“What a piece of work is man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
How express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
The paragon of animals”
from What a Piece of Work is Man
Historians have concluded the first war in recorded history was in 2,700 BC, between Sumer and Elan in Mesopotamia, though there is evidence of previous battles. That battle was presumed to be over scarce resources as agriculture became relatively more important than hunting. Land was more valuable than before and worth fighting for. There hasn’t been a year without a war somewhere since; what has changed is the scale and capacity for the death of others, including non-combatants.
War was once more personal. When populations were smaller, you knew some of the warriors personally, along with their families. Sometimes, you knew members of enemy forces. War was about land, resources, borders, and religion. There was undoubtedly nationalism, but not always hatred of the opposition. There was some recognition that those on the other side were human, too. Battles were often decided by negotiation, with emissaries from each side deciding the result with no loss of life or destruction of property. Things were more civilized then.
As centuries passed, though wars were always about economics, the justifications became more and more about religion, color, and race. Someone is reading this right now objecting, saying race is just a construct, which is true. While there are differences culturally and physically between some peoples, race was not usually the motivating factor until the discovery of the New World and later after Bacon’s Rebellion. To justify taking land and enslaving people, the classifications of some as being subhuman was part of the rationale which made killing them okay.
As weapons advanced, the capacity to kill progressed exponentially. Because man was now destroying villages and cities, the explanations had to include justifications that the dead weren’t valued in the same manner as those killing them. They were savages, or animals, inferior in some way, so their deaths weren’t worthy of protest. As many wars were justified by religion, the church found itself explaining how their gods demanded the death of women, children, and the elderly in pursuit of an economic goal.
The Crusades were justified by religion. In 1095, Pope Urban II offered forgiveness of all sins for those who fought on the Christian side against Muslims, which they partially financed by stealing from the Jews. But the deadliest weapons were swords, maces, crossbows, and lances. The wars were deadly, and the causes were questionable, but genocide wasn’t a consideration.
“Whoever for devotion alone, but not to gain honour or money, goes to Jerusalem to liberate the Church of God can substitute this journey for all penance.’”— Pope Urban II
By 1260, cannons were introduced to Chinese battlefields; later, man had guns that evolved to the point where several shots could be fired without reloading. Then came the Gatling gun, which later came with a swivel. The ability to kill constantly evolved, with bombs making the most significant leaps and bounds. We, as a species, were killing more efficiently yet caring much less.
Civilians have always beeen at some risk during wars, but it took media coverage, television, and movies to make the number of casualties clear. People could ignore mass destruction until they saw it or read a description so precise it couldn’t be ignored. Civilian massacres were still mostly hidden, allowing nations to claim the moral high ground while covering up atrocities. In America, for every My Lai Massacre, there are several, like the Massacre at Nogun-ri, which we’re still finding out about over seventy years later. US troops lined up unarmed Koreans on a bridge and called in an air strike with Air Force jets strafing them. The attack occurred in 1950, with the first reports leaking out in 1999.
If there were a point when the world would say “Too Much!” you’d think it would be after the US dropped nuclear bombs on Japan, first a uranium-based bomb on Hiroshima, with a plutonium-based bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, effectively ending World War II. At the time, 85% of the US population felt that the use of the bombs, which killed over 100,000, including those who died of radiation poisoning, was justified. In another poll 70 years later, 56% felt the bombings were justified. Baby steps!
I will point to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, only to highlight the death toll, particularly of women, children, and the elderly, that the world is willing and able to ignore. Over 1,400 people have been killed in Israel, and more than 9,600 Palestinians were killed in Gaza, with another 134 in the West Bank. These numbers come with the conflict likely to be in the early stages with projections from Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu for a long war.
The ground war in Gaza is just beginning, and the air strikes from Israel show no sign of immediate end. I’m not using this article to point fingers and place blame but to point out how immune we’ve become to death and destruction unless it’s happening to people like us. or those we know. The combined deaths this year in Ukraine, Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and elsewhere from avoidable conflicts and weapons of mass destruction is greater than the population of some nations. The 18 people recently killed in a Maine mass shooting would barely have registered except that the whereabouts of the gunman were unknown for some days.
We are literally wiping each other out, and in the name of what? Because we teach our children to hate and elect officials best able to express that message. The Pentagon is planning to request funding from Congress to build a bomb 24 times more potent than the one we dropped on Hiroshima. Where in the world could we drop such a bomb without more civilian losses than we could justify in human terms? The answer is to make the victims less than human, turn them into animals, or do something inhuman that won’t be missed.
We’ve reached a point where war and the resulting casualties have become entertainment. Americans were glued to their televisions during the “Shock and Awe” phase of the Second Iraq War. War has become more about “look what we can do” instead of imagining the suffering of those on the receiving end. That doesn’t consider the 9 million people that starve each year while the world looks away. This only works if the people dying aren’t thought of as people. That’s something we are getting quite good at
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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