Sanity or Truth? Which Goes First?

Miscellany

Posted April 8, 2022

Sanity or Truth? Which Goes First?

It is often said that the first casualty of war is Truth, but this is not necessarily true. Often the first casualty of war is Sanity. I am not about to dispute the occurrence of “rebels without cause”, for they happen. Nor am I about to deny instances where war is inevitable under the prevailing political culture. But I will assert that this war-friendly regime exists because war cannot survive competition and we are unable to break its monopoly. This, in turn, is attributable to our failure to heed President Eisenhower’s warning about the threat to humankind posed by the “Military– Industrial Complex” and other similar warnings.

Instead, we let demagogues burn into our minds rubbish such as the popular General Vegetius utterance:

“Ci vis Pacem para Bellum” = “If you wish for Peace, prepare for War”

The notion is to blame, along with its like and yes, ourselves for letting them turn us into war-addicts. It is they who make us “give cannons to the children and children to the canons”, like Jacques Prevert put it.

The Vegetius utterance is ludicrous. It scares us about losing our peace and makes us prepare for war with which to subdue our neighbours who may prepare for war so as to defend themselves against the threat we posed them when we got armed to defend the peace against the threat they could pose by getting armed ... This inanity has been sold widely and has caused humankind to resemble a hamster in cage running madly on the wheel! If we shed this phobia, there would be no one to threaten the Peace, nor a need for armies to “protect” us.

More than defending the Peace, armies act to suppress freedom. They install and sustain tyrants. The tyrants divert public resources to the armies thereby starving the people of resources. This, in turn, necessitates more oppression and the tyrants keep on expanding the military for more of the same.

Fighting for Peace dissipates the energies needed to confront War. Peace is nothing, it is merely the absence of War. In the presence of War, Peace cannot be – in the absence of War, Peace is inevitable.

Indeed, if the resources consumed by the armies were re-assigned to eradicate the “need” for armies, the causes of war would wane, if not vanish.

War has preempted the scene, as it has prevented the development of “alternatives”. There is no realistic facility in existence through which to pursue objectives like national security and international dispute resolution. Institutions such as the International Court and the UN are as if custom-designed to accentuate the “supremacy” of war. They are eunuchs guarding the harem of war.

In 1919 while licking their wounds from WWI, humans created the “League of Nations” with a mandate "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security."

It proved useless. The League didn’t prevent Hitler from building the mighty Wehrmacht (War Machine). Thus WWII wasn’t prevented and some 60M people were slaughtered.

At the end of WWII, we went at it again and concocted the United Nations, our familiar UN. But we did not start with a post-mortem of the League, as we should have done. The result is a UN that is arguably no better than the League. But let the UN speak for itself:

“What we [UN] do: Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the UN can take action on the issues confronting humanity in the 21st century, including:

* Maintain international peace and security

* Protect human rights

* Uphold international law.”

“The UN can take action”? Why does it not? Because it has metamorphosed into a lethargic bureaucracy thoroughly incapable of more than a Debating Society. The UN did not prevent, indeed it accommodated the Cold War. It did not prevent the formation of NATO in 1949. Its failure to do so precipitated the formation of the Warsaw Pact in 1982, both of them being formidable war-making machines. They fed on each other by faking protection of each from the other.

Bureaucracies die hard. After the demise of the SOVIET, NATO carries on “protecting” and pursuing dangers to help it grow. The UN bats not an eye to NATO trespassing on its turf, duplicating the UN wardship of peace.

Hell no, the UN is not a toothless tiger, it has big fangs. The other day Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, took a run at a Nobel Peace prize by delivering a harsh blow to the Russians. He called Putin “untrustworthy”! Yes, indeed!

I am not privy to Putin’s reaction but I guess he emailed Bob to go jump in the lake, bottomless, no less (he, not the lake) for that is what Bob does well. Ask Rick Mercer ...

*******************************

Themistocles goes to sea

Anticipating fighting the Persians at sea, the Greeks sought an admiral to command the fleet. Themistocles, renowned neither for seamanship nor ethos, went after the job.

What do you know about naval warfare, the Athenians asked the aspiring admiral – he readily admitted ignorance.

“But I need a victory”, he added, because “Miltiades’ glory caused me loss of sleep”. Miltiades had beaten the Persians in Marathon 10 years previously and the Greeks were proud of him.

The Athenians said “Yes”. The foxy admiral lured the large clumsy Persian ships into the Salamis narrows and did them in. The victory saved Western Civilization and has been rated as the most important sea-battle in history. Perhaps it is.

**************************************

Sanity or Truth? Which Goes First? - Alcyonenews