there is some deep-seated biologic
al drive that takes over the majority of the species from time to time, egging people
on to kill each other. Just a few deep thinkers--libertarians and free-market
advocates, mostly--sit on the sidelines and wonder why ev
eryone
is acting so crazy. Man, it’s tough being right all the time. After the Romans,
the excuses for war started to get a little more clever. Religious rationalizations
became all the rage as the Muslim armies stormed out
of Arabia, conquering kingdom after kingdom and demanding--surprise!--that everyone
think like them or be put to the
sword. The excuse for war then was fulfilling the Will of God. But give me a
break--the real reason goes back to "Krieg"--to get stuff. You don’t
think the leaders of the ancient Jihads used the resultant booty to enrich
themselves? Interestingly, the vast majority of the human species seems incapable of
seeing through the ragged veil of rationalizations for
war--they mostly seem to want to go along with it, getting some sort of
strange, vicarious thrill in news that their brave warriors have conquered
yet another land. The same holds true today: have you noticed that those who
crow loudest at news of massive destruction of enemy forces are precisely those
who will never have to fight? The Rush Limbaughs and Michael Kellys of
the world--overage, overweight, and over-publicized--seem especially to enjoy the
concept of "our boys" whipping their boys. In some
sense, these media giants view themselves like the upper classes of Rome,
cheering the victories of our brave soldiers, while incurring no risk on
their own part. This is, I must admit, most convenient. Politicians, too,
have little or nothing to risk by stirring up the war-pots; win or lose,
they are seen as dynamic patriots. The Christian world responded to the Muslim
invaders by launching Crusades to re-take the Holy Lands from the infidels. The
rationalization was that God wanted to have the Holy Lands
controlled by believers in the One True Faith. But the Crusaders also got to take a
bunch of loot, raiding and
pillaging villages while they had a lot of fun killing members of their own
species, aided and assisted by fellow soldiers who thought just like them! Could it be
that there is some deep-seated programming in the typi
cal human
DNA strand that orders us to, from time to time, all start thinking and
acting the same way, like locusts looking for a nice wheat field? Finally, after
the agonies of the Crusades, the civilized world entered
an era known as the Age of Reason. Okay, maybe we weren’t entirely reasonable back
then--after all, this was the period of time when we hunted witches and burned them at
the stake--but we like to think we had emerged
from some period of great darkness. It was at this time that the human
species began to talk about having Rules of War. Frankly, technology was
advancing to the point where it was no longer just the grunts who were put
at risk in wars--improvements in longbows and the invention of the gun meant
that even noblemen and officers could be taken out at any time by a
particularly skilled soldier. Suddenly, the concept of "Krieg" was
looking just a little too risky. The solution was not to eliminate warfare,
of course--war is just too much fun for that--but to establish Rules so that
armies could invade, pillage, and take over, while still claiming to be
Gentlemen. Among the Rules of War that came to be accepted by Western
Civilization (but no one else) were that you should not deliberately fire
upon the officers of the enemy army. Apparently, the ruling classes came to
understand that they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the goodies of war if they
were dead, so this has the look of a nice gentleman’s agreement.
Unfortunately, one of the best tactics for defeating an enemy army is--to
steal an American sports concept--to sack the quarterback. When the British
tried vainly to hold on to their colonies in America, they were
shocked--shocked!--that the revolutionaries actually fired (as General
Burgoyne put it) "upon the persons of our officers!" "Rules of War," it can be
argued, is an oxymoron. The only goal
of the game of war is to win it; winning a war usually means killing more of
them than they kill of you, which means victory goes to the side willing to
sink the lowest. Thus we have a tension, in the past few centuries, between
those who claim that non-combatants should never be targets in war, and
those who find ways to excuse it. To do this and retain the veneer of
civilization, however, requires clever rationalization. When Robert E. Lee
invaded Pennsylvania, he ordered his men not to pillage and loot, on penalty
of being summarily shot. Lee was, in war, a gentleman, which also made him a
loser. He took the oxymoronic Rules of War seriously, thus guaranteeing his
defeat. General Sherman and General Grant--a previously-hospitalized neurotic and
a drunkard, respectively--got about as low-down and nasty as they could get, which
made them winners. Sherman is still remembered in th
e
South for his sixty-mile swath of destruction through Georgia, in which he
shot civilians, burned fields, shot the livestock, and let the soldiers he
recruited from Northern prisons pillage and rape as he turned a blind eye. The enemy
civilian as well as the enemy soldier, Sherman is said to
have instructed Lincoln, must feel the hard hand of war, must suffer the destruction
of his land and the looting of his home in order to be brought
to quick surrender. Sherman was one nasty, merciless psycho--but he was probably
right, given
that the goal of waging a war is to win it by any means possible. Following
his example, a certain line of reasoning has developed in America that says
fighting wars with unusual brutality and senseless destruction is actually
an act of mercy, because it shortens the war. On this line of reasoning, the
fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II, a city which had no military
significance but was likely to burn well because of the predominance of old
wooden buildings, could be justified: the Germans would be made to see how
horrible war was, and would be more inclined to surrender to prevent further
incinerations. In like manner, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is
routinely said to have been an act of mercy, because a land invasion of
Japan would have resulted in far more casualties. A demonstration of The
Bomb’s destructive capability a few miles off Tokyo’s shore could
possibly have convinced the Japs to lay down their arms, but I suppose we’ll
never know. Besides (though we’ll never admit it) we love it! The Germans,
experts in the psychology of war, have a word for it: Schadenfreude,
or the joy of inflicting pain. But now we are shocked--shocked!--that religious
fanatics from the Mideast, where people have butchered each other for centuries over
who better serves God, where Western ideals of The R
ules of War are unknown,
have decided to target civilians! Don’t get me wrong--bin Laden (if he did
in fact mastermind the atrocity of September 11, which is yet to be proved)
is a total wacko fanatic. But guess what, boys and girls: that’s normal in
that part of the world. If our boys in Washington want to meddle in the
Mideast, they shouldn’t be surprised that this would eventually happen.
The challenge we face now is similar to that faced by Rome in the first
century: do we withdraw from our "spheres of influence" and live peaceably, or do
we engage in a war of attrition with the barbarians? The Romans, of course, chose war,
being ready to be just as mean and atrocious
as the barbarians, displaying the crucified bodies of their victims along
the roads to demonstrate their prowess. Now those guys knew how to scare the
enemy! How far are we willing to sink in pursuit of Total War on the terrorists?
We’ve already said that we make no distinction between the terrorists and those who
support them. Does this mean we target cities in Syr
ia, Libya, Iran, Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, if we find evidence those countries
support the terrorists? Do we decide, like Sherman, that we should target civilians in
those countries in order to make them "feel the har
d hand
of war?" Let’s say some new atrocity is perpetrated against American
civilians--use your imagination or read any Tom Clancy novel to imagine how--will that
justify indiscriminate killing of civilians? How could it
not? If you are a soldier going through a village in Afghanistan, where you
don’t speak the language and don’t know the customs, how are you to
judge whether the young man scowling at you is a terrorist or just an angry
citizen? How could you tell a Vietnamese civilian from the Cong in jungle
villages where you didn’t speak the language? One great fallacy of armchair
warriors in any culture is the idea that
war can be easily controlled. More often, it spins completely out of
control. At the dawn of the Civil War, both sides thought it would be over
in a few months after a few skirmishes, whereupon both sides would return to
sanity and negotiate a truce. Six hundred thousand casualties later, both sides were
shown to have had rather poor judgment in this regard.
If we’re to win this (as usual) undeclared war against an unknown enemy, we’d better
be prepared to win, to get really nasty, to engage in a lot of
surplus bloodshed. Our enemies, to be sure, will not shrink from such a
prospect. Get ready for the war to expand to dozens of countries. But let’s
get rid of this fantasy that we play war By the Rules. There aren’t any
rules, once the going gets dirty. Our truly strange opening moves, in which
we bomb the hell out of Kabul, then follow up with mercy food rations, is
not a good sign that we have any idea what we’re getting into.
So, if like most of our fellow citizens, you really love war (c’mon,
admit it), then get set for plenty of it. Get ready to be shocked
at the
barbarity of the enemy, and get ready to teach them by using
their own
medicine. Get ready for the society where everyone thinks just
like everyone
else, where everyone waves the flag and sings hymns. Just brings
shivers to your spine, doesn’t it?
Paul Weber
End<{{{
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