[Fwd: The Logic of War]

[Doug Millison]

I hope his will resonate with some Pynchon-L readers.  The author of this
post is a regular on the PSYART list.
-Doug

>Date:         Thu, 25 Oct 2001 17:52:36 -0400
>Reply-To: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
>              <PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU>
>Sender: Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts
>              <PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU>
>From: Norman Holland <nholland at UFL.EDU>
>Subject:      [Fwd: The Logic of War]
>To: PSYART at LISTS.UFL.EDU
>
>PsycheCulture at CS.COM wrote:
>
>       Novelist Arundhati Roy, in an article published on September 29, 2001
>in the GUARDIAN OF LONDON tell us that in 1996 Madeleine Albright, then the
>US secretary of state, was interviewed on national television. She was asked
>what she felt about the fact that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a result
>of US economic sanctions. She replied that it was "a very hard choice," but
>that, all things considered, "we think the price is worth it".
>
>    This is the fundamental logic of war: if evil is to be destroyed or
>eradicated, some (innocent) people have to die. In the case of the United
>States, the evil that requires the destruction of innocents is Saddam
>Hussein. In the case of Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network, the evil that
>requires the destruction of innocents is the infidel,  America.
>
>    One can feel "moral outrage" if one wishes, but this will prove useless.
>Innocent people have been killed throughout the Twentieth Century in war and
>genocide to the tune of  more than two hundred millions persons. Moral
>outrage does not seem sufficient to stem the tide.
>
>    Indeed, in every instance that I have ever studied, societal murdering is
>undertaken IN A STATE OF MORAL OUTRAGE--in order to avenge an "injustice."
>
>    The basic logic of warfare is:
>
>(1) We are good and the enemy is evil.
>
>(2) In order to destroy evil, it is necessary to kill other human beings
>Presumably each person that resides within the enemy nation embodies the
>"evil" that inheres within that nation--and therefore is fair game.
>
>(3) Killing and dying are necessary to preserve goodness and destroy evil. If
>persons embodying our nationality die, this is unfortunate but necessary. If
>persons on the other side die, it does not matter much.
>
>      Among fundamental principals guiding my study of the phenomenon of war
>are the following:
>
>(1) Death (and body mutilation) are bad things. Once you die, then you do not
>exist any more. Someone made a wise documentary about Iwo Jima. The narrator
>began as if working out of the same old bag: "These men died for freedom and
>democracy." Then he panned to the dead, deteriorating bodies washing up on
>the shoreline and said, "But for these men there is no freedom or democracy."
>
>(2) The institution of war is fundamentally bizarre. However, it is such a
>common phenomenon (from a historical perspective) that persons have a hard
>time perceiving its bizarreness. In World War I, men got of trenches and ran
>into artillery shells (motivated as usual in each country by the assumption
>that they were "defending civilization"). This suicidal process continued for
>FOUR YEARS. There were nine million killed and thirty-five million wounded.
>What was going on? I read three hundred books on the subject, and so few
>express astonishment or reflect on the essential weirdness of the occurrence.
>
>      War is the consequence of a shared fantasy with each side playing a
>role in the fantasy. War operates according to a binary logic revolving
>around good and evil. Each nation plugs in to the shared fantasy, that is,
>ACCEPTS THE LOGIC OF WAR.
>
>      In order to extricate oneself from the war phenomena, it is necessary
>to perceive the entire system as a FANTASY COMPLEX WITH EACH NATION PLAYING A
>ROLE.
>
>      When I speak of "awakening from the nightmare of history," I am
>speaking of UNDERSTANDING THE PURPOSE AND MEANING OF THE SHARED FANTASY THAT
>IS THE SOURCE OF WAR.
>
>Richard A. Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
>Institute for the Psychological Study of Culture
>