Song Lyric of the Day (‘Eve of Destruction,’ on Returning From ‘Four Days in Space’)

“Ah, you may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place
The poundin' of the drums, the pride and disgrace.”—American rock ‘n’ roll songwriter P.F. Sloan (1945-2015), “Eve of Destruction” (1965), performed by Barry McGuire from the album of the same name

NASA’s successful launch of the Artemis II space program—marking America’s return to the moon for the first time in a half century—was rightly celebrated as a resumption of a scientific and technological marvel. 

But I was also struck by the conjunction of events in the above lyrics from Barry McGuire’s compelling protest song of the mid-Sixties, as well as a repetition of that today.

Even as the Gemini missions were taking the space program to another level six decades ago, tensions were rising in the Mideast, as Israel and its Arab neighbors confronted each other over control of water sources in the Jordan River drainage basin—or, as McGuire sang, “You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'?/And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin'.”

Now, even as so many eyes are lifted to the skies, the focus of so much of the world remains on the Mideast, only this time shifting from the Jordan River to the Strait of Hormuz, where America’s current President is unabashedly engaging in “the poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace.”

Some may wonder if the current war actually represents “the Eve of Destruction.” But how else to interpret the current Oval Office occupant’s threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Ages, where they belong”?

Quote of the Day (William James, on War, ‘An Explosion of Imaginative Energy’)

“Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrills and excitements. The only relief from Habit's tediousness is periodical excitement. From time immemorial wars have been, especially for non-combatants, the supremely thrilling excitement. Heavy and dragging at its end, at its outset every war means an explosion of imaginative energy. The dams of routine burst, and boundless prospects open….

“This is the constitution of human nature which we have to work against. The plain truth is that people want war. They want it anyhow; for itself, and apart from each and every possible consequence. It is the final bouquet of life's fireworks.”— American philosopher, psychologist, and educator William James (1842-1910), “Remarks at the Peace Banquet,” published in the Official Report of the Universal Peace Congress, held in Boston in 1904, and in The Atlantic Monthly, December, 1904

One hundred and twenty years ago this month, William James’ analysis of the psychological roots of war came amid a convulsive thrust of American power far outside the nation’s continental bounds. It was the culmination of his rising concern, since the Spanish-American War six years before, over the possibility that his fellow citizens would be embroiled in yet another overseas conflict.

Viewing the outcome of those hostilities, Secretary of State John Hay had pronounced it “a splendid little war.” Even the vast possessions in the Caribbean and in the Pacific gained by the U.S. at a cost of only 4,000 casualties, however, did not lessen James’ grave misgivings about the nation’s new imperial role.

The philosopher’s younger brothers, Wilkie and Bob, had served in the Civil War, ending up physically and emotionally wounded, respectively, in the postwar period.

Already troubled by their fate, William began to think even harder about the war fever that had swept through America again. It was a line of inquiry that Sigmund Freud would pursue, through different premises and on a worldwide scale, in his last significant work, Civilization and Its Discontents (1931).

James went on to argue in the speech and essay from which I’ve quoted that this instinct for war was so ferocious that it could only be tamped down by degrees, not abolished instantly. It was a mournful preview of what developed through the rest of the 20^th century, when technological advances spread destruction on a level that James had never seen and might not have even contemplated.

I thought of James’ speculations last night while watching, on TCM, the 1997 biopic MacArthur, starring Gregory Peck. A highlight of the movie was an extended passage from the victorious American general’s speech, a month after the dropping of atomic bombs, when the Japanese surrendered in September 1945 to conclude WWII:

“A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war….

“We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.”

The philosopher and the general would shudder at more recent developments. The rise of terrorism has increased the chances of regional wars (e.g., the War on Terror) and failed states so weak that their governments are no longer in control (Somalia, Afghanistan).

Moreover, the alliance system that MacArthur deemed no longer sufficient to contain the madness of armed outbreaks. Pointing to a new “axis of autocracies” (Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran) now cooperating, foreign correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov asks, in today’s Wall Street Journal, “Has World War III Already Begun?”

Pray that the answer is no. 

Quote of the Day (Elizabeth Samet, on the Use of Force)

“The way we think and talk about force will influence not only the use of American military might abroad, but also our response to the violence that has increasingly been used as a tool of insurrection at home.”— American essayist and historian Elizabeth Samet, Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness (2021)

This Veterans Day, even as we honor their service, let us remember to bind up their wounds—emotional as well as physical.

Quote of the Day (Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, on National Stories and International Quarrels)

“No two countries tell the same story, even when describing the same events. One country’s glory is another country’s grievance. One’s founding myth is another’s crowning shame. In international relations, such dissonance is dangerous. Governments quarrel over what history makes rightfully theirs. Resentment over old offenses overrides powerful incentives to cooperate. Interests, threats, pride, justice—determinants of war and peace are defined by stories that never overlap exactly and often clash catastrophically. The past is never dead; it is kindling for future conflict.”—Foreign Affairs editor, diplomatic historian and George Marshall biographer Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, “The Clash of Victimizations” (review of Howard French’s “Everything Under the Heavens”), Washington Monthly, June/July/August 2017

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Phil Klay, on ‘God in a War Zone’)

“How do you not see God in a war zone? The God I believe in was tortured and died in agony on the cross. God is there when I see another human being and see something of infinite worth and value. God is there in this infinite horror and majesty of the world. The idea to me that all of this beauty and all of this horror is nothing but mere matter seems ridiculous, and I can’t disentangle my sense of horror from my sense of the beauty and value of what is being destroyed in war.”—American novelist and Iraq war veteran Phil Klay, interviewed by David Marchese for “Talk” column, “Finding a Moral Center in This Era of War,” The New York Times Magazine, Dec. 3, 2023

The attached photo of an anti-terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine, taken July 18, 2016, was distributed by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

Quote of the Day (C.V. Wedgwood, on Changing Reasons for ‘The Judgment of the Sword’)

“After the expenditure of so much human life to so little purpose, men might have grasped the essential futility of putting the beliefs of the mind to the judgement of the sword. Instead, they rejected religion as an object to fight for and found others.”― English historian C.V. Wedgwood (1910-1997), The Thirty Years War (1938)

With the signing of the second of two treaties, the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War, 375 years ago this month.

I suspect that the two proper nouns in the last sentence will bring a barely visible light to the eyes of many of my readers. They’ll be lucky to hear the dimmest echo of a high school or college world history class, or, if they’re real theater aficionados, they might remember it as the period in which Bertolt Brecht’s fierce antiwar play, Mother Courage and Her Children, is set.

Yet all of this deserves to be better recalled. The lengthy war that came to an end with the strokes of several pens and millions of sighs released resulted in the greatest loss of civilian lives in Europe until the Irish Potato Famine two centuries later.

I bring this up now because of the latest crisis engulfing the Middle East: Hamas’ coordinated terror attacks earlier this month from the Gaza Strip onto adjoining areas of Israel, followed by retaliation by Israel. In the three weeks since the fighting began, 1,400 Israelis and 7,000 Palestinians have already perished—and those totals are sure to climb as Israel prepares a full-scale war.

A couple of weeks ago, after intense exposure on the evening news to the anguish all too present in the region now, a relative of mine, though a regular churchgoer, said he couldn’t believe how much violence has been committed in the name of religion. His stunned disbelief was understandable, but also, in a larger sense, misplaced.

The Peace of Westphalia dealt with the religious elements in the war by instituting the principle of cuius regio, eius religio (each prince would have the right to determine the religion of his own state). But as C.V. Wedgwood noted above, rulers soon would alight on other motives for whipping up hatred.

The Hamas-Israel War has pitted Moslems against Jews in the Mideast, but the conflict goes beyond mere sectarian issues, with lack of a Palestinian homeland, class resentment, and superpower politics also involved. 

In much the same way, the Thirty Years War ostensibly arose from conflicts between Catholics and Protestants hub in Europe, but issues of national sovereignty and balance-of-power issues eventually complicated matters considerably. (Well along in the conflict, Catholic France supported the Protestant principals in an attempt to damage the Holy Roman Empire.)

At this vast remove, we’ll never know for certain exactly how many lives were lost in this protracted conflict, but historians estimate that somewhere in the neighborhood of eight million perished.

Human beings have accumulated a wealth of knowledge in the four hundred years since the Thirty Years War broke out, but have yet to ameliorate on a broad scale the tensions of suffering people and the exploitative instincts of their leaders. So it’s all too possible that the body count of the Thirty Years War can be exceeded in our time.

(The image accompanying this post, The Ratification of the Treaty of Munster, was painted in 1648 by Dutch painter Gerard Ter Borch.)

Quote of the Day (Ambrose Bierce, on a ‘Theater of War’)

“No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.”— Journalist, Union Civil War soldier, and satirist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), “A Horseman in the Sky,” originally published in 1889 in the San Francisco Examiner, revised as part of Bierce’s short-story collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891)

The story of the last days of Bierce may be most familiar to readers and film fans through the 1985 Carlos Fuentes novel Old Gringo, as well as the movie adaptation four years later starring Gregory Peck, Jane Fonda and Jimmy Smits. Fuentes said he became interested in the cynical Bierce when he read Tales of Soldiers and Civilians as a teen.

I chose the above quote for my Memorial Day post. Readers desiring more information about the impact of the Civil War on Bierce-- a decorated Civil War veteran, forced out of the fighting because of a head wound—and how it left him with a belief in war’s absurdity and the determination to convey its “rattle and roar” in unsparing, exact detail, might want to read this post of mine from nine years ago.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Pope Francis, on ‘The Only Way to Peace’)

“It is neither a culture of confrontation nor a culture of conflict which builds harmony within and between peoples, but rather a culture of encounter and a culture of dialogue; this is the only way to peace.”—Pope Francis, Sunday “Angelus” prayer at noon, Sept. 1, 2013

Quote of the Day (Cecil Day-Lewis, on War, Fear and ‘This High Delirium of Nations’)

“Today, I can but record
In truth and patience

This high delirium of nations
And hold to it the reflecting, fragile word.” —Anglo-Irish poet (and British Poet Laureate) Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972), “Ode to Fear,” in The Complete Poems (1992)

In case you were wondering: Yes, this poet is the father of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis. He wrote against the backdrop of the outbreak of Fascism in Europe, and the world war that resulted.

The anxiety of our time is of a different tenor than the poet’s, but the potential for resentment, unrest and a widespread conflagration of bellicosity is every bit as real now as it was then. In particular, the mood swings now afflicting the American public over the collapse of the Afghan government pose real concern.

Twenty years ago, a widespread consensus existed for military action into the country. There are any one of several reasons why that mission failed, but—after the longest war in American history—it is clear that the American withdrawal has triggered scenes reminiscent of the fall of Saigon.

Whether it’s the Russian experience in Afghanistan or Germany’s after WWI, a futile military mission can sow the seeds for national bitterness over the loss of face and the loss of lives.

We should not imagine immunity from such feeling in the United States. But, even as scenes of chaos and carnage fill our TV screens and many question the point of so much American sacrifice, instead of lamenting “another Vietnam” or “another Munich,” lawmakers might want to explain how:

*Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai acted erratically, emotionally, in a paranoid manner, and in deep complicity with those pocketing American aid all around him—and why so many in Congress barely made a peep; 

*Just-departed President Ashraf Ghani cut and ran in the face of the Taliban only a day after a televised address in which he said he still hoped to “stop the ongoing imposed war on Afghan people";

*The Bush administration widened the focus beyond finding Osama bin Laden to a wider war in Iraq;

*Out of $7.8 billion spent by the U.S. on reconstruction projects since 2008, $2.4 billion in assets were unused, abandoned, deteriorated, or destroyed, according to a report by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR); 

*Donald Trump can claim that Biden had lost the country when he himself wanted to withdraw four months earlier--and few in his party were willing to denounce the plan loudly at the time, when it could have made a difference.

If historical analogies are in order for Afghanistan, there is another one at hand. The question of “Who Lost China?” in 1949 poisoned American foreign policy—and provided endless grist for Republican talking points—for two decades before Richard Nixon, a Cold Warrior of unimpeachable credentials, moved towards normalizing relations in 1972.

As today, a Democratic President was in office in China when our client government fell with shocking speed in 1949. 

But Harry Truman, like Joe Biden now, correctly saw that there were limits in how much the U.S. could accomplish with a corrupt regime that took American money without building up a stable government or the nation’s will to fight. ("All the money we [have] given them is now invested in United States real estate," Truman observed in explaining why "We are not going to give the Chinese a nickel for any purpose whatever," according to historian Michael Beschloss' Presidents of War.) 

The “high delirium of nations” that Day-Lewis fought against is a dangerous state of affairs. But so is a populace with a cable-bred, one-minute attention span constitutionally incapable of remembering the lessons of history. 

Instead of braying about the Afghanistan disaster, posturing politicians and pundits owe it to a war-weary American people to explain how much longer they were prepared to stay in a remote, mountainous nation long renowned before U.S. troops ever set foot there as "the graveyard of empires"--and when they would know it was time to go.

Quote of the Day (George Santayana, on ‘The End of War’)

“Only the dead have seen the end of war."— Spanish-born American philosopher, essayist, and poet George Santayana (1863-1952), “Tipperary,” in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

The image accompanying this post is the Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Veterans Memorial, which I visited while in Pittsburgh in June 2019.

Quote of the Day (Marjorie Pickthall, on the ‘Marching Men’ of WWI)

“With souls unpurged and steadfast breath

They supped the sacrament of death.

And for each one, far off, apart,

Seven swords have rent a woman’s heart.”—Canadian poet Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922), “Marching Men,” from The Wood Carver's Wife (1922)

Remember those lines this Memorial Day, and beyond—along with this one, from Herman Wouk’s novel War and Remembrance: “Either war is finished, or we are.”

(The image accompanying this post shows a grim, agonized Kirk Douglas, knowing his men face certain death, in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. That 1957 film showed, in less poetic terms than Ms. Pickthall’s verses, the immense, lacerating sacrifice of soldiers in WWI—indeed, implicitly, of all wars.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘M*A*S*H,’ In Which Klinger Tells Hawkeye and B.J. Who’s Funnier in the 4077th)

Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger [played by Jamie Farr] [responding to a question from Hawkeye Pierce and B.J. Hunnicutt about which of the two is funnier]: “I'm writing my Uncle Abdul about what it's like over here—doctors, nurses, saving lives. Well, I got a commanding officer who dresses me up in his clothes and sits me on a horse named Sophie so he can paint his own picture. There's a priest writing war ditties. And a snooty major who pays me twenty bucks to go out into the woods with him and watch him blow up a pigeon with a land mine. And if that doesn't beat all, I got a head nurse who shoots unarmed luggage. All you guys do is tell jokes. What the hell's so funny about that?”— M*A*S*H, Season 8, Episode 12, “Dear Uncle Abdul,” original air date Dec. 3, 1979, teleplay by John Rappaport and Jim Mulligan, directed by William Jurgensen

Quote of the Day (Karl Barth, on WWI and the Question of God’s Will)

“None of this is God’s will, neither the selfishness and arrogance in human beings, nor the mutual hatred of the nations, nor their anxieties about one another and their threatening armaments, nor finally that they mutually attack life with both precise and heavy firing power at sea, on land, or in the air. All these things are completely alien to the innermost being of God . . . God is as distant from them as from their enemies in the wrath with which their actions fill God. But God is also as distant from them in the love that God wants to bestow to draw both sides out of their confusion. And this indeed remains the same in victory or in defeat.”—Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), sermon of September 6, 1914, in A Unique Time of God: Karl Barth’s WWI Sermons, translated by William Klempa (2016)

Commemorating Armistice Day, and how the guns fell silent—only to sound again a generation later, due to the “selfishness and arrogance in human beings.” Who can say, in our own time of nationalism, awakened like a beast, that the guns will not sound again, even louder this time?