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12.08.2004
Reading through various discussions about politics, war, terrorism, history, etc.. I begin to realize that maybe I have a radical view of human events. I start from an assumption that all human beings behave the same under similar sets of circumstances; and that a fundamental way in which we can predict the best outcome for people is to recreate the condictions in which people are at their best. I also assume that if people are acting in destructive and violent ways, that even though there is a small chance that they may be doing so for no reason, that it is more likely that they have some reason for acting as they do. This assumption is at odds with one that assumes that our enemies have no good reason for trying to kill us. I reject that idea out of hand. It might not make any sense to us, but it does to them, for some reason. (I also assume that most people would rather be sitting around eating good food, listening to good music and having sex than fighting each other. Once people are settled in, well fed and happy it takes alot to get them moving again. Its a lot like friction, it takes more force to start a static object in motion than to move an object that is already in motion. So it stands to reason that the more people we have settled in, and happily going about their business, the less likely there will be conflict. Its really too sad that this is not the case... and quite deliberately so.) Case in point: An article from the Asian Times about the Kamikaze pilots of World War II. Upon interviewing the pilots that, for various reasons, never flew their missions we understand that their primary desire to engage in such tactics emerged from their desire to protect their families from an enemy threat. "It was an order - help your country, your country being the family that you loved, your brothers and sisters, friends, your home town - to protect these things from the enemy," A universal human emotion. The same emotion expressed by sodiers fighting in Iraq. What cannot be disputed is the fundamental "rightness" of that sentiment. What could so be wrong about a desire to protect loved ones from danger? What can be discussed, and the two are deliberately confused, is whether the actions they are engaging in are indeed a fit to their intentions. Did suicide missions into American battleships in the Pacific really protect Japanese women and children from death by the enemy? Is the occupation of Iraq really protecting American women and children from the dangers of terrorism? I assert that very few people will fight simply to destroy an enemy without an underlying motivation. There will always be madmen who kill for the pleasure, but you cannot build an army, or a movement, out of madmen. Any large scale conflict will be fought amongst people who see their cause as just and their "enemy's" cause as a threat to their existence. Why do we fight? To protect things we care about; family, religion, ideals, communities. Even amongst the soldiers in the most evil regimes in history you will find this common thread, misguided as it might be. Maybe I'm an optimist? What goes wrong? Well, to be frank about it, we get lied to. We get manipulated into thinking that our very survival depends on destroying our enemies, who feel justified in fighting us because they feel threatened, and vice versa. The reality of the situation is that to start the whole mess into motion a bunch of people will have had to be motivated into thinking that their very survival is at risk from a non-existant enemy. I think its safe to say that most war is caused by politicians, who for their own political gain, concoct (or exhaggerate) an outside threat for the primary purpose of consolidating their political power. A secondary purpose can include gaining access to the riches of another people, though in this day and age we find its much easier just to steal what we want through legal manuavers. -- Years ago I read a book called "Japan at War: An Oral History". It was a fascinating look into the lives of people living in Japan during WWII. What you find is that people on that side of the conflict shared many of the same values that people on this side of the conflict did as well. What you come away wondering is, "Why were we fighting?" "They were trying to kill us!" |
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