If Western humanism has a preeminent advocate of the ages, it is Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1456–1536). His Adagia (1515), a collection of proverbs with commentary, is the first bestseller in history. And its most popular essay was composed on an ancient aphorism: dulce bellum inexpertis — “war is sweet to the inexperienced.”
These are fitting words on Memorial Day.
Crossposted from my blog.Written at a time when war had for perhaps the first time risen to rival disease and starvation — the two traditional scourges of humanity — Erasmus’ essay has been called the founding tract of pacifism. But he was not a pacifist. Rather he insisted, against the grain of his times, that war be confined to a last resort of self-defense, for the excellent reason that “even the most successful and just war,” waged by a good prince for a noble purpose, is prone to descend into unspeakable atrocities.
Thus:
Man, says Erasmus, is the one creation made entirely for friendly acts, yet in war his social disposition turns him into “a brute so monstrous that no beast will be called a brute in future if compared to man.” After all, “When did anyone hear of a hundred thousand animals falling dead together after tearing each other to pieces, as men do everywhere?”
How is such perversion even possible? It is due to concerted campaigns for amnesia by which the bitter lessons of the past are unlearned. Though experience teaches that the expenses of bloodshed are ten times higher than those of peace with results much worse, the propaganda of clerics, lawyers, and princes has again made war “such a respectable thing that it is wicked — I might almost say ‘heretical’ — to disapprove of this which of all things is the most abominable and most wretched.”
Five centuries hence, another thoughtful commentator reflected on the difference between West Europeans and North Americans in this respect. William Pfaff, writing in The International Herald Tribune in January 2003, is worth quoting at length:
American commentators like to think that the “Jacksonian” frontier spirit equips America to dominate, reform and democratize other civilizations. They do not appreciate that America’s indefatigable confidence comes largely from never having had anything very bad happen to it.
The worst American war was the Civil War, in which the nation, North and South, suffered 498,000 wartime deaths from all causes, or slightly more than 1.5 percent of a total population of 31.5 million.
The single battle of the Somme in World War I produced twice as many European casualties as the United States suffered, wounded included, during that entire war.
There were 407,000 American war deaths in World War II, out of a population of 132 million – less than a third of 1 percent. Considering this, Washington does not really possess the authority to explain, in condescending terms, that Europe’s reluctance to go to war is caused by a pusillanimous reluctance to confront the realities of a Hobbesian universe.
Pfaff adds the following observation:
It cannot be emphasized too often that not one of the principal figures associated with the Bush White House’s foreign policy, with the exception of Colin Powell, has any actual experience of war, most of them having actively sought to avoid military service in Vietnam.
Evidently, not just individuals but the whole country has ignored central lessons of “what war means for its victims.” As International Law scholar Richard Falk has put it in The Nation:
In mainstream US discourse, the unforgivable flaws of the Vietnam War are that it was (1) lost at (2) by US standards, a hefty cost in American lives (3) without clear US interests at stake. The scholars debate which was more instrumental in eroding support for the war. It is clear, however, that either dwarfs the fact that it (4) involved grave war crimes such as free fire zones; the deployment of the most poisonous chemical weapons known to science in civilian areas; and the bombing back to the stone age of Laos and Cambodia at an officially estimated cost of respectively 350,000 and 600,000 civilian lives.
Certainly the US military and political establishment had no significant qualms about (4). Anyone in doubt about this should contemplate SIOP-62, the top secret contingency plan for US nuclear first strike. Effective from 1962, this plan mandated a nuclear annihilation of not just the USSR but its enemy China in the event of suspicious Soviet troop movements. Thus it prescribed the murder of up to a hundred million innocent citizens of a non-belligerent nation posing no threat to any NATO country. Anything less, explained the head of the Strategic Air Command, General Thomas Powers, “would really screw up the plan.”
The 2004 release of these utterly sinister documents failed to cause any noticeable stir in the US public, even though they prove that America was ready, at a moment’s notice, to carry out a nuclear holocaust making every previous genocide pale in comparison. One shudders to imagine what Erasmus would have said of this ultimate deviation from his — or any — conception of justifiable warfare.
Or, to return to the current malaise, whatever would he have made of the following sermon, given at a time when only 25 percent of Americans thought the Iraq War a mistake?
Chris Matthews, MSNBC Hardball, April 2003
Now the warmongering pundits who shilled for that bungled war are using virtually indistinguishable rhetoric to enable another “preventive” onslaught; one that might need to avail itself of nuclear weapons as a tactical necessity. The leading political commentator on America’s most trusted television network thunders: “You know in a sane world, every country would unite against Iran and blow it off the face of the Earth. That would be the sane thing to do.”
Are such odious operators met with a firestorm of popular derision from the US public? Not outside of liberal blogs.
Apart from 9/11 and the events of 150 years ago, the American people still has no experience of being at the receiving end of “this which of all things is the most abominable and most wretched,” but which remains so sweet to the inexperienced.
Thanks Sirocco for introducing me to someone new and the link about him.
Matthews quote only gets more disgusting as time goes on. And I believe absolutely that bush has no real concept of war, what war really does to soldiers, the families on both sides, war torn country being completely shell shocked for years and years. I think he believes or is vicariously living out some John Wayne war movie fantasy.(same as John Wayne who never served either so I guess that makes sense) Dam the torpedoes, full speed ahead, I’m the war president dammit.
With respect to The NPD President, I think this book store got it right (click to enlarge):
😉
ha..makes you wonder if that grouping of books was done intentionally by someone working there.
When following the link you provided and reading about Erasmus and all the studying and writing he did makes me wonder where are all the true philosophers and writers in our times. We don’t seem to have many great ‘thinkers’ and scholars anymore.
This one has never been about freedom, of people that is, unless you consider it the freedom to rob people around the world.
It is only about the money.
As an american verteran, I am truly ashamed of the the general public for not being in the streets, taking back our country.
Dearest Infidel, your expression of shame is one of the few things that gives me hope today.
America and her leadership need to develop a concept of shame. Beyond the initial shock and anger of 9/11, few of us felt ashamed of having provoked anyone to such an act.
Even now we cannot seem to muster any shame about the events of Haditha.
There does seem to be a general lack of willingness to acknowledge war crimes. Historian Niall Ferguson claims in his new book that US troops routinely executed captured Japanese prisoners towards the end of WWII. Two-fifths of American army chaplains surveyed after the war considered orders to kill prisoners as legitimate. The same thing was seen in Europe, as illustrated by the controversial scene in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers where a US officers mows down German POWs.
Warriors of all nationalities commit rampant crime at war. Reluctance to acknowledge this at least indicates a code of honor at work. If it is acknowledged and nobody cares, that is the worst-case scenario. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Haditha incident.
I remember when I was a mere 19 and an old man I knew who worked with my father and had served in WW11..was drunk one night and started raving about the war and how he and fellow soldiers were transporting German prisoners on a plane and ‘as usual’ he said they just pushed them out. While also saying there were things he knew that were to horrible to even repeat.
Being young and very naive I thought this was just the ravings of some drunk old man and couldn’t possibly be true. “WE’ didn’t do things like that.
Now of course that story has come back to haunt me many times as I’ve gotten older and I wonder too at the hell that old man had lived through…and maybe explained in part his alcoholism.
The present regime is like the Borgias, without the brains.
But I think the US security state has been f’ed up long before that came around, as e.g. the SIOP-62 plan shows.
Then again, when all is said and done, I don’t think the USA is necessarily more cynical than most other nations would be with comparable power — and less so than some. Power corrupts, universally.
Well said. It is a world gone mad all right. There is some psychological principle that posits people will accept internal explanations to explain success (I won the race because I was born fast) but tend to use external explanations to explain failure (I lost the race because the starter messed up and I got out of the blocks wrong). I think we do this as a society. I keep hearing a term BooMan used, echoing in my head. American Exceptionalism. We’ve got to be the most narcissistic people on the planet. Look how many we lost. Look. Almost 3,000 in the world trade center. And another 2,500 in the war. Woe is us.
Fuck. We’ve killed millions since we came out to be an imperial power. And that’s not to mention the billions that our policies of global capitalism condemn to sub-humanity. I’ve got to rate America a sell in my portfolio. Because what comes around…
….goes around. And our time is coming. I have a sense that there’s a tiny beginning of self doubt in the general American belief of omnipotence. So what would be the next logical step for an intelligent, enlightened society? To take a step back from disaster? In America? No! Instead, no one is in the street demanding sanity. No. It’s headlong over the precipice with more fervor, for yet more war.
If this country fails to survive the next 50 years, let alone the next 10, it will be because it was not saveable, or even worth saving in it’s present form.
R.J. Rummel in his Statistics of Democide 1997 gives the following estimate:
While I believe the higher bounds of this estimate are the more plausible given the aforementioned death toll in South-East Asia, that is not especially high for a nation that big and powerful. His estimates for various other powers bring this out.
Yet it’s vastly more than has been inflicted on the US itself. “Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim” (Bertrand Russell).
On the other hand, it’s mostly luck that hindered the US from killing more civilians than Stalin and Hitler put together.
In sum, I’d say the US is a pretty ordinary great power, morally speaking. It’s hard to say whether the myth of exceptionalism keeps it from behaving better, or behaving worse. That would be a worthy diary topic!
I wish I had a hundred recommends for you Sirocco. Even though you make my cry for my country today and the insanity we have embraced.
Thanks. Truly didn’t mean to make you sad though! 🙂
The US of A is not an inherently war like country. Mainly we are military bunglers. Sure, the South in the Civil War had heroic generalship but the reality is they were facing a poorly led draft army and defending their own cities with good railroads and communications to their rear.
The Union side had more challenges attacking the South and met every one of them poorly, until Grant came along and ran the ball straight ahead like Woody Hayes. Inelegant but effective.
Many immigrants from 19th century Europe came to escape the incessant war between the knitwit kings and emperors only to be drafted into the war btwn the states.
While Europe’s history is colorful, it is also gruesome beyond scale, especially from 1914. That they had much better generalship is indisputable when seeing the death totals confirmed. How many millions dead?
The bravery of the WWII soldiers is remembered today far more than any single military mind (Geo C Scott notwithstanding). WWII was also a three yards and a mushroom cloud of dust style battle.
Still, so many in the US see the need to keep up the charade of rich military tradition which like so much of rich US tradition is based on sham.
We have a rich tradition of bullshit in this country. Sales people we are good at producing for sure.
The Civil War, albeit exceptionally savage, was arguably a more modern war than WWI half a century later. E.g., factors like the telegraph were as significant as brute attrition, while in WWI centered on attrition even though the evolution of defensive technology (machine guns, minefields, trenches) meant that this would guarantee protracted bloodbath without clear resolution one way or another. I’d say that’s fairly stupid generalship…
This reminds me of a British army joke after the abovementioned battle of Somme (which btw has a 90 years anniversary in a month): Who is the greatest Scottish general? Haig. He killed the most Englishmen.
As to WWII, Pfaff makes this valid point:
But when the chips are down, it was chiefly the Soviet Union that defeated Nazi Germany on the battlefield. Resources matter more than military valor (as shown by France’s dire straits in WWI) and maybe even strategy. The US contribution was mainly on the supply side — in terms of admittedly indispensable oil and hardware — as well as saving half of Europe from Soviet Communism by sneaking in there first.
An estimated 90 percent of German ground combat time was spent against Soviet forces, and a similar fraction of the Wehrmacht fell on Soviet territory. This exacted a death toll to population ratio as seen below:
Both Russians and Americans tend to take for granted that their respective nations defeated Germany almost single-handedly; both are wrong, but the Russian side is much closer to the mark. The American myth about WWII is likely among the most delusional popular misconceptions of military history. Since all American wars are conceptualized in terms of WWII — the budding one against Iran no exception — it probably has some consequences too.
Absolutely on target. American exceptionalism turns out in truth to be freedom from real war, which we are prepared to wish on others because we have not esxperienced it ourselves. Pfaff has caught part of the ESSENCE.
One of the best analyses of the U.S. at war, ever. Yet our myth of military excellence continues, and is codified in what we teach our children – see almost any history book taught in American high schools.
Rather, we should have the reality of recognizing our hubris.