Reflections on The War

More thoughts about the Burns masterpiece.

WWII was a justifiable, necessary war. Even soldiers who had come to doubt this at the time, after years in battle, changed their minds with the discovery of Hitler's death camps.

Is the "war against terrorism" a justifiable, necessary war? Since Islamic extremists have clearly announced their goal of destroying western culture, yes, I think so. The rub is, the enemy is not a nation, easily identified and located, but an underground and loose assembly of religious extremists. And we clearly have not found the right strategy for fighting in such a war. In fact, what we've done so far has strengthened the enemy. We are not acting or looking good so far.

Dropping the A-bomb was necessary. I've been on the fence about this all my life. But after watching The War, I think it was a necessary, if terrible, choice in order to save lives in the long run (both American and Japanese). Invading the mainland would have been a long bloodbath. In war, you often must choose between alternative bad choices.

We will not make progress in the war against Islamic extremists until the entire country embraces the responsibility of fighting it and makes the mutual and widespread sacrifices required to fight it. This is where WWII and the present have little in common: only those who lost someone in the towers or who have someone fighting in Iraq really "feel" this war. No one else is paying a price for it.

Peace is an interruption between wars. If we haven't found a way to live in a sustainable peace in thousands of years, writing a history of unspeakable acts and unimaginable suffering, if we haven't found a way to live in peace by now, I don't believe it's likely we're going to find it. We are wired for war. We are part of Nature, which cares nothing about our suffering. Species come and go. So will we.

The nobility and kindness that sometimes appear in a world thus defined mark the best thing about our species. As a species, we are more admirable as trees than as a forest. The smaller the group, the better we usually behave. The largest group, the Nation, often works worst of all.

We work best as moral individuals, units of one, Thoreau's Majority of One. We don't have to change minds or win elections to be victorious. We have to be true to our values -- which means, of course, having values in the first (or rather, last) place, which requires context, thought, choices. In the end, it is exactly as Camus has it in "The Myth of Sisyphus" ... the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart.

Sisyphus, says Camus, is happy. And we can be, too. The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart.

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.