Against Pacifism

Have We Forgotten Where We Came From?

One underdiscussed facet of the right-leaning revisionist commentators like Darryl Cooper (MartyrMade), Dave Smith, Tucker Carlson, et al., is the rabidly anti-war attitude. This is likely a reaction to the Neo-Conservative Jingoistic world that they grew up in and ended up despising. To these commentators, for each of the international conflicts currently roiling the Middle East and Eastern Europe, there is only one answer: stop fighting. This manifests itself in Ukraine by calling for Zelenskyy to cede all territory occupied by Russia, and in Israel by calling for the IDF to stop bombing Gaza in their fight against Hamas¹. Recently, this same worldview was mapped onto historical events with the idea that Churchill was the chief villain because he insisted on fighting the Germans until help came from the US, USSR, or both. That because he refused peace, more people died than would have otherwise.

All of these stances seem to come from a form of negative consequentialism². They believe that fewer lives lost is better than more lives, no matter what other cost are incurred. Europe is overtaken by the German Reich and Soviet Union? Well, that’s okay because look at how many tens of millions of lives were saved by not fighting back. A terrorist organization is in control of the government of a neighboring polity and has just killed a thousand of your citizens? Well, better not try to take them out, since thousands of others will be killed in the process of carrying out this war. Just got invaded by a more powerful and imperialist neighbor? Better to just fold immediately and let them take over to save the lives of your citizens.

I am by no means pro-war, but I land firmly in the “sometimes war is necessary” camp. In my estimation, there are legitimate reasons to conduct war, though this usually comes in the form of prolonging an existing one brought on by another power rather than starting one. I don’t want to re-litigate that which has been discussed ad nauseam for the past few years in Gaza and Ukraine, but I would like to use them generally to discuss what is missed when pacifism overtakes all other analysis.

I think in general, Americans don’t know what war is, what it means to fight one, nor why it is sometimes necessary. This comes from the fact that a war has not reached our coast for eighty years³. In that same period, there has been a war, revolt, revolution, or genocide in nearly every corner of the world, many of which we have participated in or backed. But none have come close to affecting us at home. We have lost the collective knowledge necessary to understand war. The attack on the World Trade Center brought some of that understanding back, just look at the polls at the time, but it was short-lived. The ensuing incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan lasted far too long and were based on false pretenses. Further incursions in Libya and Syria to clean up the mistakes of those wars were made a decade later by a president who promised to remove us from the region. These failures are at the root of the hatred for what these people call the “American Empire.”

America has made mistakes when it comes to international conflicts, but it is not a record of endless failure. Perhaps I don’t know enough, or they too much⁴, but I suspect that, on balance, America has been a force for good in the world. That has not happened without bloodshed, without war. I believe that war, despite it being the greatest evil in the world and the most primal instinct in humanity, can be used for a good cause. This cause is often relative, though. For Putin, war is a tool for glory and hegemony, for Ukraine, honor and survival. For Hamas, war is for liberation and extermination, for Israel, safety and security. We, sitting safely at home, can debate over the legitimacy of these aims and if the warfare conducted has achieved them. But that doesn’t matter. To the combatants, the aims exist and are legitimate.

These aims can be difficult to fully parse out in real time, but when enough time has passed, the dust has settled, and the record has been revealed, these aims can become more clear and focused. Metacom (King Philip) and his Native alliance used war to remove the English from their land, the English returned the favor to ensure the safety and security of their communities. To both, the mere existence of the other was encroaching on their ability to succeed as a nation. Sometimes the aims can even be the same on both sides. For Hitler, war was needed for liberation and extermination, for Germans and against Jews and Slavs. Churchill had the same aims, only he wanted to liberate Europe and exterminate Nazis. For both, these aims came from a deep-seated prejudice brought on by the Great War. The difference is legitimacy of the cause. But who gets to say what is legitimate?

This may seem as simple as saying that the winners write history, so they choose whose fight was legitimate. But I think that over-simplifies the issue. It definitely is a factor, I have no doubt. The American Revolution is a good example of this phenomenon. I don’t want to go too far with this analysis since I haven’t begun reading about the Revolution yet, but it can be argued that a select group of rich men was so upset over a rise in taxes, which were still lower than those in the mother country, that they rebelled. Thus, the conflict and bloodshed that ensued was on their hands. It is only because they won that they are seen as heroes, not terrorists.

I would contend, though, that nearly every nation places their founders on pedestals, for better or for worse. Furthermore, the original cause also plays a role. There is an interesting counter-factual that can help illucidate this. What if the new government was a monarchy, one with King George I replacing King George III? Would it still hold the same mythological quality? Perhaps to Americans, but it’s likely that France wouldn’t follow suit a decade later, nor the rest of Europe half a century after that. So, the American Revolution would have a much smaller footprint in world history. Therefore, because this war had far-reaching effects that liberated millions from monarchy, is that not worth the lives lost⁵?

A similar point can be made about the events during and after WWII, which, in my mind, creates a new layer of analysis when looking at the lives lost in war. The post WWII era in the West is characterized by a rush towards liberalism and a fight against collectivism, something that I would say is a good thing. The horrors of authoritarianism and communism were brought to light and expunged. Therefore, those who came before us that stood on the side of Western values, regardless of their faults, are held in high regard, e.g. Winston Churchill. This has a flattening effect on individuals that turns them into heroes (or villians) instead of complex people. So what the new revisionists believe they are doing is challenging the supposed hegemony of the American Empire by tearing down the existing mythological figures. I think this has value, so I don’t object to this necessarily.

However, like the leftist revisionists before them, instead of bringing to light new angles, new details, and more nuance, they just flatten the other way. The natives that burned down any frontier village and major town they could find were turned into liberators with their backs against the wall, rather than terrorists following a racist zealot. Hitler was a complex man who merely ran into logistical issues while prosecuting a war and begged for peace, rather than being a drug-addled racial exterminator who wanted to conquer Europe. Churchill becomes a blood-thirsty Germanophobe who would have liked to kill as many as possible to satisfy his ego, rather than the man standing against Fascism and protecting the West. I’m sure you can find some truth in all of these descriptions. But rejecting the current simplified narrative and replacing it with a new simplified one leaves us worse off.

In the same way, they flatten war into a mere numbers game. They rightfully shun the glory mongers and interventionists, but end up praising pure pacifism, no matter the cost. Ukraine should not fight Russia to prevent the death of its citizens, Israel should not retaliate against the 1200 slaughtered by Hamas nor the tens of thousands rockets shot at them by Hezbollah. Britain should not stand against Nazism. The English colonists should not fight back against arsonists. It may seem noble to ask for a world with no war. But, instead those that don’t care about your morality, or your abhorrence towards killing, or your calls for peace run roughshod over your country, your community, your neighbors, and you. By doing nothing against aggressors, they are only emboldened. They will never see the world like you do, they will just kill you. Many in America seem to have forgotten that.

We live in an increasingly multipolar world. America as World Police is likely a thing of the past. I, for one, am not exactly saddened by that. I still think America is a force for good, but I think we have made far too many mistakes, and our hubris has cost us in recent years. Regardless, this shift from a previous world order to a new one will bring with it new challenges. I hope to God it does not bring war to our shores. But if it does, I hope that the pacifists realize peace is not always the best option. All their ancestors knew this to be true, otherwise they wouldn’t be here in the first place.

1. More recently still, the pager and walkie-talkie explosion attack against Hezbollah, as well as the strike that killed the leader of Hezbollah, has drawn the ire of a similar crowd.

2. I am not a philosopher, I’ve only read one philosophy book in my life, Bertrand Russell’s A History of Western Philosophy, so I may be wrong in this analysis. What I am trying to state is that these commentators believe that the prevention of death must outweigh the prevention of losing one's country, one’s safety, or one’s stability. This seems to conflict with their general conservative ideals, so there is likely more to this, but I will stick with this narrow bit for now.

3. One may argue that 9/11 was a war coming to our shores, but in my analysis it is fundamentally different from Japan, who was embroiled in a war in the Pacific and allied with Germany by the time of Pearl Harbor.

4. Or more likely rely on very specific sources of information that confirm their worldview.

5. Of course, if one is inclined to agree with authoritarian systems, this way of looking at this is moot.