Thank you Graham, for this remarkable post. I have long argued that WWII was justified because of the rottenness of fascism in particular and dictatorship in general. But I have to admit that even WWII could have been nipped in the bud if good intelligent people had simply killed Mussolini, Hitler, and the military elite in Japan.
I posit that Greed is the seed that caused all wars from prehistoric days of Homo sapiens to 2025. I don't blame any particular economic system. Any economic system that services all the people within its realm to the advantage of all is good. Which means all economic systems must be strongly regulated by any government that governs for the good of all, instead of the few.
Property should be the lowest level of consideration, not the primary.
It doesn't bother me that some people are wealthier than me. What bothers me is that people like elon reeve musk use that wealth for the sole and only purpose of accumulating more wealth. So I guess, what I realize is it is greed and the accumulation of power to which I object.
So to satisfy me, we would have to teach all Homo sapiens youngsters the value of common good, of maintaining the safety, health, and nourishment of all Homo sapiens in our sphere.
I was intrigued to receive the notification a few minutes ago, that you liked the piece, because I know we'd previously disagreed about it, when it went up last year. I can't always remember what I wrote, so I was reading it again when your comment came in. Thank you.
I started to ask myself as I read it whether I'd have written it differently now. In June last year, the prospect of a second Trump administration was far off. The prospect that it would be doing what it's doing now was as good as ruled out.
Trump wants Ukraine to sue for peace, but will offer no guarantee of that peace. He wants a straight recompense for the US's investment in the Ukraine war. He's demanding that in the same way as a rifle manufacturer would ask for payment for his rifle. Because it's not the rifle-maker's fault if you cannot shoot straight. That's very devoid of principle, and totally transactional, and Trump sees no problem with that, and I do. But he's paying the bill, and I'm not (well, you know what I mean).
I feel opposed to any peace with Russia, because I now take your view: we need to, not beat Putin but crush him. And, to do that may cost a lot of lives. So I am caught here contradicting everything I wrote last summer. And I suppose I'm taking a broad view that, if Russia is not crushed, it will always come back. There is a reader here who I know personally who is from Lithuania, a former Soviet territory. He is adamant: Russia must now be destroyed, because every time they get a second chance (since the days of Peter the Great) to be normal and decent, they end up being evil. And there is no more hope of reforming them now than there has ever been. So, he says, cost what it may, we need to roll our sleeves up for the fight.
Ukrainian philosopher Vlad Beliavsky, with whom I have corresponded, said once: "Russia cannot win this war. What will Putin do - wipe out 44 million Ukrainians? Because that's the only way he can win." Well, if that's how Putin can win, I have little doubt that he will consider the option. I wrote to Vlad, "There is another way to win this war: wipe out 144 million Russians." The joke is, both he and I are ardent pacifists. Not easy, eh?
Sorry Graham on this one I don't agree. Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler by allowing Hitler and his Nazis to takeover Czechoslovakia with no interference if Hitler would cease and desist from attacking other European Nations. That lasted what? 6 weeks, 2 months? And it wasn't as though the Nazis then treated their newly conquered lands decently, they rounded up and killed anyone they didn't like. They (the Nazis) left us pictures to prove it.
So, when Hitler attacked Poland, Chamberlain resigned and Churchill took over. What exactly could Churchill do to stop Hitler from taking over all of Europe including England? Look the other way? Turn the other cheek? The only way to have stopped this war in the bud would have been to send in Mossad (which didn't exist for another 20+ years) to assassinate Hitler. And I'm not certain even that would have stopped the move of fascism. You weren't born until long after WW2, so, it may be difficult for you to understand how much fear fascism struck in us. I was born 4 March 1933, so I was 6 and 1/2 when WW2 started. I was precocious but I was a little kid, and I still remember the fear I felt if we didn't prevent the fall of Britain the Nazis would then set their sights on Canada and the US.
The thing is you cannot negotiate with a psychopathic liar. And like trump, hitler was a narcissist, misogynist, and hated everyone but himself for whom he and trump have a godlike reverence.
I was a couple of months past 12 when VE day occurred. I understood dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima effectively ended the war; to this day I think we were wrong to drop the second bomb after only 3 days. We could have negotiated then.
I've never studied the Korean War so I have no opinion on its justification. As I said in my comment a few days ago I see no excuse for any of the wars in which America was involved from the cessation of activity in Korea until the present day. I do support the Ukrainians in their battle to defend themselves against Putin and his Russian troops. I hope we and Europe continue to give Ukraine all the help we possibly can.
We may be protecting ourselves after November, unless we can arouse enough lazy asses to vote to overwhelm the trumpster magats. Fascism rearing its ugly head again.
I hope we can look upon this as a disagreement as I still enjoy reading your posts.
I knew you’d disagree. Thank you for at least apologising for it.
I believe that the mark of civilisation is one in which the rule of law applies without distinction, without preference and without oppression. Both domestically and internationally.
Domestically, a citizenry must be policed. He who will not submit to the fair application of the law must be subjected to its force. And those who will not fairly apply the law must likewise be subjected to its force. For the application of unfair law, unfairly denies law’s very purpose. It is a purpose that is regularly denied these days.
Isaac Asimov once said that resorting to violence is a mark of incompetence, and that is true. Nevertheless, failure to resort to force in the face of unrelenting force is still impotence.
Internationally, force becomes a resource much more readily resorted to than domestically. It is the threat of violent force that frequently overshadows diplomacy and what is wrong with that is the fact that diplomats thereby paint themselves into a corner, from which they cannot recede without applying the violent force they have threatened that cornered them in the first place.
Economic and geopolitical interests intervene to flavour the readiness with which violent force is applied. And when it is applied, it is never applied by them who threaten it. It is applied by men and women who are raised and taught to obey unflinchingly the orders of those who command them. In short, the basis on which civil society can peacefully exist depends on a corps of armed thugs who are trained to do politicians’ bidding, and that is little more than how mafia works.
If they who negotiated were the first onto the battlefields, we would see a very different tone of negotiation. Dramatist Edward Bond wrote once about airmen who drop bombs on enemy countries and return to their families to be embraced by their own children, whereas they’ve just bombed other people’s children to hell. “How can they live with themselves?” he asks. Well, they live with themselves because they are able to invent a morality that suits them. Perhaps several moralities. Moralities are cheap, and malleable, dispensable even; like fashion clothing.
A pacifist stance has one of two consequences:
1) the pacifist’s destruction, as he adheres to his philosophy of non-defence (classic anabaptist philosophy), the result of which is his immediate death at the hands of the thug and either a reliance on his acceptance into another place, where such considerations as the preservation of mortal life hold less sway, or his acceptance of death as a means to preserve the life of his enemy; or both;
2) the use of force only in extremis, when the life of the pacifist is in mortal danger. Then, and only then, may he raise his gun in defence. That, then, is the point at which he must abandon his philosophy and he knows that, should he survive, he must reconcile his acts with his infidelity towards his own beliefs.
If nation states never raised a defence to invaders, what then, would the consequences of that be? There would be the chance that an invader not only assumed governance of us and our territory but that they would also set to, to eliminate some amongst us. Like the Nazis did. So, we should defend ourselves.
Would Germany and Russia and America have killed as many Ukrainian, Haitian, Grenadian, Iraqi, Georgian, Chechnyan, Afghan, Czech, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Norwegian, French, Belgian, Dutch, Romanian, Greek, Cypriot civilians if these nations had never fought back? What about the American Indians and the South American Indians who resisted the western colonialists. What about the Haitian slaves who resisted their French masters? Did fewer lives get lost because of the resistance? Or did resistance augment the toll of life, even if it may have augmented the quality of life for some of those who resisted, if it even did?
What would have become of Ukraine if Russia had conquered Kyiv in three days? How many thousands of Russians and Ukrainians would be alive today if Mr Zelenskyy had simply handed over the reins of power? Ukraine fought because of the principle of self-determination. How many lives is the principle of self-determination worth, however? You tell me. You tell me how many Ukrainians need to die in the name of self-determination, before it’s too many. Those who have seen the killing fields out in Ukraine, who have seen the butchered civilians in Izium and Bucha, have already cried out, “Too many.” And still we continue as before.
The world has cheered Ukraine on in its resistance. But it has not, despite all its generosity, given Ukraine the means to win. It’s almost unkind to say it, but western policy seems to have been modelled in order not to save Ukraine, but to ensure its destruction. What plucky little Ukraine has done is not confound the Russian government, but confounded the governments in Washington, Berlin and London – by surviving. Simply because every time it gets knocked down, it stands up again, as a nation. But those who fall in its name never stand again.
How much faster would Ukraine’s aid be resolved upon if those in Switzerland now were instead on the front in Luhansk? And how much faster would a ceasefire be negotiated if they were there?
Proxy war? Ha! All war is proxy war. Because those who declare it never have to fight it.
With your further explanation we are again in agreement. In the really old days, Like 3000 years ago, the battle 'leaders' were. They actually led their men into battle, Once the battle leader was killed the losing men slunk off in defeat. I agree that if thoroughly rotten men like Hitler and Putin actually had to lead, or at least be with their troops, where their own life and limb were endangered, they might not be so willing to "kill and conquer"
Somewhere along the line, a few hundred years ago, these leaders got the idea they "were too valuable" in planning the battle, to risk their death [maybe they were, too valuable at directing the battle to put their own skin in it]
Then it became even worse. The kings, monarchs, emperors. whatever the hell they wanted to call themselves sat on their thrones, fought vocally (or in writing letters) with others of their kind and sent their proxies (generals, field marshalls, whatever) and berated them for their losses or praised them with laurel wreaths for their conquests.
Wars of defense are usually correct, wars of greed are not.
Closer to home for me, if the orange blob of blubber actually was there when the armed American forces began fighting back against his thugs, he would probably have peed his pants and run to the protection of his secret service agents.
If the 'men' (usually, but I'm not implying that women are never greedy) sitting in Washington, Moscow, Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Tehran and so on Knew their life was on the line in planning a was of aggression, perhaps they wouldn't be quite so anxious to send their troops into battle like Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine, Gaza etc,
Thank you Graham, for this remarkable post. I have long argued that WWII was justified because of the rottenness of fascism in particular and dictatorship in general. But I have to admit that even WWII could have been nipped in the bud if good intelligent people had simply killed Mussolini, Hitler, and the military elite in Japan.
I posit that Greed is the seed that caused all wars from prehistoric days of Homo sapiens to 2025. I don't blame any particular economic system. Any economic system that services all the people within its realm to the advantage of all is good. Which means all economic systems must be strongly regulated by any government that governs for the good of all, instead of the few.
Property should be the lowest level of consideration, not the primary.
It doesn't bother me that some people are wealthier than me. What bothers me is that people like elon reeve musk use that wealth for the sole and only purpose of accumulating more wealth. So I guess, what I realize is it is greed and the accumulation of power to which I object.
So to satisfy me, we would have to teach all Homo sapiens youngsters the value of common good, of maintaining the safety, health, and nourishment of all Homo sapiens in our sphere.
I was intrigued to receive the notification a few minutes ago, that you liked the piece, because I know we'd previously disagreed about it, when it went up last year. I can't always remember what I wrote, so I was reading it again when your comment came in. Thank you.
I started to ask myself as I read it whether I'd have written it differently now. In June last year, the prospect of a second Trump administration was far off. The prospect that it would be doing what it's doing now was as good as ruled out.
Trump wants Ukraine to sue for peace, but will offer no guarantee of that peace. He wants a straight recompense for the US's investment in the Ukraine war. He's demanding that in the same way as a rifle manufacturer would ask for payment for his rifle. Because it's not the rifle-maker's fault if you cannot shoot straight. That's very devoid of principle, and totally transactional, and Trump sees no problem with that, and I do. But he's paying the bill, and I'm not (well, you know what I mean).
I feel opposed to any peace with Russia, because I now take your view: we need to, not beat Putin but crush him. And, to do that may cost a lot of lives. So I am caught here contradicting everything I wrote last summer. And I suppose I'm taking a broad view that, if Russia is not crushed, it will always come back. There is a reader here who I know personally who is from Lithuania, a former Soviet territory. He is adamant: Russia must now be destroyed, because every time they get a second chance (since the days of Peter the Great) to be normal and decent, they end up being evil. And there is no more hope of reforming them now than there has ever been. So, he says, cost what it may, we need to roll our sleeves up for the fight.
Ukrainian philosopher Vlad Beliavsky, with whom I have corresponded, said once: "Russia cannot win this war. What will Putin do - wipe out 44 million Ukrainians? Because that's the only way he can win." Well, if that's how Putin can win, I have little doubt that he will consider the option. I wrote to Vlad, "There is another way to win this war: wipe out 144 million Russians." The joke is, both he and I are ardent pacifists. Not easy, eh?
Sorry Graham on this one I don't agree. Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler by allowing Hitler and his Nazis to takeover Czechoslovakia with no interference if Hitler would cease and desist from attacking other European Nations. That lasted what? 6 weeks, 2 months? And it wasn't as though the Nazis then treated their newly conquered lands decently, they rounded up and killed anyone they didn't like. They (the Nazis) left us pictures to prove it.
So, when Hitler attacked Poland, Chamberlain resigned and Churchill took over. What exactly could Churchill do to stop Hitler from taking over all of Europe including England? Look the other way? Turn the other cheek? The only way to have stopped this war in the bud would have been to send in Mossad (which didn't exist for another 20+ years) to assassinate Hitler. And I'm not certain even that would have stopped the move of fascism. You weren't born until long after WW2, so, it may be difficult for you to understand how much fear fascism struck in us. I was born 4 March 1933, so I was 6 and 1/2 when WW2 started. I was precocious but I was a little kid, and I still remember the fear I felt if we didn't prevent the fall of Britain the Nazis would then set their sights on Canada and the US.
The thing is you cannot negotiate with a psychopathic liar. And like trump, hitler was a narcissist, misogynist, and hated everyone but himself for whom he and trump have a godlike reverence.
I was a couple of months past 12 when VE day occurred. I understood dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima effectively ended the war; to this day I think we were wrong to drop the second bomb after only 3 days. We could have negotiated then.
I've never studied the Korean War so I have no opinion on its justification. As I said in my comment a few days ago I see no excuse for any of the wars in which America was involved from the cessation of activity in Korea until the present day. I do support the Ukrainians in their battle to defend themselves against Putin and his Russian troops. I hope we and Europe continue to give Ukraine all the help we possibly can.
We may be protecting ourselves after November, unless we can arouse enough lazy asses to vote to overwhelm the trumpster magats. Fascism rearing its ugly head again.
I hope we can look upon this as a disagreement as I still enjoy reading your posts.
Fay
I knew you’d disagree. Thank you for at least apologising for it.
I believe that the mark of civilisation is one in which the rule of law applies without distinction, without preference and without oppression. Both domestically and internationally.
Domestically, a citizenry must be policed. He who will not submit to the fair application of the law must be subjected to its force. And those who will not fairly apply the law must likewise be subjected to its force. For the application of unfair law, unfairly denies law’s very purpose. It is a purpose that is regularly denied these days.
Isaac Asimov once said that resorting to violence is a mark of incompetence, and that is true. Nevertheless, failure to resort to force in the face of unrelenting force is still impotence.
Internationally, force becomes a resource much more readily resorted to than domestically. It is the threat of violent force that frequently overshadows diplomacy and what is wrong with that is the fact that diplomats thereby paint themselves into a corner, from which they cannot recede without applying the violent force they have threatened that cornered them in the first place.
Economic and geopolitical interests intervene to flavour the readiness with which violent force is applied. And when it is applied, it is never applied by them who threaten it. It is applied by men and women who are raised and taught to obey unflinchingly the orders of those who command them. In short, the basis on which civil society can peacefully exist depends on a corps of armed thugs who are trained to do politicians’ bidding, and that is little more than how mafia works.
If they who negotiated were the first onto the battlefields, we would see a very different tone of negotiation. Dramatist Edward Bond wrote once about airmen who drop bombs on enemy countries and return to their families to be embraced by their own children, whereas they’ve just bombed other people’s children to hell. “How can they live with themselves?” he asks. Well, they live with themselves because they are able to invent a morality that suits them. Perhaps several moralities. Moralities are cheap, and malleable, dispensable even; like fashion clothing.
A pacifist stance has one of two consequences:
1) the pacifist’s destruction, as he adheres to his philosophy of non-defence (classic anabaptist philosophy), the result of which is his immediate death at the hands of the thug and either a reliance on his acceptance into another place, where such considerations as the preservation of mortal life hold less sway, or his acceptance of death as a means to preserve the life of his enemy; or both;
2) the use of force only in extremis, when the life of the pacifist is in mortal danger. Then, and only then, may he raise his gun in defence. That, then, is the point at which he must abandon his philosophy and he knows that, should he survive, he must reconcile his acts with his infidelity towards his own beliefs.
If nation states never raised a defence to invaders, what then, would the consequences of that be? There would be the chance that an invader not only assumed governance of us and our territory but that they would also set to, to eliminate some amongst us. Like the Nazis did. So, we should defend ourselves.
Would Germany and Russia and America have killed as many Ukrainian, Haitian, Grenadian, Iraqi, Georgian, Chechnyan, Afghan, Czech, Finnish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, Norwegian, French, Belgian, Dutch, Romanian, Greek, Cypriot civilians if these nations had never fought back? What about the American Indians and the South American Indians who resisted the western colonialists. What about the Haitian slaves who resisted their French masters? Did fewer lives get lost because of the resistance? Or did resistance augment the toll of life, even if it may have augmented the quality of life for some of those who resisted, if it even did?
What would have become of Ukraine if Russia had conquered Kyiv in three days? How many thousands of Russians and Ukrainians would be alive today if Mr Zelenskyy had simply handed over the reins of power? Ukraine fought because of the principle of self-determination. How many lives is the principle of self-determination worth, however? You tell me. You tell me how many Ukrainians need to die in the name of self-determination, before it’s too many. Those who have seen the killing fields out in Ukraine, who have seen the butchered civilians in Izium and Bucha, have already cried out, “Too many.” And still we continue as before.
The world has cheered Ukraine on in its resistance. But it has not, despite all its generosity, given Ukraine the means to win. It’s almost unkind to say it, but western policy seems to have been modelled in order not to save Ukraine, but to ensure its destruction. What plucky little Ukraine has done is not confound the Russian government, but confounded the governments in Washington, Berlin and London – by surviving. Simply because every time it gets knocked down, it stands up again, as a nation. But those who fall in its name never stand again.
How much faster would Ukraine’s aid be resolved upon if those in Switzerland now were instead on the front in Luhansk? And how much faster would a ceasefire be negotiated if they were there?
Proxy war? Ha! All war is proxy war. Because those who declare it never have to fight it.
With your further explanation we are again in agreement. In the really old days, Like 3000 years ago, the battle 'leaders' were. They actually led their men into battle, Once the battle leader was killed the losing men slunk off in defeat. I agree that if thoroughly rotten men like Hitler and Putin actually had to lead, or at least be with their troops, where their own life and limb were endangered, they might not be so willing to "kill and conquer"
Somewhere along the line, a few hundred years ago, these leaders got the idea they "were too valuable" in planning the battle, to risk their death [maybe they were, too valuable at directing the battle to put their own skin in it]
Then it became even worse. The kings, monarchs, emperors. whatever the hell they wanted to call themselves sat on their thrones, fought vocally (or in writing letters) with others of their kind and sent their proxies (generals, field marshalls, whatever) and berated them for their losses or praised them with laurel wreaths for their conquests.
Wars of defense are usually correct, wars of greed are not.
Closer to home for me, if the orange blob of blubber actually was there when the armed American forces began fighting back against his thugs, he would probably have peed his pants and run to the protection of his secret service agents.
If the 'men' (usually, but I'm not implying that women are never greedy) sitting in Washington, Moscow, Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Tehran and so on Knew their life was on the line in planning a was of aggression, perhaps they wouldn't be quite so anxious to send their troops into battle like Vietnam, Iraq, Ukraine, Gaza etc,