Interesting few days
The past couple of days have been extremely busy for me. Two tales: To begin, Yesterday I participated in a theatrical performance. I know what you're thinking: "Brian? In theater?" Well, it wasn't exactly theater. It's called "Meeting of the Minds" and the Philosophy Department puts it on every year. We get six students together and have them portray famous philosophers in a discussion. This year it was "Morality" and I played St. Thomas Aquinas. I think I did a pretty good job (in other words I divided everything up into points and was an ass about it). I even made the audience laugh a few times. It feels really strange to make 120 people crack up and then get applauded. I've never had that before...
Something entirely different happened to me on Tuesday though: I got called a murderer. In one of my classes we were watching a film and one of the main characters murders a cab driver for no reason. Afterwords one of my classmates mentions that because I'm in the military and my focus in life is to kill people, there is no difference between the character and myself. I got pretty pissed off about this.
To begin with, I don't go around killing random people. Aside from that, my not-so-smart compatriot seems to have misunderstood the purpose for a military. The mission of the military is not to kill people, but to reduce the will of an opponent. In any conflict, whether defensive or offensive, it is not how many people you kill rather what sort of shape the opponents will is in that matters. If you slaughter thousands of the enemy, but he is still willing to fight (ex: The Japanese in WWII), you have accomplished nothing. Conversely, if you can get by with killing as few people as possible while crushing your opponent's will to do battle (ex: Strategic bombing on Industrial Centers in the First Gulf War), you have won. Killing enemy personnel is merely a path to a larger objective. It's actually more efficient to destroy your opponent's capability/will to do battle than his actual forces. Her lack of thought really bothered me.
Beyond her idiocy a larger thought struck me. She honest to god hates the military and thinks that I joined up because I'm evil and I want to kill people. While I won't deny that on a certain level I do want to kill people (most men do), this is not the real reason I joined up. Compounding this is the simple fact that without the military and all of the "murderers" in it, she would not be living her life today. I know she's a pacifist and deeply immersed in eastern religions as well as the postmodern movement, but that means jack in the real world. I like the Old Irish saying: "You can refuse to love a man and you can refuse to lend him money, but if he wants a fight, then you have to oblige him."
She further needs to realize as Will and Ariel Durant said in Lessons of History: "War is one of the constants of history and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war." There have been many people throughout history that have advocated peace as a way of life. None of them have succeeded. Do I think it impossible? Yes. Just as I believe that if it actually worked Communism would be the best system. The problem is that it can never and will never. Sure, it'd be great if we all were happy distributing our wealth and making sure no one starved. Just as great as it would be if we could get rid of all the guns and be happy and at peace with eachother. I don't believe it will ever happen though. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one day we all can be at peace. Until then though, I side with George Orwell when he said "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. " I would like the think of myself as one of those rough men; and while I may be ready to do violence, I don't think that makes me a bad person. In fact, I think it makes me an honorable person.
To provide some positive light to this rant, here's my slant: I prefer to think of the profession of arms as Lt. Gen. Edward M. Flanagan Jr. put it: "When one considers that the freedom, the security, the way of life of the United States depends on the quality of our military establishment, one begins to realize that the military service, especially leadership positions therein, is a high calling, a vocation not unlike the priesthood, a profession that transcends the ordinary and mundane"
Something entirely different happened to me on Tuesday though: I got called a murderer. In one of my classes we were watching a film and one of the main characters murders a cab driver for no reason. Afterwords one of my classmates mentions that because I'm in the military and my focus in life is to kill people, there is no difference between the character and myself. I got pretty pissed off about this.
To begin with, I don't go around killing random people. Aside from that, my not-so-smart compatriot seems to have misunderstood the purpose for a military. The mission of the military is not to kill people, but to reduce the will of an opponent. In any conflict, whether defensive or offensive, it is not how many people you kill rather what sort of shape the opponents will is in that matters. If you slaughter thousands of the enemy, but he is still willing to fight (ex: The Japanese in WWII), you have accomplished nothing. Conversely, if you can get by with killing as few people as possible while crushing your opponent's will to do battle (ex: Strategic bombing on Industrial Centers in the First Gulf War), you have won. Killing enemy personnel is merely a path to a larger objective. It's actually more efficient to destroy your opponent's capability/will to do battle than his actual forces. Her lack of thought really bothered me.
Beyond her idiocy a larger thought struck me. She honest to god hates the military and thinks that I joined up because I'm evil and I want to kill people. While I won't deny that on a certain level I do want to kill people (most men do), this is not the real reason I joined up. Compounding this is the simple fact that without the military and all of the "murderers" in it, she would not be living her life today. I know she's a pacifist and deeply immersed in eastern religions as well as the postmodern movement, but that means jack in the real world. I like the Old Irish saying: "You can refuse to love a man and you can refuse to lend him money, but if he wants a fight, then you have to oblige him."
She further needs to realize as Will and Ariel Durant said in Lessons of History: "War is one of the constants of history and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war." There have been many people throughout history that have advocated peace as a way of life. None of them have succeeded. Do I think it impossible? Yes. Just as I believe that if it actually worked Communism would be the best system. The problem is that it can never and will never. Sure, it'd be great if we all were happy distributing our wealth and making sure no one starved. Just as great as it would be if we could get rid of all the guns and be happy and at peace with eachother. I don't believe it will ever happen though. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe one day we all can be at peace. Until then though, I side with George Orwell when he said "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. " I would like the think of myself as one of those rough men; and while I may be ready to do violence, I don't think that makes me a bad person. In fact, I think it makes me an honorable person.
To provide some positive light to this rant, here's my slant: I prefer to think of the profession of arms as Lt. Gen. Edward M. Flanagan Jr. put it: "When one considers that the freedom, the security, the way of life of the United States depends on the quality of our military establishment, one begins to realize that the military service, especially leadership positions therein, is a high calling, a vocation not unlike the priesthood, a profession that transcends the ordinary and mundane"
