November 15, 2003

 

                                                                War as a Disease

 

Definition

Organized killing of other human beings. 

 

Qualification of a Violent Conflict as War: Whether a conflict qualifies as war is generally decided by the party with the most power.  Many violent conflicts are not defined as war and some non-violent conflicts are labeled wars:  

1.                  Violent Conflicts not accorded the Status of War:

a.         Revolutions, uprisings, rebellions.

b.                  Guerilla warfare, resistance to occupation.

c.                   The hiring of secret mercenaries, death squads and private militias.

d.                  Secret assistance to depose another country=s leader.

e.                   Conquests defined by the powerful as Acivilizing missions@ or Ahumanitarian interventions.@ 

 

2.         Other Types of Conflicts not classified as War: Though causing many deaths, some types of conflicts are not classified as wars.  Examples include:

f.                   Class War: The powerful have fought against the demands of the poor throughout the ages, but have not classified this as Awar,@ though it consistently causes many deaths both by economic oppression and violence.

 

b.                  The Displacement of Populations: Millions over the world have been displaced forcefully to make way for the projects of the powerful, such as large dams, mechanized agriculture, oil pipe lines and canals.  These actions are not considered Awar.@  The removal of all 167 inhabitants from Bikini, in 1946, to make way for United States nuclear bomb tests, is not classified as a war by the United States against the Marshall Islands.

 

3.                  Abuse of the Term, AWar:@ Some projects labeled Awars,@ are not in the usual sense of the term.  Examples include:

a.                   AThe War on Poverty@

 

b.                  AThe War on Drugs.@

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Epidemiology

Wars are waged by countries every few years, under various pretexts.  Thus, for instance, the United States has engaged in, at a minimum, fifteen wars in the past two centuries: 

 

                                           Official Wars waged by the United States

 

 

                           War

 

               Duration

 

         Years since

      Previous War

 

1.   War of 1812

 

1812-1815

 

  -

 

2.   Indian Campaigns

 

1818-1830

 

  3

 

3.   Mexican War

 

1846-1848

 

16

 

4.   Civil War

 

1861-1865

 

13

 

5.   Spanish-American War (including         conquest of the Phillippines)

 

1898-1902

 

33

 

6.   World War I

 

1917-1918

 

15

 

7.   World War II

 

1941-1945

 

23

 

8.   Korean War

 

1950-1953

 

  5

 

9.   Vietnam War (including Laos and         Cambodia)

 

1960-1975

 

  7

 

10.  Invasion of Grenada

 

1983

 

  8

 

11.  ASecret@ war in Central America

 

1980's (assume 1984-1989)

 

  1

 

12.  Invasion of Panama

 

1989

 

  0

 

13.  First Gulf War

 

1991

 

  2 

 

14.  War against Yugoslavia

 

1999

 

  8

 

15.  Second Gulf War

 

2003

 

  4

 

 

 

 

Pathogenesis

There are five general set of attitudes or theories about the causes of war:

4.                  Lloyd deMause and Other Psychohistorians: Beginning with the publication of History of Childhood, in 1974, Lloyd deMause and others have adduced an enormous body of evidence to support the theory that war is a re-staging of early childhood trauma, combining:

The Need to sacrifice: The child, grown, still seeks mother=s love B  now as recognition, respect and honor for heroism, patriotism and Aservice@ to the motherland.

 

The Need to re-enact Early Childhood Traumas: Early pain, punishments, humiliations and unjust treatments are re-staged, however this time from the point of view of the aggressor.

 

The Need to humiliate Women: Women are overwhelmingly powerful in the early, formative years of a child=s life.  This is experienced as humiliating particularly by males, and especially if there has been incest between mother and son.  Rape of women is a usual component of war.

 

The Need to alleviate Guilt engendered by Independence: The price of independence is separation from one=s parents, and hence potentially loss of their love.  War and its suffering delay the advent of a life better than one=s parents and thus alleviate the guilt engendered by full separation and independence.

 

1.                  AThe Fatalists:@ These theorists believe that war is not under human control.

 

Among such thinkers are Yahweh of the Old Testament (10th century B.C.), Thucydides (5th century B.C.), Thomas Hobbes (17th century), Sigmund Freud, Ruth Benedict, Konrad Lorenz, Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century), Robert Kaplan and Chris Hedges (21th century).

 

2.                  AThe Realists:@ These theorists glorify war.  War is a teacher, it gives us meaning, it can be an expression of love, it is a language of politics, it is the medium in which men come to life, etc... 

 

Among such thinkers are Niccolo Machiavelli (16th century), Jean Jacques Rousseau (18th century), Georg Hegel, Carl von Clausewitz, Karl Marx, Frederich Engel, Heinrich von Treitschke (19th century), Colmar von der Goltz, the Bishop of London in 1914, Reinhold Niebuhr, George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin van Creveld (20th century) and John Stoessinger (21st century).

 

3.                  AThe Just-war Theorists:@ These theorists believe that at least some wars are just.  Such wars are akin to law suits and represent an extraordinary legal remedy to be employed if all else fails.  Just-wars are necessary to fight evil.  They are a lesser  evil. 

 

Among such thinkers are Cicero (1st century B.C.), Saint Augustine (5th century), Pope Urban II (11th century), Sir Thomas More , Martin Luther (16th century), Charles de Montesquieu (18th century), Howard Zinn, Robin Fox (20th century)and Michael More (21st century).

 

4.                  AThe Idealists:@ AThe Idealists@ B a designation ascribed to them by the self-proclaimed ARealists,@ who have the ascendency in the world at present B consider war organized murder and proscribe all of them, generally on moral or religious grounds. 

 

Among such thinkers are Jesus (1st century), Desiderius Erasmus (16th century), John Donne (17th century), John Ruskin (19th century), Martin Luther King (20th century) and Rachel Cory (21st century).

 

Clinical Manifestations

War consists in inflicting as much damage to one=s opponent as possible while sustaining the least possible damage to one=s own side.  The damage includes the killing, injuring, maiming, terrorizing and torturing of the population, including children; the destruction of Asoft targets,@ such as homes, schools, health centers and community centers; the destruction of a country=s infrastructure, such as water and sewage treatment plants, electrical plants, telephone centrals, official buildings and records; the burning of libraries; and the destruction or theft of art works, natural resources, treasures and monuments.  

 

Duration

For the United States at least, recent wars have tended to be shorter than in the past.  This may be due to the fact that it is overwhelmingly more powerful than any other country in its ability to inflict damage, and that it has selected extremely small, poor and disarmed countries as its targets.

 

Convalescence

Where victory has been quick and decisive, convalescence is very short.  Where there has been a perceived loss, like the Aloss@ of Vietnam by the United States, recovery may be slower.  After the Vietnam War (1975), the United States was said to be suffering from the AVietnam syndrome@ which consisted of opposition to aggression, terror and violence, and even sympathy for victims.  In 1983, commentators claimed that the invasion of Grenada had put an end to the syndrome.

 

While treatment for post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) is extended to combatants, it is generally not extended to civilians, even if these are children.

 

Complications

Complications originate principally in the inability to predict the course of events.  Some examples involving the United States, are as follows:

1.                  Cuban Crisis, 1962: During the 1962 Cuban crisis, President John F. Kennedy was determined to preserve the Acredibility@ of the United States by not backing down from his threat to use nuclear weapons.  A 40-year commemorative review of the crisis has now revealed that on October 27, 1962 (the most tense moment of the crisis, when U.S. destroyers were attacking Soviet submarines), only the sole decision B one word B from submarine officer Vasili Arkhipov, blocking the order to fire nuclear-armed torpedoes, saved the world from a major nuclear conflagration.

 

2.                  The Vietnam War, 1960-1975: Of the approximately 450,000 American soldiers deployed in Vietnam, 58,000 died B a small number compared to 3,000,000 Vietnamese citizens.  However, as of today, one-third of the deployed soldiers have applied for service-related disability status.  This is a very high injury rate for soldiers in any war.

 

3.                  The Cassini Space Probe, 1997-2004: The Pentagon uses nuclear power for space weaponry and rocket propulsion, despite its high risks.  For example, Cassini, the 1997-2004 space probe to Saturn, directed by the national aeronautics and space administration (NASA), contains 72.3 pounds of plutonium.  In view of the 1986 Challenger accident, NASA did not use a space shuttle to launch Cassini.  However, it did use a Titan-IV rocket, despite a 1993 Titan-IV explosion at launch in California. 

 

Moreover, NASA designed Cassini=s flight so that in 1999, it made a Afly-by@ to earth, traveling 312 miles above it, at 42,300 miles per hour.  This, despite the fact that NASA itself had estimated beforehand that should an accident occur during this manoeuver, the plutonium would vaporize, possibly exposing some 5,000,000,000 people to radiation.   

 

4.                  Terrorism: The Moslem men, trained by the United States to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan during the 1980's, returned to their homes all over the world after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989.  Angry now at the United States, they have staged terrorist attacks in many countries, the best known  being the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993 and the commandeering of airplanes to fly into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.  The threat of terrorist attacks in the United States has increased since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.  The premise that any country, including the United States, has control over events is a delusional fantasy.

 

Treatment

There is little interest in stopping war, whether in the United States, other countries, or at the level of the United Nations. 

 

The Human Development Index (HDI): This index, developed by the United Nations in the mid-1990's, is made up of four criteria B life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, school enrollment and per capita gross domestic product (GDP). 

 

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP): By using the GDP as one of the criteria to determine the level of Adevelopment@ of a country, the United Nations has made the statement that Adevelopment@ (longevity, education and wealth) is not synonymous with Acivilization@ B  if by the latter term, one means putting an end to the barbarism which is war. 

 

The gross domestic product encourages war in the following ways:

1.         The GDP includes Profits repatriated by Foreign Investors.  The greater the profits (through low wages to workers), the greater a country=s GDP.  Hence, the GDP hides oppression of workers, mostly of the South by the North B a major source of despair, terrorism and armed conflict.

 

The GDP  measures the Cash-generating Capacity of a Country, without Regard to how this Capacity is attained.  Weapons manufacture increases the GDP.

 

The GDP measures only the Total Income generated by a Country.  It does not measure wealth distribution and thus may hide a country=s high and increasing absolute level of poverty.

 

The GDP omits Women from its Statistics.  It does not consider work done (mostly by women) in the house, without exchange of money, as Awork.@  It thus leaves out the needs and demands of a large segment of the population which, as a group, is much less enthusiastic about war than men.

 

The GDP omits Children from its Statistics.  It gives no value to investments in children, such as their birth, maintenance, care and education.

 

The GDP lacks Environmental Measures.  It is oblivious to the need to preserve the environment and natural resources.  However, it records as growth, activities such as war, which destroy the environment.

 

 

 

The GDP treats Armed Forces and Arms Transfers in Special, Privileged Categories.

 

The GDP assigns No Value to Peace.  The GDP not only omits peace from any consideration but it also omits any measure of qualitative life satisfactions (such as people=s sense of freedom, well-being, security and happiness) as well as any possible alternative perception of the place of money in human life.

 

Prevention

Humans have sought to regulate war and limit its devastation since the dawn of history.  Particularly since the Second World War, much effort has been put into promulgating laws in an attempt to Acivilize@ war.  The United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Statutes, the Geneva Conventions, and the World Court, all have produced a substantial body of law defining the criminality of certain behaviors with regards to war. 

 

While these efforts have brought some fruits, the United States B  the sole world Asuper-power@ at present B has disregarded international laws in its recent conflicts.  As technology has rendered  means of destruction increasingly efficient, the number of deaths sustained by the losing side in conflicts with the United States, has been very dramatic.

 

Conclusion

50,000,000,000           species in

 

  4,600,000,000          years of evolution, have produced

 

                             1     species, homo sapiens, which has Aachieved the kind of intelligence needed to establish a civilization@

 

but in whom empathy is missing, a disease

 

which now threatens to destroy it

 

and its nurturing environment, planet Earth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                     Bibliography and References

 

Definition

Lifton, Robert and Greg Mitchell,  Hiroshima in America B A Half Century of Denial (Avon/Hearst, N.Y.) 1995, p. 84.

 

Van Creveld, Martin, The Transformation of War (Free Press, New York,. N.Y.), 1991.

 

Epidemiology

Ali, Tariq, Bush in Babylon B The Recolonization of Iraq (Verso, New York, N.Y.), 2003, pp. 174-177.                                                                                     

 

deMause, Lloyd, The Emotional Life of Nations (Karnac/Other Press, New York. N.Y.), 2002, p. 160.

 

Pathogenesis

deMause, Lloyd, The Emotional Life of Nations (Karnac/Other Press, New York. N.Y.), 2002.

 

Hall, Francoise

AWhy War?@ September 26, 2003, 16 pages.

 

AWhy War?@ (Part II), October 13, 2003, 22 pages.

 

AAttitudes towards War B A Summary,@ October 18, 2003, 9 pages.

 

Clinical Manifestations

Van Creveld, Martin, The Transformation of War (Free Press, New York,. N.Y.), 1991.

 

Duration

 

Convalescence

Chomsky, Noam, World Orders, Old and New B With an Update on the Palestinian Predicament (Colombia), 1994, p. 94.

 

 

 

 

 

Complications

Cuban Missile Crisis:

Chomsky, Noam, Hegemony or Survival B America=s Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 2003, pp. 73-74.

 

Vietnam War:

ADemocracy Now!@  WBAI, New York, N.Y., Fall 2003 broadcasts.

 

Zinn, Howard, On War (Seven Stories, New York, N.Y.), 2001, p. 50.

 

 

Cassini Space Probe:

Grossman, Karl, The Wrong Stuff B The Space Program=s Nuclear Threat to our Planet (Common Courage), 1997, pp. 22-58.

 

Terrorism:

Chomsky, Noam, Hegemony or Survival B America=s Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 2003, pp. 187-216

 

Elshtain, Jean, Women and War (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL), 1987, p. 90.           

 

Mahajan, Rahul, The New Crusade B America=s War on Terrorism (Monthly Review Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002.     

 

Treatment

Hall, Francoise, AWar Institutionalized B The United Nations System of National Accounts,@ October 31, 2003, 7 pages.

 

Prevention

Berrigan, Philip, AForeword,@ to Francis Boyle, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence B Could the U.S. War on Terrorism go Nuclear? (Clarity, Atlanta, GA), 2002, p. 12.

  

Van Creveld, Martin, The Transformation of War (Free Press, New York,. N.Y.), 1991, p. 87.

 

Conclusion

Mayr, Ernst, Bioastronomy News 7:3, 1995; cited in Chomsky, Noam, Hegemony or Survival B America=s Quest for Global Dominance (Metropolitan/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 2003, p. 1. (Quote is from Ernst Mayr).                        

 

Roy, Arundhati, War Talk (South End Press, Cambridge, MA), 2003, p. 74.