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Happy people don’t start wars. They don’t need “purifying” or “liberation,” and their everyday lives are already full of hope and meaning, so they don’t need a war to save them from anything.

What sort of strange emotional disorder is it that war cleanses, liberates and saves people from? And how can killing, raping and torturing people be acts that purify and restore hope in life? Obviously war is a serious psychopathological condition, a recurring human behavior pattern whose motives and causes have yet to be examined on any but the most superficial levels of analysis.

STANDARD THEORIES OF CAUSATION OF WAR
All standard theories of war deny that it is an emotional disorder at all.1 War, unlike individual violence, is usually seen solely as a response to events outside the individual. Nations that start wars are not considered emotionally disturbed–they are either considered as rational or they are “evil,” a religious category. Although homicide and suicide are now studied as clinical disorders,2 war, unfortunately, is not.

In writing The American Book Part II this past weekend, I wrote the sentence, “Until there’s a cure for cancer, it needs to be cut out,” in reference to the idea that – until people can stop being such violent dipshits, they need to be “corrected” (see: “The Shining”) for the good of mankind. I took it out because it is basically a justification for genocide, but theoretically at least, there are a whole lotta people holding back progress, possibly because of a violent and horrible upbringing (as the chapter suggests), but also holding back progress that could curb the number of horror stories among the poor by allocating more resources towards those who need it. Instead of cutting out the “cancer” in this case, it would be cutting it out via education, other programs, that would cut down on the severity of that cancer. Ayn Rand calls this collectivism, but it does seem a step towards societal harmony if people aren’t abusing each other in such high numbers.

The despots in the American Book justify world war to hasten the above – the Dick Cheney character sees no other way out because he’s a sociopath. It would seem anyone who runs for the presidency, becomes Secretary of Defense, would be a sociopath to some degree. It is automatic as Commander in Chief that you will be sending people to death. You can justify that you might be limiting those casualties, and improving the country so less people suffer, but still: people are going to die because of your policies. That is a given. It takes a special kind of lunatic to not have a problem with that. It also suggests that the base of the Republican party is a collection of sociopaths. Not only are they pro-militant, but they also don’t want any social services that’ll help keep people alive in this country. Madness – and they’re furious at “libtards” for curbing “freedom.” Perhaps this is why they cling so desperately to the pro-life card, because it’s the one area they’re adamant about things not dying.

But war is also deeper than that. If everyone was well-fed in a mansion and spent all their days reading, what would people do with innate aggression? I don’t totally agree with his suppositions – that war is entirely based on childhood neglect, as there are cases of mental illness without neglect, and mob mentality which may not entirely be because of childhood abuse. Basically, everyone has a fucked up childhood to some degree, and this is unavoidable, as children are vulnerable and can be scared of the darkness in the closet even within a perfectly happy childhood. A child learns about the world in part by learning about fear. I would go so far as to say that some people are just crappy people – regardless of their circumstances. If there can be saints and geniuses with innate abilities, it’s not a stretch to think that there are some with innate abilities to be assholes.

What he’s basically getting at is that war is psychosis – how that psychosis is generated is up for argument. He says,

That anyone should imagine that hundreds of millions of people can enthusiastically engage in mutual mass butchery over minor pieces of territory is so patently ludicrous that it is a wonder anyone could ever have taken it seriously; yet this what historians and political scientists still ask us to believe. The entire “rational decisions” school of war theorists, all of whom claim utility as the ultimate motive for war, run up against the extensive empirical research done on hundreds of wars in recent years that consistently shows that wars are destructive not rational, that wars cost even winners more than they gain, that those who begin wars usually lose them and that leaders who go to war historically never actually calculate before they do so whether the gains will exceed the costs.

Lunatic behavior, yes. As is the idea that we need to go to war to fulfill the prophesies in a myth-laden book. Balls-out schizophrenic style lunacy. But back to point #1: so long as people are lunatics to this degree, it would appear that war is an inevitability. If a president came to power that wanted to bring the Book of Revelation to life, this president would need to be “corrected.” A war to stop a war. Frankly, it’s kind of hopeless. Because until we make society better, this cycle isn’t going to stop.   There are millions of people actively seeking to make society turn to shit: those who think it’s better to bomb countries than put that money towards education, or other forms of “collectivism.” As if supporting people who may be able to improve society overall is a kind of evil.

The lunatic behavior of war seems inevitable, because people are literally losing their minds in greater numbers. The Tea Party – for one – thinks giving unlimited power to corporations is somehow a preferable antidote to the power of government. It’s madness. And these are the same people who desire for war. That is not an accident. They are demented – blinded in part by religion, as mentioned above. For the sake of hypothetical argument (which could get me into deep shit if a Tea Partier read this) supposing that the pro-militant base were magically “out of the picture.” Then maybe society could move forward without progress being called regression ( like a shitty Republican-style health care bill being called “socialism”).  This would be another “purification” – not of childhood ills, but the element that is actively trying to fuck up the country.

This is the justification for any genocide, and it’s horrible – obviously. The same argument could be made about Wall Street executives- i.e. the elite. There’s no reason to point fingers at the Tea Party, who may have a lot of attention, but not a lot of power when compared to big business.  When the aristocracy is taken out, it’s called revolution, not genocide. Still, yet another war – would this revolution also be a psychosis, even it is started to take out elements that lead to even more division?

Tough questions, but I’m in the middle of writing another novel about world war, a war that is somewhat justified by the state of our dystopia. If we’re really going to start a Venus Project on a massive scale, it doesn’t quite seem possible given the number of interests that would be rabidly against that idea.  In “Star Trek,” the reason they reached their utopia was because of World War III and the desire to never repeat it.  Given how much people tend to hate each other about things that don’t exist (socialism, racial/religious superiority, etc.) it seems like a pretty inevitable outcome.  And, one can argue, even necessary. If that’s the case, then war is not psychosis, it’s part of the human system.

If there’s no major war, we’ll limp forward bit by bit while there is widespread suffering, and wars continue.  Maybe this is as it should be – if the world’s not going to end anytime soon, eventually society will self-correct and we’ll get our shit together. Meantime, there will be a lot of small wars, not necessarily the big one that will wipe everything out.  Eventually, we’ll look back at a time when there was widespread starvation and a baseball player made 20 million dollars a year as akin to using leeches for medicine in the Dark Ages. It will be like – to misquote Philip K. Dick – “The Dark Ages never ended.”

Though I disagree with the non-regulation of corporations of libertarianism, Ron Paul is very good on the anti-war effort.  He says,

If Islam is further discredited by making the building of the mosque the issue, then the false justification for our wars in the Middle East will continue to be acceptable.

Last week Jonah Goldberg had this post, which makes the case that anti-Muslim bigotry is not that rampant in this country.  I’d make this argument: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are anti-Muslim backlash.  Hundreds of thousands have died – and there’s hardly concern on the part of the American public, likely due in large part due to who we’re killing and the residual hate and fear unleashed on 9-11.  Even if there were no hate crimes on our home soil, there’s continuing violence against Muslims on theirs.  For many, this is a war against Islam – and the idea “we’re fighting them there so we don’t fight them here” is satisfying their anger.

We host a roundtable discussion with independent British journalist Stephen Grey; Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg; former State Department official in Afghanistan, Matthew Hoh; independent journalist Rick Rowley; and investigative historian Gareth Porter.

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If we carried out a targeted campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, against sites used to train and equip militants killing American soldiers, and against certain targeted terror-supporting and nuclear-enabling regime elements, the effects are just as likely to be limited.

Easy like Iraq, in which he said:

But that era–in which the American stance was one of doubt, weakness, and retreat, in which we failed to affirm our most cherished principles or even stand up for ourselves–came to an end on September 11, 2001. The United States committed itself to defeating terror around the world. We committed ourselves to reshaping the Middle East, so the region would no longer be a hotbed of terrorism, extremism, anti-Americanism, and weapons of mass destruction. The first two battles of this new era are now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably. But these are only two battles. We are only at the end of the beginning in the war on terror and terrorist states.

There is NO difference in the impulse – and the outcome – of going to war in Iran.  It is to extend limitless war against an enemy that is being radicalized by these wars.  Kristol’s war-hawk fanaticism is the same as terrorist fanaticism. His first impulse is to kill people.  You don’t end fanaticism with more fanaticism.

In light of this, how creepy is this letter to Bush by the Project for a New American Century only days after 9-11.  Almost as if it had already been drafted:

We write to endorse your admirable commitment to “lead the world to victory” in the war against terrorism. We fully support your call for “a broad and sustained campaign” against the “terrorist organizations and those who harbor and support them.” We agree with Secretary of State Powell that the United States must find and punish the perpetrators of the horrific attack of September 11, and we must, as he said, “go after terrorism wherever we find it in the world” and “get it by its branch and root.” We agree with the Secretary of State that U.S. policy must aim not only at finding the people responsible for this incident, but must also target those “other groups out there that mean us no good” and “that have conducted attacks previously against U.S. personnel, U.S. interests and our allies.”