John McCain has asked us not to judge former Senator Bob Kerry without understanding that war is always about killing.He reminds us that war’s demand for killing tends to corrupt all combatants – even "war heroes" – in all wars – even "good wars." Although it is certainly true that all wars corrupt, it is not true that all wars corrupt equally. A defensive war presents fewer opportunities for corruption and more for justice.
Common Ground
Before I explain what I mean, I need to explain what Senator McCain means by "corruption" and the extent to which I agree with him. The central conflict is between the command to kill and the "injunction to love all as we would be loved," and in war, the former trumps the latter. He describes his own experience as follows:
I hated my enemies even before they held me captive because hate sustained me in my devotion to their complete destruction and helped me overcome the virtuous human impulse to recoil in disgust from what had to be done by my hand. I dropped many bombs in Vietnam, and I wish I could say that they only destroyed military targets. But surely noncombatants were among the casualties.
The combatant, who may be a righteous, God-fearing, lovely human being, must become inhumane day after day if he is to do what his country has asked him to do. The injunction to love all as we would be loved is the first casualty of war, any war. Wars are that awful, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool or a fraud.
Senator McCain’s experience is, as he explains, common to both "good" and "bad" wars. Even justified killing brings on "the virtuous human impulse to recoil in horror," as Senator McCain describes it. No matter how just the war or the killing, combatants will easily resort to various moral corruptions as a means of suppressing this impulse: hating the enemy, taking pleasure in inflicting death, or rejecting morality altogether. These corruptions, and war crimes caused by them, occur even in just wars conducted by soldiers and leaders struggling to be just.
My point is that combatants need not be motivated by hate. They can instead be motivated by love of others, but it really only works in a defensive war. A defensive war by nature appeals to better motives than an offensive war.
Motives for Combatants of Defensive War
A defensive war by nature appeals to the soldier’s self-interest and to his love of others. He sees his own life, liberty and property threatened, along with that of his family, neighbors, friends and countrymen. This threat gives the soldier a motive to fight to protect himself and those he loves.
Between self-interest and love of others, love is the stronger motivator. Self-interest does not clearly favor standing and fighting. A soldier in any war stands a good chance of dying. His own liberty may be more dear to him than his life, but it is really the liberty of others which is won by his sacrifice. It is the very unselfishness of the soldier’s sacrifice which makes reverence for the war dead so universal.
In a defensive war, both of these motivations are provided by nature and supported by traditional moral instruction. Self-interest, of course, is common to all. Most survive childhood with natural affection toward family and friends. Most also are taught love of neighbor and country by their parents and religious leaders. Upon attack, a military leader may draw upon these teachings to inspire action without introducing a revolution in or perversion of morality.
Motivating Combatants in Offensive War
An offensive war directly attacks the life, liberty and property of the people to be overcome. The government, therefore, cannot effectively appeal to the very virtues in its own people which it is trying to suppress in its opponents. It must therefore devise other motivations.
This presents not just a question of technique – of how to motivate – but a more serious question about the morality of the motivator (setting aside the fact that he is inducing to immorality and focusing solely on how he is going about it). C.S. Lewis addressed a different but related question, where he fortuitously chose this very situation as an example:
When a Roman father told his son that it was a sweet and seemly thing to die for his country, he believed what he said. He was communicating to the son an emotion which he himself shared and which he believed to be in accord with the value which his judgement discerned in noble death. He was giving the boy the best he had, giving of his spirit to humanize him as he had given of his body to beget him….
[Those who disbelieve this sentiment but find it useful] must set themselves to work to produce, from outside, a sentiment which they believe to be of no value to the pupil and which may cost him his life, because it is useful to us (the survivors) that our young men should feel it.If they embark on this course the difference between the old and new education will be an important one. Where the old initiated, the new merely ‘conditions.’ The old dealt with its pupils as grown birds deal with young birds when they teach them to fly: the new deals with them more as the poultry-keeper deals with young birds – making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation – men transmitting manhood to men: the new is merely propaganda.
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, pp. 31-33 (Collier 1986). Even if we may quibble with the Roman soldier’s concept of "country," we would do well to note the inherently totalitarian nature of inspiring feelings for their utility rather than because they are believed.
In offensive war, the government must do just this. It must wage war against its people’s virtue before it wages war against its declared enemy. Self-interest remains a motive to the combatant, but it is now the government, and not an invader, which threatens his life and liberty if he fails to fight. Rewards of loot and license are promised – though we are now "civilized" enough to loot our own taxpayers and merely "sanction" those we conquer. All wars generate a certain devotion to military unit, but habitual aggressors tend to elevate this above the natural affection toward friend and family. The love of country is replaced by love of empire.
More perversions follow.Since the enemies are not invaders, they cannot stop the conflict simply by returning home. They must be dehumanized, so that they may be killed more easily. The soldier must be turned to a "devotion to their complete destruction. "Names like "gooks" are an essential part of the process. It may also help to have the draftees lay in their bed at night and, instead of leading them in prayer, leading them in cries of "Kill! Kill! Kill!" All at the expense of the god-fearing taxpayer. See also Jeff Elkin’s article on this process.
Much more can be and has been done to cause our soldiers to "become inhumane day after day. "Senators McCain and Kerry – and countless like them – give reason to hope that the human spirit will ultimately reject the indoctrination of hate.
Other Remarks
I had intended also to explain how a defensive war gives the baser motives less freedom of action, but perhaps this graphic and eloquent threat by "warlike Harry" will suffice. Invaders seldom bring their women and babies along to be raped and impaled.
There is also the more difficult question of motivating soldiers to defend a truly innocent ally. For now, I will simply note that this situation divorces virtue from self-interest and natural affection and, therefore requires, either soldiers more virtuous or leaders more Machiavellian than for a truly defensive war. I mean no disrespect of soldiers past or present when I assert that we are asking too much of their virtue and deserving it too little.
Conclusion
Yes, Senator McCain, even good wars – defensive ones – have their corruptions. But unlike offensive wars, defensive wars offer combatants the motivation of love, and not just the temptation to hate.
May 1, 2001
