There are few who remember, and the number dwindles every day,
back to the time when, among other things like black Bakelite
telephones and cars from which seat belts were completely absent,
we fought wars. No doubt as the years accumulate this era will pass
from history to myth to legend, but for those who possess the
attention span to read this (also a dwindling number), trust me: we
did.
There are few who remember, and the number dwindles every day, back to the time when, among other things like black Bakelite telephones and cars from which seat belts were completely absent, we fought wars. No doubt as the years accumulate this era will pass from history to myth to legend, but for those who possess the attention span to read this (also a dwindling number), trust me: we did.
And we weren’t alone; everybody did – English, French, Dutch, Chinese, Polynesians – it was a very big thing back then, and everybody understood how it worked. You acquired an enemy, which would be a country, or a city-state, or a minor kingdom – an independent entity of some simple description – and you pointed your army at it and you pulled the trigger. In the vast majority of cases the enemy would return fire, and you would have a war which would go on until one side or the other ran out of army or was offered a palatable deal. This would be followed by a truce, a treaty which spelled everything out nice and neatly, and then you would have peace for a while.
I know, I know, those trending toward the younger end of the spectrum yet who still find value in reading spelled-out words, complete sentences, and division of prose into paragraphs (I’m guessing that’s maybe six people and God love you, don’t ever change) are thinking “No way, dude, no way.”
And who could blame you? Fighting wars must seem as archaic a concept as the notion that once upon a time putting things in envelopes and giving them to the Post Office was the only way to transmit written material from one location to another. It’s just, like, so 1940s and did they even have food and clothes and air back then?
Somewhere along the line a secret committee decided that the Waging War Division of the world’s governments needed an upgrade, so we don’t do them anymore. I mean, where in the world is there a war? Nowhere; the last one worth being aware of was probably Iraq vs. Iran back in the ’80s, and since? I don’t think so.
The newer, better, slicker way to go is the non-war military engagement, often in America dubbed an “operation.” Other countries may have different labels; I don’t know for example what term the participants in the Israeli-Palestinian-Lebanese not-a-war are calling it. But we seem to favor operation: whether we’re invading Panama or bombing Serbia, strafing government forces in Libya, or sending six digits worth of troops, equipment and money to engage in full-scale maximum-violence military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, these are not wars, which in a blinding stroke of international enlightenment have apparently been abolished.
See, we have taken conflict to a new plateau of insight in which we are now able to separate governments from their people; it’s a more surgical approach to shooting and blowing things up. Back in the day for instance we waged war “with” somebody or “against” somebody; like the terms “fat chance” and “slim chance”, “with” and “against” while normally opposites are in this context synonymous. But we’re not fighting “with” or “against” Iraq or Afghanistan or Libya, we’re fighting “in” those places.
This is because back in the day we took the regrettably simplistic view that “that country’s government is a threat to us and its people bear responsibility for their own government however it may have achieved power so we’re at war with that country; end of story.” Nobody ever offered the opinion that, say, you know Hitler is undeniably oppressing lots of his countrymen and nobody has the kind of freedom we like to see, so let’s go fight the German government in order to free the German population from its harsh rulers, and then we’ll be “in” Germany representing the German people on the undemonstrated assumption that they want us.
But now that’s how we do it, and I for one am damn glad that instead of engaging in the barbaric brutality of war we are now bombing and shooting people and taking significant casualties in operations conducted for humanitarian purposes by presenting the gift of freedom among the wreckage to those who survive our beneficial intervention.
I mean, this is a very big leap forward for mankind here; each new military engagement further proves that we will have no more wars.
Also no truces, no treaties, and no peace, but everything has a trade-off.
Despite being an award-winning columnist, Robert Mitchell doggedly remains the same eccentric attorney who has practiced general law in Morgan Hill for more than 30 years. Reach him at r.****@*****on.net.
