Does anyone actually really want war? Maybe a few psychopath
megalomaniacs do? We often hear the argument that if people refused to fight
there would be no war. However, it’s not that simple.
We wouldn’t have expected the Ukrainians just to sit back
and do nothing when Russia invaded, would we?
I once had an A-level German student who in his prepared talk
for his oral exam argued that women shouldn’t be expected to fight. I played devil’s
advocate and pointed out how mothers in the animal kingdom protect their young.
So, yes they would fight.
Surely we need defence? And in order to have defence we need
trained forces. These same forces can be useful in peace times too: for example,
in the recent pandemic, when there are climatic catastrophes and when essential
services strike or are overwhelmed.
The argument for being allowed to keep guns is that one has
the right to defend one’s home and one’s family.
Sometimes we have to get involved. When Hitler marched into the
Sudetenland he was given an ultimatum by our prime minster. We had to follow through
with our threat.
We’ve been at war a couple of times in my life time and both
times I’ve felt very uncomfortable.
At the time of the Falklands we lived near a lot of naval
families. They felt it all keenly. We knew some of the families of people who
died.
The war in Iraq was so divisive. The United Nations couldn’t agree about it. Many
other nations disapproved of our involvement. Maybe it was a good thing that we
got rid of Saddam Hussein. Can’t somebody do something similar to Putin? Though
I’d like him to be taken alive and made to face up to what he’s done. Where
were these weapons of mass destruction? And why did the best prime minister I’d
ever known let me down so much? His government as well as taking us into the
war abolished compulsory language learning for secondary school children. Language
learning may even help to prevent some wars.
What motivates people to start wars? They feel that some injustice
has been done even if it’s imagined? Germany did have a rough time after the Great
War. Their aggression may be a reaction to this. Putin is looking for some idealised
version of Russia. Thatcher was scared of losing some power. Blair may well have been sincere in his belief
in the existence of those terrible weapons and how Hussein might have used
them.
And what of weapons of war anyway? They can be atrocious. Look
at the gas in the Great War and the Doodlebugs and V2s that Germany invented in
World War II. What we did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was appalling. What’s up
next? Even more sophisticated nuclear weapons? Biological weapons? Cyber-attacks?
What about the men and women who are drawn into the fight? Many
volunteered for the Great War out of sense of honour and also because it
offered employment. By the time of World War II people were seeing thing more clearly.
Conscription was a necessary evil. Now we see war a little differently. Even the
professional military would rather be rescuing families from floods and delivering
food parcels than dropping bombs. Yet they have the training and it kicks in when
they’re in confrontational situations.
It saddens me when one looks at the history of wars that it’s
always decisions of politicians, dictators, and world leaders, often older
white males, (many argue that Thatcher always behaved like a man) that send younger
people to war.
“Make love not war,” was the cry of the woke-Boomer-hippies.
This was probably mainly in response to Vietnam. Yet it is too great a love for
something, clinging on to a past that we can no longer have, that sometimes
provokes those very wars we believe to be the opposite of love.
