20170504 War makes us monsters

UN Poster for Peace 2016 - disarmament

If it were possible to calculate the costs accruing to the world in terms of reduced agricultural output, damaging weather, loss of quality of life ranging from no water to drink or higher costs of air conditioning, etc., from each additional ton of CO2 produced, so as to allocate fairly to industries, farms, NASCAR races, etc., those damages which society as a whole could collect from given offenders, it is conceivable that laws passed to effect such environmental “taxes” might make corporations (and citizens who barbecue on backyard grills or profligately use decorative natural gas consuming lamps and fireplaces) think twice about using fossil fuels.

Such a system might change behavior if, as economists hold, people are creatures of reason naturally unwilling to incur added costs. But what can we do about the unaccountability for war’s destruction of the environment and society? Victors try passing the costs onto the vanquished but we know what future enmity results from that (WWII born from the agreements following WWI).

I wouldn’t ask Americans who in truth came away relatively unscathed from WWII and who know only the devastation they can visit on others with impunity (see Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.). The nation as a whole picks up the tab and figures it into the costs of an unquestioned military-industrial-congressional complex. Noteworthy is the fact that the Department of Defense is the only body of government which cannot be audited year after year despite laws mandating it should be. 

These costs, including the opportunity cost of things which could have been done but for the war and war provisioning, however severe they may be, pale in comparison to the damage we inflict on our moral selves and on those with whom we fought. Together we each forsake the notions of civility, nobility, and intelligence to remake ourselves as mindless barbarians who know no limit to brutality in our quest for the good that we previously treasured. This tax falls upon us all. And we are expected from this depraved state to rise from the ashes to forge a new, more just, more lasting comity among the nations?

We have no choice anymore. Foreseeable conflicts will destroy us all. Better to turn from war altogether–even defensive war–than risk accomplishing our moral demolition. We can start with unilateral nuclear disarmament to demonstrate that we will threaten other nations no more and can ask other nuclear powers to follow our example. 

We can pull back from our present conflicts, bring our soldiers home, refit our aircraft carriers for international emergency service, step back from our worldwide military bases, destroy all chemical/biological/radiological stockpiles, and revise our public purpose to become a generous aid to nations in difficulty and remake ourselves to be nobler members of a courageous and hopeful community.

c. J.S.Manista, 2017