The War Geniuses

The thing that most struck me during Memorial Day/Decoration Day yesterday was a quote that Amy Goodman used in her Memorial Day article:

Thomas Paine wrote in the March 21, 1778, edition of his pamphlet The Crisis, 'If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of willful and offensive war...he who is the author of a war, lets loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds the nation to death.'

I suppose that it struck me so strongly because I have been reading a new book by Fred Kaplan entitled The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War.

Petraeus and his people recognized that the there was a necessity to deal with insurgency in Iraq and thus became a sort of “insurgency” themselves withing the US military establishment.

These military people are all highly intelligent and experienced. They have unlimited financial backing; they take time off to get Ph.D.'s; write books; fly off to high-level conferences; get visas and permits easily; have access to every source of information there is. I have known some of them. I am aware that they have far more information and sheer brain power than I do.

However, I see again and again as I read Kaplan's book that all that talent and experience and money was worse than wasted – it was detrimental. The Iraq war was, as one of these highly-powered people himself said, “a colossal blunder.” It was the opening of a vein that bleeds the US to death. The Viet-Nam war was the same thing. I think that one of the ancient traps for the highly intelligent and subtle and powerful is that they make an initial assumption that is wrong and get started down a wrong road, and all their intelligence and subtlety is used to continue down that road past all kinds of great obstacles until they reach the dead end. There is then no hope but going back to the beginning, to the naked human being, the Child of God, the mutual humanity of us all.