What about war in the Obama Era?

Are you a warhawk or a peacenik?

It is disheartening how many people will readily select one of these two labels during political conversations. Even if we gladly subtract Internet trolls from our calculations, it appears that American political philosophy has been destroyed outright. It has given way to a culture of soundbytes. It has become an embarrassment in the global community.

Naturally, the problem in America is neither liberalism nor conservatism, but extremism. There’s a big difference between opposing war and opposing a war. The former is puerile idealism. The latter is a freethinking choice.

When freethinking people who supported the war with Afghanistan (after all, they attacked the US) then questioned the allocation of our resources to Iraq, the warhawks screeched. Rational argument was drowned out by the Roman mob and the media ringleaders. The grand result? The most powerful country in the world stretched to a three-ring breakdown of economic, cultural and military dimensions. The warhawks nurtured and promoted by the Bush regime have resulted in a more dangerous, more unstable world.

It isn’t that war is wrong. The Spartans at Thermopylae, confronting an army of 100,000 Persians, changed the course of history by protecting Greece (and as a result, the foundations for democracy, science, and philosophy.) This accomplishment could never have worked with doves sent bearing olive branches to alight on the Persian king Xerxes’ shoulders.

And much the same, the fight against terrorism (which owes many roots to the same region from which Xerxes’ soldiers came) isn’t something likely to be resolved through discussion and flowers. A fundamentalist mindset, much like Hassan-i-Sabbah's devotees nine centuries earlier, is at work. Looking forward, we can hope that greater education in conjunctions with the promotion of secular governments will influence future generations to thwart this kind of fanaticism; in the meantime, war is often a necessary tool.

It can even be argued that war has been a motivating factor for progress, as the flint arrowhead gave way to the surgeon’s scalpel. A group of berry-pluckers isn’t on the same fast-track of evolution as the hunters who must use innovation and coordination to stalk and kill. However, such metaphors begin to dry up as we enter the nuclear age. The modern world has more at stake, and is far more complex than ever before.

Warhawks don’t like complexity. Their mindset is childish and not a little demented.

They like absolutism and "red meat rhetoric." But reality doesn’t support their philosophy. The same crowd who bandy Reagan about like a patron saint blissfully ignore that the dissolution of the Soviet Union owed much to the olive branch, not the arrows. In today's geopolitical battlefield, the preopsterous "Axis of Evil" label fails to address Iran's huge underground movement of progressives bent on establishing a secular democracy in their country. 

And let’s face it: war isn’t something we should be particularly proud of. It displays the worst side of humanity’s character. It tempts one to wonder what we could be doing – the cure of all diseases, the alleviation of environmental problems, the colonization of other worlds – if we didn’t spend so much time in the business of killing.

 And it is a business. Different wars require different tactics; fighting against fascism in World War II, then waging the cloak-and-dagger Cold War, and now the War on Terror. Three wars, requiring three different sets of tactics. Assassins, Delta Force types, wetwork specialists… these are the best tools for our latest war, but they don’t line the pockets of big defense contractors. And those contractors know it.

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment," said President Eisenhower. "We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."

The trouble with the Iraq War is that it was conceived, marketed, and sold by the treacherous alliance of plutocrats and theocrats who had no regard for American security aside from their own stock-market securities. Fueled by militant nationalism (and a perverted version of Christianity not dissimilar to the mantras of the very terrorists we’re supposed to be fighting) they crushed open debate on the subject. Now we’re seeing the results of this misdirection and deception: The tripling of Al-Qaeda according to recent findings, the squandering of global goodwill, the miring of US resources into Iraq… while the cultists still scream, “Don’t question! Don’t debate! Attack! War is peace! Fnord!”

I supported war with Afghanistan before 9-11 ever happened, back in the days when the Taliban were dynamiting centuries-old Buddhist statues. Imagine if a fanatical government took charge in Egypt and decided that the pyramids were an affront to Allah; those pyramids, like the Afghani statues, are a gift to the human race and no one government reserves the right to destroy them simply because of the latest theological fashion trends.

War is a tool; so is peace. As such, they can be used correctly or incorrectly. To decide if it should be applied, and how it should be applied, and against whom it should be applied, requires open discourse, debate, and discussion. That means unplugging cowardly spinsters like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter (and the fanatics from the pacifist front.) Let them live in a world of absolutes.

Let them scream about liberalism, conservatism, while the rest of us see them for what they represent: extremism. That should not be the American way.

"War. War never changes." That's the mantra from the new game Fallout 3, spoken by Ron Perlman’s masterful voice over.

Perhaps, perhaps not. But people have the choice to change.

Related Elections 2008 info: 
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Meet the new U.S. Senators
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Examiner nationwide straw poll
Examiner Coverage: Elections 2008