IS WAR WORTH IT? 27

Despite the tremendous costs in life, limb, and treasure can it rationally be claimed that wars are sometimes worth it? Some would answer with a resounding no. Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973) R-MT who was the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives voted against United States participation in WWI and for good measure was the only member of congress to vote against the USA entering WWII. Would you believe it – she was a pacifist. Her modern day equivalents are not so much true pacifists as they are simply philosophically opposed to whatever actions are taken by Republican administrations, especially if headed by G.W. Bush.

What are the attitudes of people, in particular voters, concerning going to war and once at war, staying the course until the war is either won or lost? I would maintain that putatively everybody loves a winner and conversely loathes a loser. In August 1864 just three months before the presidential election, Lincoln said that unless something changed he was not only going to be beaten, but beaten badly. After more than three years of war and with horrendous casualties the people of the North were war weary with no end of the war in sight. Small wonder that Lincoln was so pessimistic about his reelection chances. In fact Lincoln wrote out a plan to attempt to save the Union to be implemented between the time of the election (1st Tuesday of November) and the inauguration of the new president (then the 4th of March 1865). As Lincoln said, the new president (former Union Armies commander, George McClellan) would have secured the election on conditions such that he could not possibly save the Union after the election. It is instructive that Lincoln sealed his plan in an envelope and had all of his cabinet sign the envelope without reading it. The men in Lincoln’s cabinet, Sec. of State, Wm. Seward (later, in 1867, he was stupidly derided with the appellation of “Seward’s Folly” for being instrumental in the purchase of Alaska from Russia. We need more such ‘foolish’ people in government); Sec. of Treas., Salmon Chase; Sec. of War, Edwin Stanton; Sec. of the Navy, Gideon Wells; Attn. Gen., Edward Bates; Postmaster Gen., Montgomery Blair; Sec. of Interior, John Usher initially all thought they would do better as president than Lincoln, but by 1864 realized how mistaken they were and by this time had so much confidence in Lincoln that they would sign off on an important presidential document without reading it.

Things changed, of course, with the taking of Atlanta by Gen. Sherman, the destruction of the Confederate breadbasket, the Shenandoah Valley by Gen. Sheridan, and the conquest of Mobile Bay by Adm. Farragut. With the fortunes of war now firmly on the side of the North, Lincoln swept to an electoral landslide winning 212 out of 233 electoral votes and a 400,000 popular vote margin (equivalent to 4,000,000 today). As I said, everybody loves a winner. N’est-ce pas?

Woodrow Wilson ran for reelection in 1916 on the slogan “He kept us out of war.” With Wilson reelected the United States did enter the war in 1917, but American troops fought for only about 15 months and suffered 116,500 deaths vs. 405,000 in WWII and 620,000 in the Civil War so there was not sufficient time for the general public to recoil from the slaughter of this most unnecessary and bloody war. Of all the wars in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, certainly the ones the USA fought in, the First World War was the one which had the least excuse to have been undertaken not only by the United States, but especially by the European nations. It is not just the carnage the war wrought, but it was a major causative factor of WWII.

Once Germany, Italy, and Japan launched their military expansionism, the Allied countries led by Great Britain and the United States had no other option than responding with their own military might. From the Allied nations standpoint the Second World War was a necessity. The alternative was to have been conquered and subjugated.

While there was some opposition in this country to the Spanish-American War (April – August 1898) it was minor at most. Why? We won. And the war was of a very short duration. Nevertheless, consider the ethical and moral factors. The United States committed unjustified military aggression against Spain forcing them out of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico. One can make a case that Spain was a colonial power who had no moral imperative to occupy those lands, yet who appointed the USA as the international sheriff?

The casus belli for the conflict was flawed – either deliberately wrong or mistakenly wrong. The battleship USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor and the cause was attributed to sabotage by the Spanish. In fact it was poor ship design. Owing to heightened tension between Spain and the United States the fires for the ship’s boilers while the ship was waiting in the harbor were never banked so as to be ready to get underway in a minimum of time. This resulted in the single bulkhead separating the boilers from the powder compartment where the powder for the ship’s guns was stored (the poor design) overheating, thereby setting off the powder.

Initially President Wm. McKinley resisted a military solution, choosing diplomacy to try to force concessions from Spain towards Cuba. After the Maine blew up killing 260 seamen, McKinley capitulated to public pressure by endorsing a declaration of war against Spain by congress on April 25, 1898.

The Mexican-American War of 1846-48 generally had high approval in the United States. Not only did American generals Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor (he was elected president in 1848) win all of their important battles, but there was a mood in the country at that time of ‘Manifest Destiny’ – the belief in the inevitable territorial expansion of the United States in North America. The USA gained over ½ million square miles as a result of the war. One can argue whether this war and the resulting acquisition of territory were just. One might also hold that given the millions of Mexicans who have illegally enter this country to find jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, perhaps the USA should have taken over all of Mexico at that time.

Not everyone agreed back then that the war was necessary and proper. A first term Whig congressman from Illinois made a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives strongly condemning not only the war, but Democrat president James Polk as well. He was Abraham Lincoln. One and a half decades later Lincoln would receive his own harsh criticism for leading the country into war. Isn’t there a cliché about “what goes around…….?”

Can the Korean War be defended without paralogistic argument? How about the Vietnam War? The First Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the Second Iraq War? I can absolutely guarantee there is wide disagreement by the public as to how these questions would be answered even if some respond in the negative, ispe dixit. The war against the Taliban & al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after 9/11 clearly has the highest approval rating and the fewest number of dissenters with perhaps the Vietnam War the least popular. There is a commonality among these conflicts. The ones which were won or appear to be going well are the most popular. The United States lost the Vietnam War – not on the battlefield, but we lost. The Korean War was stalemated. Neither was popular. The popularity of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will be determined by their final resolution. If the results ending up being beneficial for the United States then their approval is assured and naturally if their outcomes are detrimental to the interests of the USA, unpopular. Yes, I am saying the moral aspects of these wars are not the determinate of their acceptance by the general population of our country. That is my claim even if I can not assert it apodictically.

I am reminded of the dialogue in the movie Unforgiven between the characters of the old gunfighter played by Clint Eastwood and the sadistic sheriff played by Gene Hackman. Eastwood is about to dispatch Hackman to the ‘undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns’ with a bullet from a Spenser carbine (invented during the Civil War). Hackman says “I don’t deserve this.” Eastwood responds, “Deservin’ got nuthin’ to do with it.” Similarly the popularity of war is largely independent of moral concerns, but rests on the outcome. It is not just from the likes of Shakespeare, Alexander Pope, or even Eric Hoffer where insightful apothegmatic philosophy can be found.