John M. Crisp
Apart from feeding ourselves and procreating, is there any compulsion more fundamental to our human character than fighting among ourselves?
Sure, religion urges us to beat our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and Jesus said to “Love your enemies,” but somehow, more often than not, our instincts take over, and we just fight.
Indeed, some wars are driven by religion, others by ideology. We often fight over land and resources. Some wars are sparked by pride and arrogance. On the other hand, the causes of some wars are elusive.
World War I is a good example: The assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914 was more a catalyst than a cause. Historians continue to puzzle over how a minor event in an obscure city sparked the first great catastrophe of the 20th Century. They point to burgeoning nationalism, rivalries, alliances, competitive armament and militarism and even naivete about the destructiveness of new weapons such as machine guns and tanks.
But the simple version is that Europe was in a mood to fight, and it took very little to ignite the war.
I was thinking about this last week as I happened upon a confluence of several stories on the same page of my local newspaper. Two of them were business-as-usual updates on the world’s most prominent wars at present: The Gaza Health Ministry reports that the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 55,000, more than half of whom, according to the Ministry, are women and children.
An adjacent story reports that an overnight drone assault by Russia has killed another three Ukrainians and injured 64 in the war that President Donald Trump ran on ending in 24 hours. He appears to have lost patience with his failure to do so, saying recently, using an outrageously inapt metaphor, that sometimes you just have to let two children fight.
Next to that story was this ominous report: The U.S. is withdrawing nonessential personnel from its embassy in Baghdad, as well as encouraging the departure of nonessential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait. U.S. talks with Iran aren’t going well, and the “potential for regional unrest” is growing.
On the same day, the New York Times reported that, according to officials in the United States and Europe, “Israel appears to be preparing to launch an attack soon on Iran.”
As it happened, between the time I wrote that last sentence and this one, Israel did indeed launch an attack on Iran, and Iran has retaliated. What will happen next is extremely unpredictable.
In other news, today, as I write, is June 14, the 79th birthday of President Trump. Coincidence or not, he celebrated his nativity by reviewing the troops in front of the White House as an awesome parade of military might passed before him, including tanks, fighting vehicles and fighter jet flyovers.
As a rule, most Americans aren’t as keen on military spectacles as are the leaders and citizens of countries such as North Korea, China and Russia. But Trump appears to enjoy them, and so do many of his supporters.
The martial spirit was in full evidence last week, as well, during Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg, as he calls it. As usual, the most enthusiastically bellicose are the young soldiers, trained to fight but never as yet sent off to war, and our leaders, who are often enchanted by the spirit of victory in battle, but who themselves never experienced combat or even served in the military. In Trump’s case, it had something to do with bone spurs.
We’re in a dangerous but familiar place: We have a powerful military committed to duty; we have a president who is beguiled by martial trappings and the imagined glory of victory; and we have a volatile situation where the choice of war isn’t entirely under our control: A minor Iranian attack on American troops in the region would be a sufficient catalyst.
Reminiscent of 1914, this is when war itself takes on a life of its own, entirely out of our hands: Brace yourself.
John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, lives in Texas and can be reached at [email protected].
