week of 1/22/03
 
 
 

Familiar sound of war drums drowns out larger problems
By David Teague

We were supposed to be in Cincinnati last weekend, celebrating my sister’s upcoming birthday and giving the once-over to my teen-age niece’s first boyfriend. The weather kept us from traveling, however, which allowed Lynnea, her boyfriend and some other friends and family to join the thousands of other folks in Washington protesting the threat of war with Iraq.

Lynnea and Traven, the boyfriend, got to know each other while setting up an anti-war group at their school. More power to them. It’s a wonderful thing to see young people paying attention to what’s going on and standing up to say something about it. This is not the first time Lynnea has made Uncle David proud by taking a stand. And even though we haven’t met yet, the boyfriend certainly scored some points, too.

If that makes me sound like a proud anti-war activist myself, I’m not quite ready for that label yet. Activism is not something I embrace easily. I am an observer by nature and a journalist by training and I am passionate about the essential role an objective observer plays in helping people understand the events that are shaping society. But I am also a parent, and barely into middle age myself, and therefore more than a little worried about the direction in which we seem to be headed.

I have a book called The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant. Published in 1968, the book’s essay on “History and War” has helped me put into words some of my own thoughts about war.

In the Durants’ view, war is one of the constants of human history that has not diminished as we’ve become more civilized and democratic. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, they write, only 268 have seen no war. The book was published just as the most significant anti-war movement in the United States was coming to life, and I think it’s fair to say those numbers haven’t gotten better in 34 years.

That must be a hard pill for peace advocates to swallow. And let’s be honest, even among those most dedicated to peace and good will, competition and conflict often can derail their best intentions, especially when one well-meaning organization must outdo another to win grant funding and survive. So let’s accept, as the Durants do, that war is almost always present and that it has become the ultimate form of competition and natural selection that we humans practice.

The nature of war, however, has changed dramatically. In Europe, between the Religious Wars of the 16th century and the wars of the French Revolution, the Durants suggest, conflicting states were allowed to respect one another’s achievements and civilization. For example, Englishmen traveled safely in France while France was at war with England; the French and Frederick the Great shared a mutual admiration of each other even while they fought the Seven Years’ War. In the 17th and 18th centuries, war was a contest of aristocracies, not peoples.

But the 20th century changed all that, the Durants write. Improvements in communication, transportation, weapons and means of indoctrination made war a struggle between people, involving civilians as well as combatants, and victory was won through the widespread destruction of property and life. Today, war can quickly destroy the labor of centuries in building cities, creating art, and developing habits of civilization.

As our leaders contemplate war with Iraq, these are the questions I hope they are asking themselves — how much are we willing to destroy of another society’s lifestyle and culture to protect the interests of the United States and insure the safety of our people? And how will we know when we have truly achieved our goal? It seems to me that many 20th century conflicts, especially those in my lifetime, never really end. A temporary victor emerges, leaving the defeated with nothing but enough hatred to drive them toward a day when they turn things back to their favor.

As much as the 20th century changed the nature of war worldwide, it also saw the spectacular rise of the United States to become the preeminent world power. Over time, we Americans have proven ourselves able to envision almost any possibility and then set about bringing it to life. Whether its science, business and industry, the arts, addressing disease and famine — you name it and creative Americans have found a way to make things happen.

Even if Saddam Hussein and other terrorist leaders would like nothing better than to bring the United States to its knees, it would be nice to think that a society that has created so much could find better ways to protect ourselves than destroying another society. And there are certainly greater world threats to be addressed than the threat of terrorism.

Earlier this month, Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, wrote these words in The Washington Post:

“Tuberculosis and malaria kill more than 3 million people per year, and AIDS kills another 3 million. These numbers are growing rapidly, dwarfing the number of people who could conceivably die from terrorism or conventional warfare. These three diseases are taking many countries backwards, back to life expectancies and mortality rates the world hasn’t seen since the early 1900s. Each of them can be prevented, if not cured. Yet we spend billions trying to prevent terrorism and pennies on fighting these much bigger killers. In 2001, for every person who died of war and violence, seven people died of one of these three diseases, nearly all of them children and young adults.”

The thing that is even more horrifying about Feachem’s assessment is that he predicts that HIV/AIDS will not reach its peak for another 45 to 50 years. By then, it will not only have totally destroyed some African countries, but its epicenter will move east. Within a decade, Feachem writes, India and China will have half of all the HIV-positive people in the world.

I cannot look at such numbers without a deep sense of fear for what the world might be like for Lynnea and Trevan, not to mention my own son, Adam. Surely, with the unparalleled creativity and ingenuity Americans have often shown, we can do more to solve these truly frightening problems than we are doing. Yet, we focus so many resources on a tiny country that we still aren’t sure is even capable of doing what it would like to do to us. Wouldn’t it be harder for our enemies to find allies if we used our creativity, wealth and power to do something good for the world, like fight these diseases?

In the closing part of their essay, the Durants imagine a conversation between an American president and the leaders of Russia and China, who were perceived as our biggest threats in 1968.

“If we should follow the usual course of history we should make war upon you for fear of what you may do a generation hence,” the American president says. “... But we are willing to try a new approach. We respect your peoples and your civilizations as among the most creative in history. We shall try to understand your feelings, and your desire to develop your own institutions without fear of attack. We must not allow our mutual fears to lead us into war, for unparalleled murderousness of our weapons and yours brings into this situation an element unfamiliar to history ...”

To this, the military general smiles and replies “You have forgotten all the lessons of history and all that nature of man which you described. Some conflicts are too fundamental to be resolved by negotiation; and during prolonged negotiations (if history may be our guide) subversion would go on. A world order will come not by a gentlemen’s agreement, but through so decisive a victory by one of the great powers that it will be able to dictate and enforce international law .... You have told us that man is a competitive animal, that his states must be like himself, and that natural selection now operates on an international plane. States will unite in basic cooperation only when they are in common attacked from without. Perhaps we are now restlessly moving toward that higher plateau of competition; we may make contact with ambitious species on other planets or stars; soon thereafter there will be interplanetary war. Then, and only then, will we of this earth be one.”

History would seem to show us that this general is clearly right and momentum obviously seems to be swinging toward war again. Just a week or so ago, I was in Sam’s Club, where you can now purchase a set of three wall maps for $13. The maps were of the United States, the world and Iraq. All we need now are the pushpins to map the course of the pending conflict. There seems to be little other possibility if we let history and human nature be our guides.

So, as much as I may want for something different to happen, it is hard to be hopeful that an American president will speak those words of conciliation. In the absence of hope, however, there can be action. There can be the documented efforts of people willing to stand up and say they envision something better than reducing parts of our world to rubble again. There can be the actions of those who will dedicate themselves to healing instead of contributing to destruction. In the absence of much to hope for, I’ll place my hope in young people like Lynnea and Traven, and all the others who are willing to say no to aggression as a path to the future.

(David Teague is a free-lance writer and editor who lives in Waynesville. Readers can reach him at bestteague@aol.com)