(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange wonders – like the folk song – when will we ever learn?
(LANGE) William Tecumseh Sherman, Karl von Clausewitz, and Count Leo Tolstoy, among many others, have expounded knowledgeably on the subject of war and peace. Yet, as we watch and respond to currently unfolding military events – events that we have funded and supported – we act as if we’ve never read what they wrote.
There was a photograph in the newspaper recently, taken from the turret of a tank. In the foreground, the steel deck was littered with spent machine gun cartridges; no one can know what became of the other half of them. My first thought was, "What an inexcusable waste of brass!"
Then there were the scenes of destruction by rockets in northern Israeli towns recently and the damage inflicted on Beirut by Israeli war planes. The first were fired to destabilize a fragile truce, and the second to force a fragile government to control its militant factions, something it has shown it cannot do. What is there about any of this that makes any sense?
As a longtime building contractor, I feel the fierce glee the Halliburtons of this world must be experiencing at the prospect of the rebuilding that will occur as soon as the ordnance stops exploding. This is not a noble emotion. It reminds me of the inimitable Tom Lehrer, in his song "The Old Dope-Peddler," who was "doing well by doing good."
One radio pundit observed the current situation reminded him of the political tensions in Europe in early 1914. He could be right. In a world where sectarian, ethnic, and tribal hatreds run so hot and deep, literally anything can happen – as it has many times, including in Sarajevo in 1914.
It appears we’ve learned nothing from history. We seem oblivious to the parallels between our situation and those of the past. We subscribe generally to the notion of human perfectibility, but always peering over our shoulder is Tolstoy, who wrote of great men: "Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history…."
Our imaginations have become stunted by power. If appeals to our religion, ethics, or morals could sway us, they would have by now. We need to understand at a deep level the real cost of war. Not in lives; we’ve grown callous to that. We need a price tag stuck onto the side of each war plane, an amount in dollars announced each time a howitzer goes off, a minute-by-minute cost-of-the-war display flashing across Times Square. Then we might imagine what incredible things we could do if those resources were turned to the abolition of hunger, poverty, and disease. If we are indeed created in the image of God, as some claim, isn’t it about time we started acting like it?
This is Willem Lange up in East Montpelier; I gotta get back to work.