The United States of America has (have) finally come full-circle. We now have our own George III. Our first George, of course, was Washington, who earned his royal status in the oldest European tradition – by having first proved to be a Great Warrior. It's true that he is known for steadfastly refusing to be treated like a king, and we still think of him as among the least autocratic of our nation's chief executives. Yet, this u2018father' of the newly-constructed Union who had so recently left the battlefield in a supposed war for freedom wasted no time in ruthlessly putting down the infant nation's first tax revolt, the Whiskey Rebellion – launched by only a handful of the new citizenry who took their freedom seriously. So George-the-First-the-Second's devotion to freedom was already showing a gap. Old World habits were proving to die hard. It would seem that Power, no matter whose, is always accompanied by temptations to ruthlessness. Already, when George was still a mere general, he didn't hesitate to have a band of deserters shot during the worst days of the Revolutionary War – even though these men did not try get away out of cowardice but because they were literally starving, freezing, and desperate. Squelching tax revolts and killing deserters were well-established traditions among the very sort of Old-World ruling class that colonial Americans had just finished throwing off for good – or so they thought.
The tradition of a glorious military background had begun to slip by the time Lincoln came to power, though renewed somewhat for Grant and Eisenhower (glory needs a war), but by the time George Herbert Bush became George-the-Second-the-Second, even a mediocre military background was of little importance (and now, grâce à Bill Clinton, of none at all). No need to go over our second George's usurpations of power in domestic matters, since his predecessors had already been doing this for decades; no need to rehash Desert Storm, either, other than to keep in mind that George-II-the Second and his courtiers, by making a patsy of our ambassador to Iraq (April Glaspie), tricked Saddam Hussein into feeling free to invade Kuwait, which was not only siphoning-off Iraqi oil but which Iraq still considered to be part of ancient Iraq (Mesopotamia), before the map was redrawn by the Ottomans and then, typically, by a meddlesome Western power (Britain) in 1914. Iraq lost its best shipping route to the sea, as well as the huge hunk of its vast southern oil fields that was yet to be discovered (1938). Knowing the Kuwaiti ruling class to be as corrupt as his own, or nearly so, and believing he had received a US go-ahead, Saddam saw no reason to hesitate. So George-the-Second-the-Second then pretended that Kuwait had to be rescued, and the American public, brain-dead after a century of government-run schooling, bought one more fiction. The UN bought it, too. By that time, after all, most of its member-nations had installed government school systems of their own.
So the tradition of warrior-to-noblesse, firmly established since the Middle Ages, appears to have expired quietly in its sleep. Slick Willy is gone, and another who has never breathed the smoke of war wields the scepter – and appears to aspire to becoming Emperor of the world – George III-USA.
Our rulers need never again arrive at noble or royal status by first getting themselves bloodied in battle, much less by leading an army at its forefront. To appreciate more fully what it meant to be an Old World hero-king or hero-noble, I recommend reading a good English translation of The Song of Roland. It is a description of how Charlemagne's army kept the Spanish Moors from crossing the Pyrenees into Gaul (France). Blood and guts everywhere. Not one nobleman-leader among these warriors ever considered sparing his own, not even for an instant. From the earliest days of the feudal system, kings, princes, dukes, earls, and even bishops got themselves as sweaty and muddy and bloodied as everybody else. (Our words u2018virile' and u2018virtue' began as medieval French cognates, both deriving from the Latin root vir – strength, courage, wisdom, manliness – qualities applicable to either sex, since u2018man' was originally genderless and meant simply a u2018human being'.)
In Shakespeare's Henry V you can find another vivid account how an authentic nobleman fought a war in AD 1415, this one about the near-miraculous English victory over the French in the famous Battle of Agincourt. I recommend seeing the play rather than reading it. The best easy-watching rendition I have come across is the superb 1989 British production for television, directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars as Henry, and featuring multiple award-winner Derek Jacobi as the intermittent narrator, a common device in Shakespeare. Buy the video if you possibly can. Even if you're not wild about Shakespeare, you'll be rewarded by sticking with this version of the play to the end. I can almost guarantee you will be glad you did. You may even want to watch it more than once.
Even though wars in any age are usually waged for either silly or downright unrighteous reasons, a single exposure to such works as Roland or Henry V makes the underlying cowardice of modern war – not to mention wickedness – abundantly clear. Henry V's reason for launching an attack against the French seems as dumb as those for so many others among history's wars, yet they were deeply believed and heartfelt, without adulteration, without a shred of politically-motivated pretense. Strict Christian rules were enforced. No fighting on the Lord's Day nor on any other Holy Days; no looting of villages; no abominations against helpless women; no destruction of crops or any other means of a poor man's livelihood.
Shakespeare shows King Henry trekking through the battle area, from encampment to encampment in ordinary garb and sometimes on foot, as grimy and exhausted as the men he visited. At one stop, he comes upon a group of men surrounding a soldier he knew and even liked. The man was clearly about to be hanged. Henry asks why. The man was caught trying to loot a village church. Henry leaves sadly, without interfering. A war must be honorable.
Did the 20th century ever once preserve this kind of honorable? The respecting of defenseless civilians and their property? The recognition of churches as sacred sanctuaries and temples for prayer and the celebration of eternal goodness and life? How many presidents who got us into wars refused to harm civilians? How many of them respected spiritual needs and cultural traditions? How many refrained from extracting spoils from the wounded and defeated (consider the Treaty of Versailles), mindful of the hardships such behavior would wreak upon the innocent and powerless?
Lew Rockwell recently suggested returning to an even simpler way of resolving international disputes than a revival of u2018honorable' warfare. George-III-the-Second and Saddam Hussein would not even have to emulate Napoleon I, if they agreed to a u2018regime change' by means of a neat and clean classic duel. (Perhaps George knows that even Bonaparte didn't stay behind in his warm and cozy imperial digs whenever he launched a serious military campaign. Even in his madness, Bonaparte still had enough noblesse left in him to get muddy in the Norman plains and freeze in the Russian snow, right along with the rest of his men.)
Now that I reflect on the admittedly brilliant idea of settling international scores in a matched-doubles duel among these bloodthirsty hawks, I realize that it's much too good for them. The only blood they would see would be their own alone, or the other guy's. Their tender eardrums would be spared the terrifying blast of bombs or nearby mortar shells or the whistle of bullets – and, above all, the screams of pain from the men they send into harm's way would never reach them, to haunt their slumbers for years to come. Let those who would bring-in a New World Order by means of war go straight to the head of the line – of the infantry – with the foot-soldiers, that is, where they can eat the dust and mud like the kings of old, like Roland, Charlemagne, and Henry V.
October 10, 2002
Joanna Parker (send her mail) is an escape from teaching in government schools and [left-]leaning Ivory Towers, successively.
