by Howard Zinn
Thus, Machiavel i said: Don't question the ends of the prince, just tel him how best to do
what he wants to do, make the means more efficient. Thomas More said: You can't do
anything about the ends, but try to make the means more moral.
In the 400 years fol owing the era of Machiavel i and More, making war more humane
became the preoccupation of certain liberal "realists." Hugo Grotius, writing a century after More, proposed laws to govern the waging of war (Concerning the Law of War and Peace).
The beginning of the twentieth century saw international conferences at The Hague in the
Netherlands and at Geneva in Switzerland, which drew up agreements on how to wage war.
These realistic approaches, however, had little effect on the reality of war. Rather than
becoming more control ed, war became more uncontrol ed and more deadly, using more
horrible means and kil ing more noncombatants than ever before in the history of mankind.
We note the use of poison gas in World War I, the bombardment of cities in World War II,
the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of that war, the use of
napalm in Vietnam, and the chemical warfare in the Iran-Iraq war of the early 1980s.
Albert Einstein, observing the effects of attempts to "humanize" wars, became more and
more anguished. In 1932 he attended a conference of sixty nations in Geneva and listened
to the lengthy discussions of which weapons were acceptable and which were not, which
forms of kil ing were legitimate and which were not.
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Einstein was a shy, private person, but he did something extraordinary for him: he cal ed a press conference in Geneva. The international press turned out in force to hear Einstein,
already world famous for his theories of relativity. Einstein told the assembled reporters,
"One does not make wars less likely by formulating rules of warfare… . War cannot be
humanized. It can only be abolished."7 But the Geneva conference went on, working out
rules for "humane" warfare, rules that were repeatedly ignored in the world war soon to
come, a war of endless atrocities.
In early 1990 President George Bush, while approving new weapons systems for nuclear
warheads (of which the United States had about 30,000) and refusing to join the Soviet
Union in stopping nuclear testing, was wil ing to agree to destroy chemical weapons, but
only over a ten-year period. Such are the absurdities of "humanizing" war.8
Liberal States and Just Wars: Athens
The argument that there are just wars often rests on the social system of the nation
engaging in war. It is supposed that if a "liberal" state is at war with a "totalitarian" state, then the war is justified. The beneficent nature of a government is assumed to give
rightness to the wars it wages.
Ancient Athens has been one of the most admired of al societies, praised for its democratic
institutions and its magnificent cultural achievements. It had enlightened statesmen (Solon
and Pericles), pioneer historians (Herodotus and Thucydides), great philosophers (Plato and
Aristotle), and an extraordinary quartet of playwrights (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides,
and Aristophanes). When it went to war in 431 BC against its rival power, the city-state of
Sparta, the war seemed to be between a democratic society and a military dictatorship.
The great qualities of Athens were described early in that war by the Athenian leader
Pericles at a public celebration for the warriors, dead or alive. The bones of the dead were
placed in chests; there was an empty litter for the missing. There was a procession, a
burial, and then Pericles spoke. Thucydides recorded Pericles's speech in his History of the
Peloponnesian War:
Before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what principles of action
we rose to power, and under what institutions and through what manner of
life our empire became great. Our form of government does not enter into
rivalry with the institutions of others … . It is true that we are cal ed a
democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the
few… . The law secures equal justice to al alike… . Neither is poverty a
bar … . There is no exclusiveness in our public life … . At home the style of
our life is refined… . Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of the
whole earth How in upon us … . And although our opponents are fighting for
their homes and we on a foreign soil, we seldom have any difficulty in
overcoming them … . I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I
want to show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those who
enjoy none of these privileges.
Similarly, American presidents in time of war have pointed to the qualities of the American
system as evidence for the justness of the cause. Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt
were liberals, which gave credence to their words exalting the two world wars, just as the
liberalism of Truman made going into Korea more acceptable and the idealism of Kennedy's
New Frontier and Johnson's Great Society gave an early glow of righteousness to the war in
Vietnam.
But we should take a closer look at the claim that liberalism at home carries over into
military actions abroad.
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The tendency, especial y in time of war, is to exaggerate the difference between oneself and the opponent, to assume the conflict is between total good and total evil. It was true that
Athens had certain features of political democracy. Each of ten tribes selected 50
representatives, by lot, to make a governing council of 500. Trial juries were large, from
100 to 1,000 people, with no judge and no professional lawyers; the cases were handled by
the people involved.
Yet, these democratic institutions only applied to a minority of the population. A majority of
the people—125,000 out of 225,000—were slaves. Even among the free people, only males
were considered citizens with the right to participate in the political process.
Of the slaves, 50,000 worked in industry (this is as if, in the United States in 1990, 50
mil ion people worked in industry as slaves) and 10,000 worked in the mines. H. D. Kitto, a
leading scholar on Greek civilization and a great admirer of Athens, wrote; "The treatment
of the miners was cal ous in the extreme, the only serious blot on the general humanity of
the Athenians… . Slaves were often worked until they died."9 (To Kitto and others, slavery
was only a "blot" on an otherwise wonderful society.)
The jury system in Athens was certainly preferable to summary executions by tyrants.
Nevertheless, it put Socrates to death for speaking his mind to young people.
Athens was more democratic than Sparta, but this did not affect its addiction to warfare, to
expansion into other territories, to the ruthless conduct of war against helpless peoples.10 In
modern times we have seen the ease with which parliamentary democracies and
constitutional republics have been among the most ferocious of imperialists. We recal the
British and French empires of the nineteenth century and the United States as a world
imperial power in this century.
Throughout the long war with Sparta, Athens's democratic institutions and artistic
achievements continued. But the death tol was enormous. Pericles, on the eve of war,
refused to make concessions t
hat might have prevented it. In the second year of war, with
the casualties mounting quickly, Pericles urged his fel ow citizens not to weaken: "You have
a great polis, and a great reputation; you must be worthy of them. Half the world is yours—
the sea. For you the alternative to empire is slavery."11Pericles's kind of argument ("Ours is a great nation. It is worth dying for.") has persisted and been admired down to the present.
Kitto, commenting on that speech by Pericles, again overcome by admiration, wrote,
When we reflect that this plague was as awful as the Plague of London, and
that the Athenians had the additional horror of being cooped up inside their
fortifications by the enemy without, we must admire the greatness of the man
who could talk to his fel ow citizens like this, and the greatness of the people
who could not only listen to such a speech at such a time but actual y be
substantial y persuaded by it.
They were enough persuaded by it so that the war with Sparta lasted twenty-seven years.
Athens lost through plague and war (according to Kitto's own estimate) perhaps one-fourth
of its population.
However liberal it was (for its free male citizens) at home, Athens became more and more
cruel to its victims in war, not just to its enemy Sparta, but to every one caught in the
crossfire of the two antagonists. As the war went on, Kitto himself says, "a certain
irresponsibility grew."
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Could the treatment of the inhabitants of the island of Melos be best described as "a certain irresponsibility"? Athens demanded that the Melians submit to its rule. The Melians,
however, argued (as reported by Thucydides), "It may be to your interest to be our
masters, but how can it be ours to be your slaves?" The Melians would not submit. They
fought and were defeated. Thucydides wrote, "The Athenians thereupon put to death al
who were of military age, and made slaves of the women and children." (It was shortly after
this event that Euripides wrote his great antiwar play, The Trojan Women.)
What the experience of Athens suggests is that a nation may be relatively liberal at home
and yet total y ruthless abroad. Indeed, it may more easily enlist its population in cruelty to
others by pointing to the advantages at home. An entire nation is made into mercenaries,
being paid with a bit of democracy at home for participating in the destruction of life
abroad.
Liberalism at War
Liberalism at home, however, seems to become corrupted by war waged abroad. French
philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau noted that conquering nations "make war at least as
much on their subjects as on their enemies."12 Tom Paine, in America, saw war as the
creature of governments, serving their own interests, not the interests of justice for their
citizens. "Man is not the enemy of man but through the medium of a false system of
government."13 In our time, George Orwel has written that wars are mainly "internal."
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order
of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and
imprisoned.
Mark Twain, observing the United States at the turn of the century, its wars in Cuba and the
Philippines, described in The Mysterious Stranger the process by which wars that are at first seen as unnecessary by the mass of the people become converted into "just" wars:
The loud little handful wil shout for war. The pulpit wil warily and cautiously
protest at first … . The great mass of the nation wil rub its sleepy eyes, and
wil try to make out why there should be a war, and they wil say earnestly
and indignantly: "It is unjust and dishonorable and there is no need for war."
Then the few wil shout even louder … . Before long you wil see a curious
thing: anti-war speakers wil be stoned from the platform, and free speech
wil be strangled by hordes of furious men who stil agree with the speakers
but dare not admit it … .
Next, the statesmen wil invent cheap lies … and each man wil be glad of
these lies and wil study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus
he wil bye and bye convince himself that the war is just and he wil thank
God for the better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception.
Mark Twain died in 1910. In 1917, the United States entered the slaughterhouse of the
European war, and the process of silencing dissent and converting a butchery into a just
war took place as he had predicted.
President Woodrow Wilson tried to rouse the nation, using the language of a crusade. It was
a war, he said, "to end al wars." But large numbers of Americans were reluctant to join. A mil ion men were needed, yet in the first six weeks after the declaration of war only 73,000
volunteered. It seemed that men would have to be compel ed to fight by fear of prison, so
Congress enacted a draft law.
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The Socialist party at that time was a formidable influence in the country. It had perhaps 100,000 members, and more than a thousand Socialists had been elected to office in 340
towns and cities. Probably a mil ion Americans read Socialist newspapers. There were fifty-
five weekly Socialist newspapers in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas alone; over a
hundred Socialists were elected to office in Oklahoma. The Socialist party candidate for
president, Eugene Debs, got 900,000 in 1912 (Wilson won with 6 mil ion).
A year before the United States entered the European war, Helen Kel er, blind and deaf and
a committed Socialist, told an audience at Carnegie Hal :
Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought! Strike against
manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and al other tools of murder! Strike
against preparedness that means death and misery to mil ions of human
beings! Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in
an army of construction!14
The day after Congress declared war, the Socialist party met in an emergency convention
and cal ed the declaration "a crime against the American people." Antiwar meetings took
place al over the country. In the local elections of 1917, Socialists made great gains. Ten
Socialists were elected to the New York State legislature. In Chicago the Socialist party had
won 3.6 percent of the vote in 1915 and it got 34.7 percent in 1917. But with the advent of
war, speaking against it became a crime; Debs and hundreds of other Socialists were
imprisoned.
When that war ended, 10 mil ion men of various countries had died on the battlefields of
Europe, and mil ions more had been blinded, maimed, gassed, shel -shocked, and driven
mad. It was hard to find in that war any gain for the human race to justify that suffering,
that death.
Indeed, when the war was studied years later, it was clear that no rational decision based
on any moral principle had led the nations into war. Rather, there were imperial rivalries,
greed for more territory, a lusting for national prestige, and the stupidity of revenge. And at
the last moment, there was a reckless plunge by governments caught up in a series of
threats and counterthreats, mobilizations and countermobilizations, ultimatums and
counterultimatums, creating a momentum that mediocre leaders had neither the courage
nor the wil to stop. As described by Barbara Tuchman in her book The Gu
ns of August:
War pressed against every frontier. Suddenly dismayed, governments
struggled and twisted to fend it off. It was no use. Agents at frontiers were
reporting every cavalry patrol as a deployment to beat the mobilization gun.
General staffs, goaded by their relentless timetables, were pounding the table
for the signal to move lest their opponents gain an hour's head start. Appal ed
upon the brink, the chiefs of state who would be ultimately responsible for
their country's fate attempted to back away, but the pul of military schedules
dragged them forward.15
Bitterness and disil usion fol owed the end of the war, and this was reflected in the literature
of those years: Ernest Hemingway's Farewel to Arms, John dos Passos's U.S.A., and Ford Madox Ford's No More Parades. In Europe, German war veteran Erich Maria Remarque
wrote the bitter antiwar novel Al Quiet on the Western Front.
In 1935 French playwright Jean Giraudoux wrote La guerre de Troie n 'aura pas lieu (The
Trojan War Wil Not Take Place; the English translation was retitled Tiger at the Gates). The war of the Greeks against Troy, more than a thousand years before Christ, was provoked,
according to legend, by the kidnapping of the beautiful Helen by the Trojans. Giraudoux at
one point uses Hecuba, an old woman, and Demokos, a Trojan soldier, to show how the
ugliness of war is masked by attractive causes, as in this case, the recapture of Helen.
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Demokos: Tel us before you go, Hecuba, what it is you think war looks like.
Hecuba: Like the bottom of a baboon. When the baboon is up in a tree, with
its hind end facing us, there is the face of war exactly: scarlet, scaly, glazed,
framed in a clotted, filthy wig.
Demokos: So war has two faces: this you describe, and Helen's.
An Eager Bombardier
My own first impressions of something cal ed war had come at the age of ten, when I read
with excitement a series of books about "the boy al ies"—a French boy, an English boy, an American boy, and a Russian boy, who became friends, united in the wonderful cause to
defeat Germany in World War I. It was an adventure, a romance, told in a group of stories
about comradeship and heroism. It was war cleansed of death and suffering.
If anything was left of that romantic view of war, it was total y extinguished when, at