Felicitous and astute author Chris Hedges is out with a new book addressing an ancient topic—war.
In The Greatest Evil Is War, he proves beyond a reasonable doubt that belligerency is the legalization of indiscriminate first-degree murder that pulverizes civilization and degrades our putative humanity. Everyone is at risk of death in wartime, whether by direct killing, starvation, disease, deprivation of medical care, denial of shelter, or otherwise.
What is new and bold is Hedges’s willingness to call a spade a spade by refusing to glamorize war. In contrast, the mainstream media and politicians of all persuasions glorify an American Empire featuring a multi-trillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex, perpetual war, and limitless executive power. Among other things, the latter includes presidential authority to play prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on secret, unsubstantiated speculation that the target threatens national security—the very definition of tyranny. The magnitude of atrocities occasioned by such harrowing power is unknown because it is hidden by the state secrets doctrine.
Hedges is hardly the first to deplore war. “War is hell,” instructed Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. “There never was a good war or a bad peace,” taught Benjamin Franklin. “Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away,” related President Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural Address. And Erasmus of Rotterdam rhetorically asked, “War, what else is it than a common manslaughter of many men together, and a robbery, the which, the farther it sprawleth abroad the more mischievous it is?”
Though Hedges condemns war, he does not offer clues as to how it can be avoided. The challenge is daunting. The philosophically empty, unreflective, hormonal species craves power, conquest, and domination as the mark of self-esteem or self-identity. It is an insatiable craving that dwarfs all other gratifications, including sex, money, fame, or creature comforts. In 1932, Albert Einstein wrote Sigmund Freud:
“Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?
It is common knowledge that, with the advance of modern science, this issue has come to mean a matter of life and death for civilization as we know it; nevertheless, for all the zeal displayed, every attempt at its solution has ended in a lamentable breakdown.”
Freud replied in part: “[A]ny effort to replace brute force by the might of an ideal is, under present conditions, doomed to fail. Our logic is at fault if we ignore the fact that right is founded on brute force and even today needs violence to maintain.”
Well-meaning initiatives to limit the horrors of war that Hedges deftly chronicles trace back to Hammurabi’s Code, the Old Testament, the Mahabharata, and the Holy Quran. The benevolent motives, however, did not diminish war atrocities. No surprise. The laws of war are honored in the breach rather than the observance.
Notably, the United States has never prosecuted any American or foreigner under the War Crimes Act of 1996 during its 26-year life.
No nation enters war expecting to lose. And victors in war generally do not prosecute their own.
World War II is exemplary of this phenomenon. Prohibitions on intentional killings of civilians were no deterrent to the extermination of hundreds of thousands in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the fire bombings of Tokyo, and the obliteration of Dresden. President Harry Truman’s Target Committee elaborated: “In choosing the list of cities, psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released.” This second aspect was particularly important for demonstrating American military power to the Soviet Union, which would soon occupy most of Eastern Europe and was also preparing to invade Japan.
The Third Reich and Japan were also indiscriminate in slaughtering civilians notwithstanding laws of war: take the Rape of Nanking, the destruction of Lidice, V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks on British cities, and the elimination of Jews in the Holocaust, for example.
Nazi leaders were punished for war crimes by the International Military Tribunal sitting at Nuremberg as were Japanese leaders by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. However, the war crimes of the victors were ignored. In a telling statement, United States Air Force General Curtis LeMay reportedly told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, “If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals,” an observation which elicited McNamara’s vigorous affirmation.
Just a few years later, in the Vietnam War, only Lt. William Calley, Jr. was prosecuted (over the Mỹ Lai massacre). Countless other soldiers were guilty of similar crimes or worse. Mỹ Lai would have been ignored absent exposure by New York Times reporter Sy Hersh. And Lt. Calley’s punishment was a featherweight deterrent of three years of house arrest.
Currently, Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine proliferate at a warp speed, but there is little likelihood the perpetrators will be punished. That would require at a minimum the overthrow of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which seems highly improbable.
The laws of war stipulate “proportionality” in the use of violence, to diminish its evil. Proportionality is violated by “an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”
Yet, when attempting to apply this principle in the real-world, this definition falls short. What is an “attack?” Use of a single weapon? Multiple weapons used over time? Was the fire-bombing of Tokyo or the destruction of Dresden one attack or multiple attacks? Moreover, before an attack occurs, calculating the risk to civilians or the importance of the military advantage anticipated requires knowing the unknowable, i.e., the bravery, courage, or resilience that will be exhibited by the opposing belligerent forces.
Sun Tzu taught, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Does that mean all wartime destruction violates the rule of proportionality because a brilliant general should be able to win without engaging in a single battle?
The fog of war—the infinite imponderables that determine battlefield success—confounds articulation of a yardstick to measure anticipated military advantage. Moreover, who decides what military advantage is anticipated? Battlefield commanders? National leaders? What if there are disagreements among decisionmakers?
The rule of proportionality is ornamental only. Violations have never led to prosecutions.
The optimal way to avoid the atrocities and miseries of war vividly portrayed by Hedges is to prevent them from starting. One way is by generating popular opposition through the truth without fig leaves: war exposes everyone to murder and everything to destruction in the name of national security. There are no guard rails.
A second way is by complying with the Constitution’s separation of powers entrusting exclusive responsibility for war to Congress. James Madison, father of the Constitution, amplified in Helvidius No. 4:
In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department…[T]he trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man…War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement…The strongest passions, and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venial love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.
The lamp of experience corroborates Madison. Congress has declared war in but five conflicts in over 230 years. And on each occasion, the peace had already been broken by actual or apparent foreign aggression.
The Declare War Clause, however, has become a dead letter since Pearl Harbor in 1941. Congress has eagerly surrendered or delegated the war power to the White House, and chronic, pointless wars have ensued. The United States has been at war every day for more than 20 years since 9/11 with no end in sight on the say-so of both Republican and Democratic Presidents. President Joe Biden has repeatedly threatened China with war if it attacks Taiwan and Russia if it invades a NATO nation. Congress is AWOL.
As Chris Hedges expounds in his book, unconstitutional presidential wars and congressional dereliction give birth to new atrocities and millions of displaced persons. When will Harvard Law School lawyers and professors publicly denounce such inhumanity?