EDITORIAL Theres no such thing as war on the
cheap
We need to rethink war. Even more,
we need to rethink peace.
There are 40-odd wars in progress just now, but Kosovo has our
attention. Its horrors force one of those examinations of conscience that our
hectic, self-absorbed lives dont otherwise allow.
Our generals and politicians looked the other way as long as they
could. No national interest was likely to be served saving lives in
a backwater of which most of us had never heard. Yet some vague world dynamic
forced Kosovo into the spotlight.
Very well, then: We would go to war. But only on condition that
none of our soldiers got killed. The ultimate perk of being the most powerful
nation on earth is that we can do whatever our national interests or political
expediency suggest without any of us getting hurt.
To achieve this dominance we have been on a technological binge,
from Reagans Star Wars to this years watered-down version. We
pounded the daylights out of Saddam Husseins Iraq. True, we sent in some
troops, and some actually got killed, but we were learning. We could win wars
by sending smart bombs down the enemys chimneys.
Its time to rethink. Despots everywhere are doubtless
noticing what Saddam and Serbias Slobodan Milosevic have learned: You can
survive and thus win against a nation, even a powerful one, that is afraid of
sacrifice.
Humans have argued for and against war since time began. The wars
they were arguing about took a toll. The United States, in recent years,
thought it could win wars that took no toll, wars on the cheap. And thats
why, at press time, the NATO intervention in Kosovo, far from intimidating
Milosevic, is defeating its own ends and fueling greater atrocities. There is
no such thing as war on the cheap.
The other way to rethink war is not to wage any. That will remain
a pious thought so long as our culture relies on military solutions. And
anyway, in the real world even heroic nonviolence falls short when ethnic
cleansers enter ones village or ones home. Few of humanitys
ideals are upheld by allowing the women and children trudging between life and
death on the roads of Kosovo to be slaughtered.
Even a well-intentioned nation like ours cant resolve every
conflict, cant police every trouble spot. So our leaders, all too often
following the polls, pick and choose among wars. And above all, the polls say,
dont bring our soldiers back in body bags. Our military, which swallows
up so much of our national budget, which is by definition committed to risking
life, which surely wants to save those poor Kosovars, wants it to happen
without the typical toll wars take. Because our pampered culture has lost its
appetite for sacrifice.
We need to rethink not only war but peace.
In the early days of this confrontation, TV anchors frequently
asked whether this war might be over in hours or might extend to days. Behind
such questions lay the assumption that this dimly identified place didnt
warrant any more of our attention or resources. The Serbs, by contrast, were
mobilized to carry on a 600-year-old war. Nearby, the other fragments of the
former Yugoslavia slaughtered each other over similar ancient grudges. The
United States, repository of so much data, so many scholars and think tanks,
fails to fathom, as it failed to understand in Vietnam and elsewhere, that
neither money nor guns can readily unravel the complexities of history, of
ossified hate. Ours is a form of arrogance that refuses to see points of view
complicated by hundreds if not thousands of years of living, of warring, of
surviving.
A world viewed by us only in terms of our interests is
an out-of-focus fragment of reality. A world that can be subdued by bombs down
the chimney is a depersonalized, dehumanized world that is not true. It would
be a great mistake, in our rush to personal fulfillment and prosperity, to
forget that a Bosnian child would, like us, be devastated to see a parent shot
in cold blood; that a Kosovar family would be as traumatized as we to lose home
and everything.
All lives are created equal. But when war looms, the value set on
one U.S. soldiers life becomes disproportionate, almost mythical
the mythology of war. What about the loss of each American killed in the inner
city? We pay scant attention. What about the thousands killed in Bosnia and
Kosovo because we looked the other way? The tens of thousands killed in Rwanda
and elsewhere because the polls were not favorable?
Such killings happen while we are at peace. While 40-odd wars
happen, we are at peace. That is why we must look again at what we mean by
peace. We emerged from the Cold War the only superpower. We had the money and
might to do what we wanted. Or so we thought. Peace, however, is not so simple.
Peace, too, demands sacrifice. If you want peace work for justice
its a cliché only because of its resounding truth. Self-absorbed,
we dont look hard at the tattered nations until their blood spills onto
our living room floors, disturbing our comfort.
Given the human condition, cheap peace is as self-contradictory as
cheap grace.
National Catholic Reporter, April 9,
1999
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