For more than a year, Americans debated the necessity of war in Iraq. Hawks and doves… For more than a year, Americans debated the necessity of war in Iraq. Hawks and doves alike took to the airwaves on the winds of detached abstraction, playing the what-if game of armchair foreign policy. As though speaking from a great height, op-ed writers spilled their ink in the name of “moral clarity.” Concepts battled for supremacy in the collective consciousness – justice vs. peace, national sovereignty vs. pre-emption, military action vs. prolonged diplomacy, and on – lines drawn with words, leaving people on one side or the other. Inevitably, both sides spiraled down into the simple preaching to the converted.
Then the Tomahawks came. Explosive strikes from on high reduced buildings to rubble, simultaneously dismantling our well-practiced slogans. We may be safe, as long as the remote is nearby, but our preconceptions are not: we have been cast out of the black and white world, into the morality of blood and metal and fire. When people die, things get complicated.
It’s easy to speak in cosmic terms, to chalk up every casualty to an eternal war of good or evil. That is uncomplicated. It is also delusion, the confusion of the abstract with the real: real humans are dying, not their beliefs. In our tendency to equate everything with cinema – and the tendency of CNN to present war with smooth, clean computer-generated graphics – it’s easy to forget the dead will still be there when you change the channel.
We are fighting evil, says the conventional wisdom. Evil is a cancer that can be excised by surgical strikes: it is Saddam Hussein, the Republican Guard, the Iraqi regime. Evil is our enemy, but is our enemy always evil? The Iraqi troops – many of whom fight not for an evil regime but against an invading army – does their nationalism and defense of God and country imply evil? Is that virtue recognized only in our soldiers? Is any resistance to our just cause the mark of evil?
Can good ends come from misguided means? Those who oppose the war, on whatever grounds, must come to terms with that possibility. Upon seeing Iraqis weeping tears of joy in the desert, one cannot hold that no good ever comes of violence. Absolutism crumbles in the face of reality, and can only be preserved by selective inattention disorder. Truth demolishes all dogmas.
What is the balance of our scales of justice? Civilian deaths are a given – not even the smartest bomb can judge innocence – but maybe it is worth sacrificing an uncertain number of futures in the name of liberation. If you are in favor of the war, you cannot help but ask how many people – on both sides – must die for the hope of democracy and freedom. You cannot help but ask how many are too many. It’s easy to regurgitate slogans about unwavering resolve, harder to question where that resolve is taking us.
It’s far from certain whether America will ride the white steed of liberation into Iraq, or merely the pale horse of death. What is certain is that America, collectively and individually, will be held responsible. Taxpayer dollars pay for the bombs raining on Baghdad; the majority of Americans support the effort. And each of us, comfortable in our homes, watching the mushroom clouds bloom and wondering what they signify, will have to come to terms with reality: War is bloody, complicated, and promises nothing but an unknown future.
Jesse Hicks is a columnist for The Pitt News. He may be reached at jhicks@pittnews.com.
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