War Is Too Easy
We'll End the War by Escalating It?
War is too easy in America today. We’ve come to accept it as normal. Peace is now aberrant. As war grows ever easier, peace becomes ever harder.
“Escalation,” not diplomacy, is touted as the smart way to end wars. Logic doesn’t seem to matter. How do you end a war by launching more damaging and deadly strikes? How is killing even more people a way to peace?
President Trump now seems to believe that climbing the “escalation ladder” in the Iran War and in the Russia-Ukraine War is the best way to resolve these deadly conflicts. It reminds me of that Vietnam-era quip that waging war for peace is like screwing for virginity.
Journalist Aaron Maté’s piece today also cites Washington’s belief in escalation:
Shortly before returning to the White House for a second term, Donald Trump criticized the exiting president, Joe Biden, for letting Ukraine fire long-range US missiles into Russia. “Why are we doing that?” Trump complained. “We’re just escalating this war and making it worse.”
Just as his campaign pledge of “no new wars” gave way to a regime-change war on Iran, Trump’s professed aversion to a US-fueled escalation in Ukraine is no more. At this month’s NATO summit in Turkey, Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio endorsed Ukraine’s drone attacks deep inside Russia. With the Russians “finding it more difficult to defend their own airspace,” Rubio explained, this will “create the space now to negotiate the end of this war.” Added Trump: “It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that could help lead to an end.”
How often do “escalations” help to end wars? Does anyone remember how escalation in Vietnam turned out?
Maybe if we truly seek to end a war, we should deescalate attacks, then engage in diplomacy. No, that makes too much sense.
There’s a great line in an old Star Trek episode, “Journey to Babel,” where Spock is advised he’d do well to “forget logic and devote yourself to motivations of passion and gain,” for “those are the reasons for murder” — and often for war as well.
Of course, these aren’t the only reasons for war, but logic often has little to do with how and why wars are waged. That much is obvious as “climbing the escalation ladder” is seen or sold by Washington as the best way to deescalate in Iran and in Russia and Ukraine.
I'd append....when you've never experienced it.
I'm not specifically referring to President Bone Spurs or members of his administration - or for that matter, the tough-talking ex-generals like Jack Keane (who saw combat in other countries) or the vast majority of the US military.
I'm speaking of all of us as a country. It's been over 160 years since we've had major battles in the U.S. with cities burned and looted, civilians killed and bodies everywhere, with the filth and smells of war. And even with the Civil War, it wasn't everywhere.
We've never had to look up in the sky for the sounds of bombs or missiles falling on us.
We've never had to fight - unless we are native Americans - on our own lands with our families behind us.
But the lust for power of an empire in terminal decline may change Americans' experience with war.
Classic Trek Episode, around the same time as another Classic Marvin Gaye, "What's Goin On" Father, father We don't need to escalate You see, War is not the answer For only love can conquer hate You know we've got to find a way To bring some loving here today, oh (Oh) That was 1971, and we're still singing about that & the Ecology too (Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) yes.., History may not repeat, but it often rhymes.