The Necessity of War

The chief function of any government is the protection of its citizens. The earliest forms of government and social organization, namely clan-based groups, were bounded upon the mutual interest of individuals to protect one another from nature and rival tribes. As the number of members grew and grew in these clan based groups, in the agrarian revolution, social stratification occurred, supporting a bureaucratic class, and an all powerful leader. This point in history witnessed the advent of warfare as we know it today. Large city-states, having conflicting interests would go to war, just as clan based groups of earlier times would fight off a pack of wolves, or a small group of hostile human beings. Just the same, these large city-states partook in war  to protect their citizens. Thus, in a strictly pragmatic and historical aspect, it is certain war sprung out of the necessity to protect the populace of a government.

In the name of the common good, these large governments would stab, slash, impale, burn-alive, decapitate, rape, gore, enslave and systematically slaughter men, women and children of rival cities.

And in that detail, it seems as if war is hardly justified. Yes, it is easy to justify war when one thinks as the parties engaging in war as "Political group A" and "Political group B", in which the survival of one group is inversely related to the survival of the other. When viewed from a far, in regards to the masses, one can unhesitatingly, without even batting an eyelid, approve of the slaying of thousands if not millions of human beings.

Yet, when examined from the position of the individual, from the eyes of the father of three laying with his intestines splayed across the cold, battle-torn ground, of a strange and inhospitable territory, war seems senseless and tragic. From the eyes of a mother in Afghanistan, who lost her three children to a drone attack, or a woman from Hiroshima left scarred and sterile from the heat and radiation of an atomic bomb that killed all of her family, or a boy in Sudan knowing no mother or father, only hunger, and despair,  one could hardly ever bring one's self to approve of any war.

No decent human being could ever carry out the innumerable atrocities of war. No heart or soul could carry the insurmountable burden of guilt of personally killing and slaughtering and destroying the dignity of so many fellow human beings.

Yet governments have not a heart. They have not a soul. Rather, they have a cold mind with an unwavering, solipsistic loyalty to the single objective of self-preservation. And in this quest, a government can and should commit acts considered immoral on the level of an individual, if there is no other alternative, and if it means the preservation of the nation itself. In political theory, pioneered by Cardinal Richeliu, this is referred as "raison d'Etat" or "reason of the state". If a nation or people are faced with life or death, it is their duty to choose life, by any means necessary. Ultimately, a country knows nothing of morality in such dire circumstances. For ultimately there is no place in either Heaven or Hell for a nation. The only place it has for eternal life is here on this sinful Earth.

Yet, we are human beings. And thus it is necessary to ask what is an individual's responsibility in regard's to one's country engaging in war?

One must never forget the brutality of war. The cost of blood and innocence it so inherently demands. And in keeping that in mind one must never ever approve of an unnecessary war- one which engages and provokes aggression for the purpose of greed or unnecessary gain on behalf of the nation, rather than the survival of its own people. It is our responsibility as human beings to ensure our nation is the defender of peace, life, and liberty. Not the creator of chaos, death, and misery. War is a last resort, and an ugly one at that. Despite the atrocities of war, it is our duty as citizens to support those who fight, and who protect our lives, our freedoms, and our property, and our duty to unhesitatingly oppose all those who challenge them.

War is ugly, and is only justifiable by the infinitely beautiful truths of life, liberty, and justice.