...the last survivor of the Enola Gay's crew, has died. I was glad to read he lived a full life after his service ended, went on to a long career as a chemical engineer, kept his mind sharp, and died peacefully.
The event calls for reflection, of just the kind you've been doing, and that Grim's done before. For World War II was the last U.S. war that ended before the Geneva Conventions of 1948 (the centerpiece of the modern jus in bello) and the U.N. Charter (the centerpiece of the modern jus ad bellum) went into effect. And with it the radical new idea that civilians..."persons taking no active part in the hostilities...no matter what kind of war it was, or between whom...were simply immune as targets. (Jean Pictet's commentary on Common Article 3, which you can get here, describes it as an "almost unhoped-for" extension of common article 2...designed to apply even to civil wars or insurrections, to the savage as well as the civilized.
Islamic radicals sometimes defend 9/11 with a tu quoque...."What about Hiroshima?" There are several answers, but one of them is: "The law changed after that. We wouldn't be allowed to do that now; and by agreement and by custom, neither can anyone else." If you're much younger than VanKirk, older wars feel wrong...punitive expeditions, attacking villages, sacking towns, the jubilation at Marchin' Through Georgia...it feels like something that doesn't belong in war. Yet that is an ancient norm, and it is the modern standard that's in its experimental stage.
Problem is, the experiment may be failing.
Unsurprisingly, John Derbyshire's over a decade ahead of me on that, on the attitude adjustment that a violent people can show when they're well and truly crushed...in this column he takes it further, looking at the different ways a nation can view military defeat, from "total denial" through dolchstosslegende all the way to "full repentance." And then noticing that the more the civilian population suffered in the war, the closer they came to "full repentance"...and, more importantly, to fighting no more wars. It's a decently robust if not perfect model. He notes many examples from the 19th and 20th centuries. I notice it broadly fits the Jewish Wars of the Roman Empire. After the third one was mercilessly crushed, says this, "Jewish messianism was abstracted and spiritualized" -- as well it might be; eternal spiritual truths do have a way of bending to fit the facts on the ground -- and the Jewish leader was vilified in the Talmud. The Scottish suppression was brutal in a lesser way...but also effective. There really was peace tho' Jamie never came hame.
I don't think this comes through a cold calculation (as in the reasoning of Grim's excellent Blackfive post), but more likely through evolved instinct. Every man can talk about fighting to the last...but we're not descended from the men who did. Neither are we descended from the men who caved at the first attack. Thus: a little violence inspires revenge; a lot of it brings submission and peace. It's been made a joke and a funny one...because of the grim truth behind it. Their hands tied by the modern law of war, the Israelis get the worst of all worlds. They get the reputation of Genghis Khan or Tamurlane, and draw as much hatred as they did if not more...but they don't get the security that real brutality might've brought them long ago (and Genghis Khan is a national hero in Mongolia, and got respectful treatment in my elementary school history books; and Tamurlane is still admired at least in some parts of Afghanistan). Israel itself is just as old as the Geneva regime; a citadel of advanced civilization born in the year war was to be civilized, and has suffered ever since from that very fact.
Terrorism lives in that safe space created by the modern order. Terrorism isn't new, as you all know well. The Sicarii were practicing a version in Palestine not too long after Jesus. But the Romans of that era were quite capable of treating a city the way a strategic bombing raid could, only up close and personal, with sword and spear. Hiding behind children only works while the enemy's not willing to target them. And that wasn't a good assumption back then.
Supposing Palestinians continue as a UN-welfare population full of frustrated young men, and the Israelis remain addicted to life, so that the attacks never cease...will Israelis forever hold their hands, if it means dying for their principles?
I don't know. But as I said -- they're not descended from men who did.
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Every man can talk about fighting to the last...but we're not descended from the men who did.
We are possibly, if those men fathered their children before their final stand.
Thus: a little violence inspires revenge; a lot of it brings submission and peace.
I just quoted Maxim 6 to Cassandra in the last day or so. Or maybe it was to Sly. Anyway, it was from memory, and that's not what it once was.
In any case, I'm not sure the experiment deserves to survive -- nor the modern age that bore it. I'm all for a resurrection of that better age that proceeded it. If these solutions don't work, well, Thomas Aquinas had a lot to say about the subject as well. Maybe we can light the lamps in Europe again after all.
We are possibly, if those men fathered their children before their final stand.
The usual primitive pattern, I believe, is to slaughter the men and boys but "clasp the women to your breasts." So we might be descended from those men's fathers, but only through the female line. And even then only through those females who survived and bore children to their captors.
It's not a beautiful thought, but it might explain a lot of things...like why Genghis Khan so enjoyed the wives and daughters of his slaughtered foes, or Mohammed had a happy marriage with a woman he's just widowed. Maybe they were wired to enjoy it back.
In any case, I'm not sure the experiment deserves to survive -- nor the modern age that bore it. I'm all for a resurrection of that better age that proceeded it.
I've been studying the law of war for professional reasons this year...some people divide it roughly into three eras: the "Just War" era that includes Aquinas, the "War as Fact" era of the 18th and 19th centuries; and the "War as Crime" era of today.
I'll go with you this far...I'm still stuck in the "War as Fact" era, when the nations that made international law were the ones who also made war. I think it was a sounder conception. Though I can understand why it went out of fashion. With the centenary this year maybe we'll talk about it.
I'm not sure about that division. Aquinas' theory wasn't widely practiced, although it served as an influential model for what ought to be done. But the Medievals were very much in the 'War as Fact' camp on most points.
They did take some care to make sure they had the right, at least jus ad bellum. But conduct in war, jus in bello, was not nearly as perfect in execution as in theory.
What about Hiroshima? The Japanese rebuilt Hiroshima. Has the Palis rebuilt Gaza and the greenhouses they torn down yet?
The Japanese got beat and they knew it.
The Palestinians aren't as smart, apparently. (You'd think after losing 4 full scale wars to the Israelis, in '48, '56, '67 and '73 that they'd have figured out that maybe Allah was telling them something.)
Geneva Convention of 1948 or not, the US strategy over the next four decades relied on the weapons whose use would have incinerated millions of civilians. The same was true of the British, the French, and of course the Soviets.
Here's a thought experiment:
It has been credibly argued that the area bombing of German cities during WWII was not a good investment of military resources. Suppose that those resources had been invested elsewhere--antisubmarine warfare, battlefield interdiction, etc---and Germany had been defeated without exposing large number of its civilians directly to warfare.
Would the de-Nazification of Germany, and the transition to a democratic and stable government, have happened under that situation? Or would there have been a new stab-in-the-back legend, search for revenge, re-armament, rinse and repeat?
Vietnam veterans were certainly stabbed in the back. Most of them aren't legends.
I would point out that chroniclers are barely going to say Mohammed's wife despised him until the end of his days though.
Takes some shine off.
In any case if the theory is that the secret to peace is to make those practicing war truly despise it. I would think that is to a point, a psychological matter. Since after all the majority of people live even after something unpleasant like World War Two, and the only the opinions of the still living matter for continued peace. It is perhaps unneccesary for wide spread slaughter, but simply make the entire process completely and utterly nerve wracking and demoralizing.
An interesting thought, Anon...but unless your enemy's culture is strongly susceptible to antiwar memes, how else to do that except with wholesale slaughter?
Most peoples in the world -- modern Americans being a rare exception, and I'm afraid that experiment will fail too -- learn their national and other unifying myths from childhood up, so that fighting for God, King, or Country is a natural instinct; and it takes a supreme loss to turn their minds from it.
I'm not sure about that division. Aquinas' theory wasn't widely practiced, although it served as an influential model for what ought to be done. But the Medievals were very much in the 'War as Fact' camp on most points.
They did take some care to make sure they had the right, at least jus ad bellum. But conduct in war, jus in bello, was not nearly as perfect in execution as in theory.
The "War as Fact" period is sometimes called the "jus in bello" period...because when it came to law of war, that's where the action was.
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