War and violence. Violence and war. Both are integral to the human psyche. It is a part of our animal makeup. It is undeniable. It is the territorial imperative that began with defending treetops with good crops of fruit from other bands of primates. Both violence and war have plagued humanity before and since we left the trees for the savannah. Human beings are too violent to be truly civilized. Civilization is only a thin veneer laid atop a thick multiple layered structure of fear, suspicion, jealousy, envy, acquisitiveness, greed and misunderstood sexual drives. It is, however, this thin veneer of civilization that keeps us striving for excellence, deflects our energy, and ameliorates our ruthlessness toward members of all species, but especially our own. It is also that thin layer that initiates the better parts of religion, that drives the selflessness of service providers, and provides the altar upon which idealists lay down their lives in self sacrifice. Like any natural veneer, that of civilization also contains serious, ingrained, structural flaws. One is the darker, malevolent side of religion. It is today, as always, this portion of religion that drives the organized violence and murder that we call war. After all what is religion? Religion is, when pared of all dross, fat, mystical nonsense, and artificial surfaces, improvable. Religion is then illogical. It is illogical for religion and religious leaders to support either side in a war. God is not on one side or the other. God is. God waits. To believe in any religion as they are currently practiced is akin to some (hopefully mild) form of insanity aided by show business fantasy and fanaticism. For individuals, religion can be as mild as a slight cold, or an all consuming illness like tuberculosis, or AIDS. A useful analogy can be found in the movie “Harvey”. Jimmy Stuart’s character believes in a large white rabbit. Since the other characters in the story can’t see the rabbit for themselves, they think Jimmy’s character is mildly nuts. He is a little crazy, but likely not dangerous. The story would be quite different if either Stuart or the rabbit carried AK-47’s and suddenly started killing people. Despite this obvious mild mental illness, we humans often choose religion as the main reason to hate and thus generate the level of emotion needed to kill others of our own species. In doing this we also change the level or degree of the mental illness. Now having inflicted such pain and suffering upon our fellow creatures, our actions must be justified and defended. We do this violence and murder solely because of slight physical or social differences caused by, or enforced by, or exaggerated by geographical differences. These same geographical distances have also created slightly different versions of similar unbelievable, illogical, mild forms of psychosis (slight differences between religions). This becomes still another reason to justify killing. “He don’t believe what we believe, so kill him.” Why this is so, is, I believe, also simple. It is because religion is so full of mystical nonsense, unexplainable contradictions, illogical events, all of which are acceptable simply because of a long history of expected belief. It is also easy to add one more requirement to a religion: kill in the name of your religion. Religion then becomes the ultimate compulsion and justification for violence, murder, and its organization into conditions so widespread that we then call it war. The real reasons for war are, in the end, always really all about territory. It is territory that permits the agricultural production gathering base of food and fiber that supports a population. In more modern examples, access to particular commodities like petroleum and other minerals are substitutes for territory. Or these desirable materials are to be found within desirable territories. It is what makes them desirable. If we examine any conflict past or present, at its base, can be found the desire to control territory. Today with Israel and Hezbollah it is the Baaka Valley, the Golan Heights, and nearby fertile farmland. However, what is discussed as the real reason for this conflict? Most commonly the answer is simply “religion”. The real reason for all war is land. Territory, not religion is the push that becomes the shove that leads to violence, murder, and that organized behavior that we call war. Thus we have come full circle. We humans really war over the control and use and exploitation of land. We excuse our conflicting emotions for doing this to our fellow creatures by layering over the unpalatable cake of murder and land greed with the icing of religion. Religion as a reason for killing is less assailable and more defensible despite its own internal illogical unreasonableness. This is so simply because it has been a part of us and our cultures for so long that many individuals never even think to question it. “God said “Kill”. I killed.” Of course, God didn’t say it. Some priest said it, but that is another story. Hell, yes, Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition. Absolve your soul as you kill another human being by devaluing the life of the chink, dinge, Charlie, Chuck, Fritz, papist, colonial, Jap, sepoy, crusader, spic, greaser, injun, nigger, slope, red skin, eyetie, buck, rag head, haolie, doe, anglo, rebel, americano, gringo, Jew, isolator, protestant, and unbeliever. My recent internet search found nineteen different insurgencies going on around the world. Nineteen places where those who control the land are fighting with those who want to control the land. These are the internal conflicts. There are also the exterior conflicts like Israel and Hezbollah today. Or in the recent past, the Korean War, Vietnam, and World War Two. How is terrorism as we know it today different from terrorism of the past? Today we use the word indiscriminately with new and illogical meanings. With very few exceptions, all wars in all of history have encompassed some form of terrorism. Terrorism is a methodology for waging organized violence. Because it is effective, it is not new. What is new is who is employing the methodology to whom. In the past, civilized countries frequently used to terrorism against the local, native populations. Today, it is the local native population that is using it against their governments and other perceived enemies. What is new is modern civilization’s reluctance to force themselves to adequately deal with both terrorists and terrorism. This is caused by the rising levels of tuti-fruiti wishing for the impossible and illogical. Simply put, terrorism and terrorists can only be defeated by actions that we moderns with our tender and unrealistic feelings really do not want to do. That is why Osama ben Laden is so sure that in the long run he can win. For the tender Westerners to win will require us to change a lot. We will need to change some beliefs. We will need to change how we live. We will have to change what we are willing to bear and do. When the process is far enough along, we will be different. That difference of the now with the future is why Osama will think that he has won the clash of cultures and religions inherent in the struggle between the tender West and a fundamentalist, theocratic Islam. In many ways we members of the tender West have allowed ourselves over the last 60 years to fall into a particularly idiotic fool’s paradise of illogical thought and unsustainable beliefs. One reason for this is that we have been able to successfully move the physical location of most wars well away from our own lands and shores. The major exception to this general rule are the localized insurgencies in Northern Ireland, Columbia, Peru, Chile, Cambodia, Bosnia, Spain and Greece since of World War Two. This lack of the immediacy of experience of death and destruction, the intimate knowledge of the experiences of war upon our lands and shores has promoted generations of citizens with an unfounded idealism that all violence is wrong. That level of stupidity cannot be sustained when one is actually attacked. Thus Osama’s plan for, and perpetration of, 9-11 upon our citizens. Does anyone doubt that that single event forced many changes in the United States and in the tender West? Three thousand of our citizens died in another of a series of “events” that had been carefully conceived, planned and carried out. The difference was that this time it happened on our shores. Before it had been in “foreign” places with funny names that are not quite real. The earlier deaths in far away places came in penny-packets as the terrorists were practicing. The 9-11 event was so catastrophic that it magnified and definitely dramatized the sudden possibility of instant death close to home and hearth. The war of cultures was brought home to us in graphic and immediate detail. No one doubts that there will be additional attacks. How could there not be? There is a huge disparity in the cost balance of terrorist attacks. Some serious investigators have estimated that the whole of 9-11 cost al-Quaeda between $300 to $500,000.00 The results of 9-11 cost the U.S. and the world trillions of dollars. It is still causing changes in how expenditures are made and is still adding expenditures to budgets that did not have to be made before 9-11. Despite all this, the primary effect of terrorists attacks is in the psychological changes forced upon the targeted civilian population. We can no longer afford to go back to sleep like sheep in a safe haven. The wolf has learned how to sneak in among the sheep. Our protective oceans are suddenly much narrower. Drowsiness on watch guarantees another attack. Each attack, successful or not, reinforces the senses of fear and dread in the population and is illustrated in the quotation “knowledge of a morning hanging focuses one’s attention wonderfully”. All of which means that as each episode of terrorism unfolds, the desired reactions of fear and panic are reinforced. The questions remain, will we allow fear to rule us? Will we allow fear to change us? To survive, will we be forced to become like our attackers? Will we of the tender West again be forced to kill civilian populations indiscriminately as we did in World War Two? That is one answer. Are there others?
(c) Copyright 2006: George Wallace recently published a book on religion which lashes out at nearly all of the comfortable ideas about God, the trappings of organized religion, and the priesthood. His pithy comments and suggestions for a return to a God-centered personal religion will interest everyone. This article may be freely reprinted so long as all copyright attributions, and the full content of this resource box are included. www.OhGodIsThatYou.com
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