#on the wish for peace
I don’t know if this is where sociocultural rambles like this go, but I have no place else to really go. So OK, one of the most important progressive slogans (starting at least with the American youth response to the Vietnam war) is the ‘no to war’ stuff. This critique also applies to American interference with Iraq or Syria in similar ways. War has been long understood by people in the West in general and America in particular as a *choice*, that it’s just really easy to imagine how it’s better to quit. Note, the exception isn’t even in US discussions of WWII, but the Civil War and the War of Independence. These are the only wars Americans fought due to existential threats to the country itself.
Anyway, so I think the whole concept of war being necessary sometimes (most prominently when your country is invaded and there’s an attempted hostile overthrow of the state) has been forgotten. It’s been boggling my mind as I try to imagine how people could honestly imagine Ukrainians are just being unreasonably aggressive in response to actual invasion, and the West is encouraging this aggressiveness for their own reasons. And the only thing I can come up with is that for those arguing in good faith, with no particular sympathy for Russia, it’s just that we’ve all forgotten the point of war. And in America, we’ve never really experienced it and are pretty insulated from such a scenario.
I mean, both 9/11 and Pearl Harbor have two things in common: 1) at least initially, pretty much no one in the US disputed the need for immediate and strong response; 2) they weren’t actually existential threats to the existence of the US.
Like yeah, OK, Japan attacked American territory, and politically or *pragmatically* speaking, the US couldn’t just be seen to let that go. At the same time, what are the odds the Japanese were literally going to be able to summon the sheer number of infantry forces and the navy needed to present a realistic threat to American existence? Next to none, though more than a bunch of terrorists could do in terms of direct force. People were shocked and angry, and felt vulnerable, but as a country, was the US ever truly vulnerable to invasion or even a war spilling over on home soil?
Well, we can answer that question in the affirmative, but only if we accept that terrorism = war. But at the same time, you can’t really broker a peace with terrorists the way you can with a nation state, either. You can pull out of the Middle East, but there’s no actual guarantee the terrorists will be happy with that and leave the West alone in that case. After all, there’s always revenge. It takes a long time for even an absent enemy to stop presenting a convenient target.
Anyway, my point is that we’re all used to wars of choice. In that situation, the moral high ground goes to whoever chooses peace. You can argue that the war in question is still justified, but it’s inevitably an uphill battle. There’s good reason so many people are cynical about such wars: so often, the common people on both sides die while the elites get richer on their blood and tears. It’s a dark thing, even if you can justify it.
But the attempts by many to pretend that Ukraine resisting a straightforward invasion by a stronger, larger neighbor is a similar situation is just… unconscionable. I can only begin to excuse it in some cases because like I said, Americans and indeed most Westerners alive today haven’t experienced a 'just war’ (though there’s a reason why Putin loves invoking WWII references… for Russia and much of Europe, it was indeed a war facing an existential threat).
When another country violently invades you with the intent of taking over the government and dismantling your national identity and power to resist tyranny, this is the equivalent of attempted rape and murder– on a broad scale. It’s not so much a metaphor as a simple generalization, because the soldiers of that country straight up want to murder you, your friends, your neighbors, and many of them won’t stop at raping or pillaging, either.
Not that war isn’t always traumatizing and horrific. But not all war is total war, where there are no limits and the society may crumble if the citizens as well as the soldiers don’t fight back. This is what we mean when we use the word 'genocide’, although no word can capture the reality of such a thing.
The thing is, I think the reality of such a thing is so huge, so terrifying and absolute, that it’s essentially unknowable for many. It takes a leap of empathy and imagination to truly conceptualize the ruination of everything and everyone around you, while accepting it’s not your fault and either you escape, help the fight (even just in maintaining morale) or you perish. I understand that. That’s why I keep thinking about the comparison to telling a person facing repeated rape and (attempted) murder they they shouldn’t fight back and others shouldn’t help, and they should simply take it and hope it’s over quickly.
To be clear, the violent criminal engaging in rape and attempted murder (in fiction, at least) often seems to advise the victims not to struggle or 'make things difficult’. Sometimes there’s a little speech about how it’ll just be worse if the victim fights back and the criminal has to make an effort. Inevitably, the victim in stories fights back in a way they may not be able to in real life, and the audience certainly doesn’t blame them. Because that would just be weird and unnatural, wouldn’t it?
Anyway, essentially, when someone has a knife to your throat, and the throats of everyone you love, I imagine that suddenly you too will *want* to fight back, and wish for victory and even vengeance.
In summary: when facing death, either individually or as a people, the moral high ground shifts, and there’s a moral imperative to survive. There’s no moral or indeed practical benefit to submitting to violent oppression. I mean, there’s a calculation that’s necessary to avoid nuclear war, certainly, but I’m talking about those wishing and hoping that Ukraine simply submits to its own ruin and the death of its people. It’s honestly just kind of ridiculous. The *only* scenario where surrender is indeed better is when it’s *necessary*, and fighting further is suicidal, and your country is faced with overwhelming odds or is facing weapons it cannot counter. Even then, in most cases the type of resistance simply shifts to guerrilla warfare and civilian resistance. This is actually the way in which all people will instinctively fight for freedom. It’s not just a slogan, after all.
