"'For instance, do you see this chunk of land, washed on one side by the ocean? Look, it's filling with fire. A war has started there. If you look closer, you'll see the details.'
"Margarita leaned towards the globe and saw the little square of land spread out, get painted in many colors, and turn as it were into a relief map. And then she saw the little ribbon of a river, and some village near it. A little house the size of a pea grow and became the size of a matchbox. Suddenly and noiselessly the roof of this house flew up along with a cloud of black smoke, and the walls collapsed, so that nothing was left of the little two-storey box except a small heap with black smoke pouring from it. Bringing her eye still closer, Margarita made out a small female figure lying on the ground, and next to her, in a pool of blood, a little child with outstretched arms.
"'That's it,' Woland said, smiling, 'he had no time to sin. Abaddon's work is impeccable.... He is of a rare impartiality and sympathizes equally with both sides of the fight. Owing to that, the results are always the same for both sides'," - The Master and Margarita.
Monday, April 18, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
renewal...
Before any renewal can take place, we must first take account of the pseudomorphosis suffered by the Western Church's culture and ethos. This pseudomorphosis is the result of the haphazard introduction of elements alien to it's holistic, realist, anti- rationalist approach to the unity of worship, theological reflection, and practical works in witness to the Kingdom that has come and is yet to come. Just thought I'd mention it...
total war to end all peace...
So, it seems there's an 'Obama Doctrine' by which one can discern whether a given war is or is not justified. Wars, you see, should mean something; they serve lofty moral purposes and advance History toward its fulfillment, or they lack justification. War is, if you will, aspirational. This implies of course that one ought to be reluctant to wage war over oil, water, fishing rights, or anything so pedestrian.
This is a reiteration, and in some ways an expansion, of the doctrine of 'Armed Humanitarianism' that has been orthodoxy since at least the First Gulf War. Recall that we were in a life or death struggle with a tyrant who was 'another Hitler' - one must always fight Hitlers [Stalins get a pass, as do Francos, but pay that no never mind]. What's important is that the conflict was cast in humanitarian terms - a ruthless dictator had given vent to his expansionist fantasies by invading a sovereign, peaceful country, one moreover that was not only smaller physically but possessed of no means of defending itself against such 'naked aggression'. It would fall the to the US and its allies to protect that nascent 'New World Order' aborning in the wake of the Fall Of Communism, by liberating Kuwait.
Recall as well that Bush Sr called on the Iraqi people to rise up and throw off the shackles of oppression. In the doing they would find an ally in the US, an ally moreover with F-14's and stealth bombers and highly skilled special forces at its disposal. Well, the Iraqis rose up, and we abandoned 'em.
Allow me a digression here. I remember hearing that the cease-fire accord worked out between the Coalition and Iraq required the Iraqis to refrain from using 'fixed wing aircraft', while allowing the use of 'rotary winged aircraft' (respectively 'airplanes' and 'helicopters' to the nonelect). This was hilarious inasmuch as we had destroyed most if not all of the 'fixed wing aircraft' the Iraqi military had, in good Old Soviet Style,* more or less buried in fixed bunkers. Even more delightful is the fact that 'rotary wing aircraft' are perfect for suppressing demonstrations and strafing villages and providing air support for mobile infantry and internal police units. Give that a thought. Here ends the digression...
So it was that the Iraqi regime used its rotary wing aircraft and its remaining Republican Guard troops and a rabble of police to suppress and then destroy the opposition. It would take some time to set 'No Fly Zones' over northern and southern Iraq.
I mention that little adventure because it points up the limits of idealism in warfare. There was simply no way we could have intervened in the Iraqi uprisings because, despite their common target - Saddam - the leaders of the various factions were quite at odds with each other, and would have most certainly fought a civil war in the absence of the Brutal Dictator. Thus, we would have found ourselves willy-nilly embroiled in a mess from which there was no escape.**
I also recall that there was then, as now, opposition to our adventures in the Persian Gulf. You could find pockets of protesters all over the campus where I lived and studied. Their most determined argument was that the First Gulf War was no war of liberation at all. Indeed, to these protesters and their sympathizers, all such rhetoric was a cynical ploy. No, this was a war for oil, plain and simple. The geopolitical status quo in the Middle East had to be maintained at all costs: the US had been nearly crippled by the OPEC oil shocks of the 70's, and we were determined that never again would our access to oil be threatened. That it was in this case threatened by a Brutal Dictator was a happy accident, allowing the administration to cast its naked power-grab in the rhetoric of liberation, law, and justice. That we abandoned the Iraqi people to the tender mercies of the Republican Guard once we had 'liberated' Kuwait only confirmed this dire reading of events. All this was summed up in their most common slogan of opposition - 'No Blood For Oil'.
Simple, eh?
It's obvious in hindsight that the First Gulf War was in fact a war about oil, and a war about liberation, and a war about restoring 'National Pride'.*** So it is with most wars, which are largely creations of accident and mixed motives. What's interesting in the context of our current military adventures, and the stir over the 'Obama Doctrine', is the extent to which we've only inflated the humanitarian, idealistic rhetoric with which we define our objectives and our justifications for war, while we grow ever more oblivious to the often sordid reality of actual warfare and its rationalizations. From Bosnia and Serbia, to Somalia, and on to Iraq (again) and now Libya, our wars have been for the most part framed as humanitarian interventions. Especially since the Clinton adminstration, more and more we have made warfare an idealistic venture.
Of course, this is nothing new - consider the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the American Revolution and then the Civil War (which was really a second revolution), World War I and the Russian Civil War. In fact, here we've run against a feature of late modernity in the West. Warfare came to be understood not as a regrettable, but intractable, feature of fallen human life, but as an exceptional evil that could be extirpated once and for all. Most often, the current war was to be the means of finally eliminating all war, either because rational humans would finally see how brutal war was [in order to impress the lesson, we had to wage war without restraint], or because the Elect would finally have eliminated those opposed to History, and thereby eliminated the Cause of Conflict.
Thus the wars of modernity have been exceptionally cruel total wars, lacking all real distinction in theory and in practice between civilian and combatant, torture and interrogation, tactical necessity and vengeance.**** Most of 'em have been civil wars (one could include here even World Wars I and II), and nearly all of 'em have been at least in part driven by an Idealism of one kind or another. What's more, almost all of 'em have been conceived as the Last War, the one which will usher in a secular Peace.
What my friends with their posters denouncing 'Blood for Oil' didn't see, and couldn't see without this historical perspective, is that it's actually far better to fight a war for oil than it is to fight one for some lofty idealism, whether the goal is the liberation of the oppressed or to creation of a Perpetual Peace. A war for oil, or some other tangible thing over which there is a dispute, can end, you see. A war waged for the sake of peace, or justice, or some other intangible ideal, will, by definition, never end. There are always enemies of the ideal who refuse the call of History, and it's all to easy to go from a humanitarian mission (defending civilians, for instance), to a full-blown massacre of those who refuse to be saved.
To return to the 'Obama Doctrine' - in requiring that wars 'mean something', that they serve lofty moral ends, our dear leader has simply been the latest to give voice to the ideal of Total War to End All War. That he has further expanded the executive power to wage war without congressional oversight is only logical - the Leader, as a manifestation of the Will of History, must have unfettered freedom to wage war for the sake of peace anywhere at any time.
So it is that we have come to a rather odd and horrible impasse. Whatever our particular pieties, for us war is not a rather pedestrian part of fallen life, to be at best ameliorated and limited through law and religious obligation, which would imply prudential reasoning and public debate and quaint formalities like declarations of war and the like. No, for us war is at once an absolute evil and the means to its own elimination. We are trapped in this contradiction, and possibly doomed to total war without end. How, or even if, we can get out of it, remains to be seen. If we do free ourselves from it, I suspect that a first step will be to realize that war is not a means to liberation, justice, or universal peace, but is merely a manifestation of fallen human violence, to be restrained, regulated, and if need be endured, this side of the Final Resurrection.*****
*Does anyone remember that the lighting ground war of 1991, was a miniature version of that great Apocalyptic Battle on the eastern European plain between Soviet and NATO forces which had long excited the fantasies of generals and game theorists on both sides of the Iron Curtain? For what it's worth, it proved that NATO would have beaten the Warsaw Pact in any conventional conflict, but that's another story for another day...
**Sound familiar? Indeed, from the wars in the Balkans to Iraq to, now, Libya, we have more and more entangled ourselves in civil wars. Of course we take sides. To decide which 'side' to support, we seem to rely on some sort of divination that allows our Leader to ride the Dialectic of History...
***A local television station loudly proclaimed that we had won our Greatest Victory and had exorcised the Ghosts of Vietnam.
****This has much to do also with the expanding totalism of the Modern State, but that's a topic for another day. Furthermore, let no one imagine that I conjure here a golden age of peace - people found yet cunning reasons to kill one another. I do assert, however, that there was a greater sense of realism regarding war before the modern era - a counterintuitive theorem to be sure, the proof of which I leave as an exercise for the reader.
*****This is why those who truly practice nonviolence are also realistic about the persistence of war as a feature of fallen history - by their refusal to fight, coupled with an acceptance of martyrdom if needs be, they are signs of the Kingdom that has come and is yet to come. At the same time, there is a way of warfare that has been all but forgotten, one that can often be in defense of the widow, the orphan, the oppressed. Consider the fatally flawed film Tears of the Sun, wherein a Navy Seal commander makes a sudden decision to stay and protect a ragtag gaggle of refugees who would otherwise be killed in their land's fratricidal civil war. This is not an act moved by idealism, or a desire to rid the world of war - this man has seen enough to know that is impossible. Of course, there is a massive air strike at the end and American helicopters come to the rescue, and we also find that they have unintentionally defended the 'rightful' president of the war-torn African nation, all of which undermines the moral center of the story.
This is a reiteration, and in some ways an expansion, of the doctrine of 'Armed Humanitarianism' that has been orthodoxy since at least the First Gulf War. Recall that we were in a life or death struggle with a tyrant who was 'another Hitler' - one must always fight Hitlers [Stalins get a pass, as do Francos, but pay that no never mind]. What's important is that the conflict was cast in humanitarian terms - a ruthless dictator had given vent to his expansionist fantasies by invading a sovereign, peaceful country, one moreover that was not only smaller physically but possessed of no means of defending itself against such 'naked aggression'. It would fall the to the US and its allies to protect that nascent 'New World Order' aborning in the wake of the Fall Of Communism, by liberating Kuwait.
Recall as well that Bush Sr called on the Iraqi people to rise up and throw off the shackles of oppression. In the doing they would find an ally in the US, an ally moreover with F-14's and stealth bombers and highly skilled special forces at its disposal. Well, the Iraqis rose up, and we abandoned 'em.
Allow me a digression here. I remember hearing that the cease-fire accord worked out between the Coalition and Iraq required the Iraqis to refrain from using 'fixed wing aircraft', while allowing the use of 'rotary winged aircraft' (respectively 'airplanes' and 'helicopters' to the nonelect). This was hilarious inasmuch as we had destroyed most if not all of the 'fixed wing aircraft' the Iraqi military had, in good Old Soviet Style,* more or less buried in fixed bunkers. Even more delightful is the fact that 'rotary wing aircraft' are perfect for suppressing demonstrations and strafing villages and providing air support for mobile infantry and internal police units. Give that a thought. Here ends the digression...
So it was that the Iraqi regime used its rotary wing aircraft and its remaining Republican Guard troops and a rabble of police to suppress and then destroy the opposition. It would take some time to set 'No Fly Zones' over northern and southern Iraq.
I mention that little adventure because it points up the limits of idealism in warfare. There was simply no way we could have intervened in the Iraqi uprisings because, despite their common target - Saddam - the leaders of the various factions were quite at odds with each other, and would have most certainly fought a civil war in the absence of the Brutal Dictator. Thus, we would have found ourselves willy-nilly embroiled in a mess from which there was no escape.**
I also recall that there was then, as now, opposition to our adventures in the Persian Gulf. You could find pockets of protesters all over the campus where I lived and studied. Their most determined argument was that the First Gulf War was no war of liberation at all. Indeed, to these protesters and their sympathizers, all such rhetoric was a cynical ploy. No, this was a war for oil, plain and simple. The geopolitical status quo in the Middle East had to be maintained at all costs: the US had been nearly crippled by the OPEC oil shocks of the 70's, and we were determined that never again would our access to oil be threatened. That it was in this case threatened by a Brutal Dictator was a happy accident, allowing the administration to cast its naked power-grab in the rhetoric of liberation, law, and justice. That we abandoned the Iraqi people to the tender mercies of the Republican Guard once we had 'liberated' Kuwait only confirmed this dire reading of events. All this was summed up in their most common slogan of opposition - 'No Blood For Oil'.
Simple, eh?
It's obvious in hindsight that the First Gulf War was in fact a war about oil, and a war about liberation, and a war about restoring 'National Pride'.*** So it is with most wars, which are largely creations of accident and mixed motives. What's interesting in the context of our current military adventures, and the stir over the 'Obama Doctrine', is the extent to which we've only inflated the humanitarian, idealistic rhetoric with which we define our objectives and our justifications for war, while we grow ever more oblivious to the often sordid reality of actual warfare and its rationalizations. From Bosnia and Serbia, to Somalia, and on to Iraq (again) and now Libya, our wars have been for the most part framed as humanitarian interventions. Especially since the Clinton adminstration, more and more we have made warfare an idealistic venture.
Of course, this is nothing new - consider the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the American Revolution and then the Civil War (which was really a second revolution), World War I and the Russian Civil War. In fact, here we've run against a feature of late modernity in the West. Warfare came to be understood not as a regrettable, but intractable, feature of fallen human life, but as an exceptional evil that could be extirpated once and for all. Most often, the current war was to be the means of finally eliminating all war, either because rational humans would finally see how brutal war was [in order to impress the lesson, we had to wage war without restraint], or because the Elect would finally have eliminated those opposed to History, and thereby eliminated the Cause of Conflict.
Thus the wars of modernity have been exceptionally cruel total wars, lacking all real distinction in theory and in practice between civilian and combatant, torture and interrogation, tactical necessity and vengeance.**** Most of 'em have been civil wars (one could include here even World Wars I and II), and nearly all of 'em have been at least in part driven by an Idealism of one kind or another. What's more, almost all of 'em have been conceived as the Last War, the one which will usher in a secular Peace.
What my friends with their posters denouncing 'Blood for Oil' didn't see, and couldn't see without this historical perspective, is that it's actually far better to fight a war for oil than it is to fight one for some lofty idealism, whether the goal is the liberation of the oppressed or to creation of a Perpetual Peace. A war for oil, or some other tangible thing over which there is a dispute, can end, you see. A war waged for the sake of peace, or justice, or some other intangible ideal, will, by definition, never end. There are always enemies of the ideal who refuse the call of History, and it's all to easy to go from a humanitarian mission (defending civilians, for instance), to a full-blown massacre of those who refuse to be saved.
To return to the 'Obama Doctrine' - in requiring that wars 'mean something', that they serve lofty moral ends, our dear leader has simply been the latest to give voice to the ideal of Total War to End All War. That he has further expanded the executive power to wage war without congressional oversight is only logical - the Leader, as a manifestation of the Will of History, must have unfettered freedom to wage war for the sake of peace anywhere at any time.
So it is that we have come to a rather odd and horrible impasse. Whatever our particular pieties, for us war is not a rather pedestrian part of fallen life, to be at best ameliorated and limited through law and religious obligation, which would imply prudential reasoning and public debate and quaint formalities like declarations of war and the like. No, for us war is at once an absolute evil and the means to its own elimination. We are trapped in this contradiction, and possibly doomed to total war without end. How, or even if, we can get out of it, remains to be seen. If we do free ourselves from it, I suspect that a first step will be to realize that war is not a means to liberation, justice, or universal peace, but is merely a manifestation of fallen human violence, to be restrained, regulated, and if need be endured, this side of the Final Resurrection.*****
*Does anyone remember that the lighting ground war of 1991, was a miniature version of that great Apocalyptic Battle on the eastern European plain between Soviet and NATO forces which had long excited the fantasies of generals and game theorists on both sides of the Iron Curtain? For what it's worth, it proved that NATO would have beaten the Warsaw Pact in any conventional conflict, but that's another story for another day...
**Sound familiar? Indeed, from the wars in the Balkans to Iraq to, now, Libya, we have more and more entangled ourselves in civil wars. Of course we take sides. To decide which 'side' to support, we seem to rely on some sort of divination that allows our Leader to ride the Dialectic of History...
***A local television station loudly proclaimed that we had won our Greatest Victory and had exorcised the Ghosts of Vietnam.
****This has much to do also with the expanding totalism of the Modern State, but that's a topic for another day. Furthermore, let no one imagine that I conjure here a golden age of peace - people found yet cunning reasons to kill one another. I do assert, however, that there was a greater sense of realism regarding war before the modern era - a counterintuitive theorem to be sure, the proof of which I leave as an exercise for the reader.
*****This is why those who truly practice nonviolence are also realistic about the persistence of war as a feature of fallen history - by their refusal to fight, coupled with an acceptance of martyrdom if needs be, they are signs of the Kingdom that has come and is yet to come. At the same time, there is a way of warfare that has been all but forgotten, one that can often be in defense of the widow, the orphan, the oppressed. Consider the fatally flawed film Tears of the Sun, wherein a Navy Seal commander makes a sudden decision to stay and protect a ragtag gaggle of refugees who would otherwise be killed in their land's fratricidal civil war. This is not an act moved by idealism, or a desire to rid the world of war - this man has seen enough to know that is impossible. Of course, there is a massive air strike at the end and American helicopters come to the rescue, and we also find that they have unintentionally defended the 'rightful' president of the war-torn African nation, all of which undermines the moral center of the story.
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