Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

William James, The Moral Equivalent of War (read online).

James is attacking the idea that war makes men out of boys. He doesn't dispute the fact that war instills discipline, bravery, honour, a sense of duty and purpose. What he disputes is that war is the BEST way to do this. The cost is simply too high, he states, when all you have to do to get the same improvements of the self is to cultivate a love of nature and take a few hiking trips.

It's amazing to think that in a nuclear society, we're still fighting war pretty much the way we did at the turn of the nineteenth century. All our much-vaunted technology hasn't changed the fact that the war machine is piloted by human beings. Success is still measured by ours/their casualty comparisons.

Terrorism and Islamo-fascism are indisputable threats to western society, and any conscientious person should oppose them. But I reject the notion that we can fix those problems through war. It hasn't worked so far. Toppling Saddam hasn't made the world safer, neither has the war of attrition we're waging with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It's not working and it won't work, and no amount of jingoism or righteous country music will change that.

What would probably work is ending our dependence on the products of Islamic nations, especially the Middle East. Understand, I'm not touting the far-left idea that 9/11 was fair retribution for American greed, and Americans are responsible for all the ills of the world. I think the US has done a hell of a lot of good. And I'm also not a green fanatic. But the way to attenuate hostilities, and the terrorism that spawns from them, is to develop affordable transportation that does not depend on oil exported from any Arabic country.

If America sunk its dollars into coming up with a solar-powered car, and SHARED that technology with everyone instead of forming a cabal to exploit consumers, then there'd be no reason for us to be in the Middle East, other than to guarantee Israeli sovereignty. And with all the troops we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan, we could intervene more effectively in Israel, and keep them from doing some stupid provocative expansion into Palestinian territory.

Even if that didn't work, it couldn't not work as expensively as the war is not working. We could try economic sanctions, buy political power and install right-thinking rulers, fund a bloodless coup--in short, do any of a half-dozen morally questionable interventions that, as loathsome as they may be to our delicate fucking sensibilities, don't end with large numbers of Canadian and American soldiers coming home in body bags.

James states:

"I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the war function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellectual refinement with the science of production, I see that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must make common cause against them. I see no reason why all this should not apply to yellow as well as to white countries, and I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples."

That was written before World War One.

Remembrance Day should be a day to remember the follies of the past, not a current event. We shouldn't be adding new people to the roster. You look around at Canada, and we still have a monarch--a monarch in the twenty-first century--and we still have soldiers fighting a war hand to hand. Get fucking current.

I guess what I'm trying to say is:

War--

Huh--

Good God y'all--

What is it good for--

Absolutely nothin'--

Listen to me--

I should also post a link to a story by Harry Tournemille called "The Sky is Falling." Not to brag, but I knew the author before he became the legendary eco-warrior who writes for Energy Boom. Now he doesn't return my calls.