Fiction is easy to change. Sure, you described something one way, but you can always change your mind to make the past fit better into the present. Sometimes – especially in the wild worlds of comic books or science fiction – we call this retroactive continuity, or retconning. If a character is brought back from the dead, because he didn’t really die after all, that’s retconning. When Han Solo shot first in the original cut of “Star Wars” but Greedo shot first in the special edition version released decades later, that is retconning in order to make Han more purely heroic.
What does this have to do with war? Well, hawks continually attempt to retcon real life. One thing about war which can be retconned easily is its motivations. Any war fought by the good guy USA can be retconned into necessary and noble as long as you remove all the past inconsistencies and gray areas.
Last week was the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. Slavery was one of the worst things ever done by the US. What was wrong with fighting a war to stop it then? Well, the North was not motivated by that. The South may have wanted the right to keep their slave states, and to spread the peculiar institution further. But the badness of the Confederate States doesn’t magically mean that the North nobly fought to rescue their fellow men and women who were in bondage. Nor does it mean that individual soldiers in the South weren’t fighting for a very basic, undeniable reason: an invading army was in their backyard.
Compared to later wars, the Civil War had fewer atrocities committed against civilian populations. However, General Sherman’s march was a grim exception. Similarly horrifying was the treatment of prisoners of war who were housed in Andersonville in the south, and places like Elmira in the north.
The cause of the Civil War is debated even now. But it still often feels as if the clash is between people downplaying the horror of chattel slavery and those downplaying a war which killed 620,000 men. (Not to mention the civil liberties outages which included conscription, a removal of habeas corpus, and the arrest of newspaper editors and dissidents – and that’s just in the north.) To debate the need for the war, or to critique the brutality of the North is to imply that slavery was not such a big deal. This is unfair, and it’s part of the retconning of wars. That War Between the States was fought, and slavery was abolished, therefore the war had to be fought. Every one of those 620,000 men needed to perish in order to stop slavery. There was no other way, simply because that is the way it happened.
That’s not true. Nor is it true that World War II had to happen just so in order to stop Hitler’s monstrous rampage through Europe. We ask now, why would you need to stop Hitler? Well, to save the Romani, the disabled, the gays, and the Jews of Europe from extermination. That is indeed a noble goal. Only – if the motivation of the Allies had been to save the Jews, why did the US admit fewer immigrants from the countries Hitler was taking over than were legally allowed during the war years? Why did the British fail to pull the trigger on Operation Foxley, a plot to assassinate Hitler? And when an alliance with Josef Stalin was vital to the Allied victory, how much of a moral high ground did they have? Some? Perhaps. As much as Hollywood’s grand stories of GI Joe saving the day suggest? No.
This is not to say that we know a half dozen Raoul Wallenbergs could have prevented the Holocaust, or that bombing the railroads to Auschwitz would have been better, or that killing Hitler would have solved everything. The warmonger is the one with infinite arrogance. He knows history and inevitability. (And he never seems concerned that in reality, you cannot retcon characters back to life.)
Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapon attack on the Kurds was a rallying cry for the Western World. The fact that during the Iraq-Iran war, the US helped Iraq use chemical weapons on Iran isn’t mentioned very often. That might confuse the narrative of who is good and who is the Satan of the moment. And of course, the more we learn about the 2003 War in Iraq, the more criminal it sounds. The US was saving the Iraqis from their own Hitler, right? No, they were searching for WMDs. But that was saving the whole world! And no, the weapons weren’t there, but at least Saddam is out of the way.
Somehow, though the body count for the Iraq War has now hit at least one million, the US has no blot on its moral character. The war was fought for very good reasons, even if there were some rough parts. Or, it was a good war, it just wasn’t fought long enough or hard enough. Anything awful done in war, or any misguided war can be retconned into greatness. The US being the land of the free makes that so much easier. The US is the hero. They would never have shot first. And if they did, it was necessary. Everyone loves the charming anti-hero, right?
What’s the point of all this? Only that warmongers and even would-be-objective historians constantly act as if history is inevitable. Who can dare to imagine what might have happened without wars which, in their bumbling way, abolished slavery or killed Hitler? But we must imagine it. Because next time – this time, against ISIS – the war will be just as essential. And so will the atrocities that come with every war. And there will be no other way to stop a monster, or prevent a massacre, so bombs, drones, and soldiers it has to be.
Soon after the war, all that was done wrong in service of that task will be forgotten. So will the fact that you cannot retcon the dead back to life. All that matters was the war had to happen. And the nobility of its goal washes backwards over history until magazine pieces, and books, and the brightest minds all say, yes, we fought for the best possible reasons. And no, none of those dead innocents can sully how right it was – how necessary.
Read more by Lucy Steigerwald
- The Nonsense of War – April 2nd, 2015
- Are Cops Soldiers Yet? – March 26th, 2015
- The Good and the Bad of Drones – March 18th, 2015
- Loving America Means Letting It Go to War – March 12th, 2015
- ISIS, Art, and Barbarism – March 6th, 2015
Carpenter
April 16th, 2015 at 12:42 am
Lincoln most definitely did not attack the South to "free the slaves", and the South did not secede because of slavery. In his inauguration speech Lincoln had given the strongest possible support for preserving slavery in the South, and he was going to sign the Corwin Amendment that would make slavery permanent. He did not fawn over Blacks – he was a member of the African Colonization Society, who sought to "colonize" free Blacks back to Africa, and for that purpose he ordered the making of ships that would transport them. (He died before he could begin with that plan.)
However, Lincoln also made clear in his inauguration speech that he would invade states in order to collect money for the Federal government: "The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against or among the people anywhere." But beyond THAT there would be no invasion. So FOR that there would be an invasion.
Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Tariff, which more than doubled the average tariff rate. The South exported most of its goods, and imported goods from England instead of from the more costly Northern factories, so this was a huge tax on the South's productivity.
The federal government used this money for those who had the Senate in its pocket – industrialists. Lincoln had in his whole life been their agent, arguing in court against the demands of farmers who wanted compensation when the railroads laid out tracks over their lands. That was why they promoted him – he was their guy. He supported Taft's and the Whigs' mercantilist system where the government was in bed with big (Northern) business, handing them money. So the Morrill Tariff was more than doubled. Note that there was no income tax, so this is how the federal government got its hands on people's money.
So the South seceded. Oh yes, there WAS a debate over slavery, and there were some Southern states that wrote about that in their causes for seceding. But overall it was because of the Tariff – not because of slavery when the president was just about to sign it permanently into law, with an amendment that also banned the creation of future amendments that would abolish it.
The first thing the South did when it seceded was to ban all tariffs in favor of free trade. This was anathema to the Northern industrialists. They wanted the Southern revenue. They cared nothing about slaves. Lincoln only talked about freeing slaves halfway through the Civil War, when the majority of the North was against the war, and when he wanted to stop European states from interfering on behalf of the South's completely legal right to secede. (Just like EU states have the right to secede. Want to use military force against them if they do so?) Lincoln had even said, "My goal is to preserve the Union. If I can do it without freeing a single slave, I will do so. If I can do it by freeing all the slaves I will do so." He hoped that the Emancipation Proclamation would cause slaves to start killing the women and children in the countryside, forcing soldiers to return home to protect them. He knew about the slaughter, mass rape and cannibalism that had taken place when Africans had revolted in Haiti.
By the way, President Jefferson in the Confederacy believed that slavery would disappear – as it did everywhere else, without civil war. There were already signs that it was disappearing in the most northern of the Southern states. With independence there would no longer be a law requiring Northern states to return runaway slaves to the South, which would lead to a wave of escaped slaves. (Lincoln, by the way, supported the law that made sure slaves were returned to their owners.) Does anyone believe there would still be slavery in the South now if Lincoln had not invaded? Aside from scattered examples in the rest of the Third World, the only region where you see widespread slavery today is central Africa. Which makes sense, since Westerners are the only ones in world history to come up with moral objections against slavery, and then forced the African tribes to give up their slaves at gunpoint.
It is very telling that leftists use slavery, and people's ignorance of its true worldwide history (including centuries of Arabs raiding and taking Europeans as slaves along the Mediterranean coast until the Crusades stopped their control of the sea), as a way to shame Whites. We are taught in school that "we are the ones who owned slaves, so I am evil thgouh the magic of inherited guilt, and Blacks are great because of inherited victim status". For that reason they can't tell the truth about the extremely pro-slavery president Lincoln, but must instead claim that he started the invasion of the Confederacy with the intention to "free the slaves". It takes an enormous eradication of facts to do so, but hey, when you control the media and schools you don't need to bother with facts. Unfortunately for them the internet spreads a lot of forbidden information today.
shh...it's a secret
April 16th, 2015 at 2:29 am
not to mention the free slaves in the evil south, the percentage of which owning
other black humans, was higher than that of the white slave-owning population.
oxydol
April 16th, 2015 at 5:50 am
Yes, we are the only country in the Western world that had to go to war in order to end slavery. And yes there were many causes of the Civil war that really wasn't a "Civil" war because the South did not want to take over the North, and ending slavery became a way of putting a gloss on our tragedy. And the war was a butchery. The Shenandoah valley was also burned over by the Union soldiers. Senseless charges that were the precursors to WWI took place. and now we celebrate the Civil War. We should be ashamed. And yes I agree the war poisoned the race waters further than they might have been had slavery had been ended peacefully. And I just learned on a NC TV History show that Abraham Lincoln's mother worked for an Abraham Enroe, who was a tall rangy six footer with a craggy face features, but then she married Tom Hanks a short squat fellow. They had pictures of this Abraham Enroe. It was on WRAL, the North Carolina Traveler who went about digging up history of NC. Interesting. Our schools and media though serve to indoctrinate us and tell us stories that make us feel good, and to have us believe that we have the precious right to vote, as when we are allowed to choose between the likes of a Hillary Clinton and a Jeb Bush.
Ted Foureagles
April 16th, 2015 at 6:25 am
That's Abraham Enloe.
antonio moreno
April 16th, 2015 at 7:56 am
I know at least one country in south america where slavery was peacefully ended by paying the slaves value to the owners and letting them free, under the agreement that slavery should end.
oxydol
April 16th, 2015 at 10:10 am
Thanks, my 84 year old memory sometimes slips and at first could not recall the fellow's name at all,, I just happened to hear about it as I was not paying much attention to the program, had intended to turn TV on when that story came on. Yes by all means Abraham Enloe. You know what this story implies?
gaby
April 16th, 2015 at 11:50 am
Slavery is just forced labor. If you are a slave you have to work or else you will be punished or killed.
Please do compare it with the current situation: If you don't own any land today and you don't have any coupons of value in your name then you are forced to work.
Punishments are very limited today which means you will be out on the street for even the most microscopic offense, if you are 3 minutes late… *poof you are gone*
The most significant component here is selective breeding. Because you were 3 minutes late that day you are send down a spiral of poverty where every following day is worse than the one before.
It is just like selecting the cows who give the most milk or picking the tree with the most fruit.
It may shock you if you think about it but it use to work like this: People had language and their own thoughts for the purpose of doing things.
We see that the livestock of modern slaves still has thoughts but they have no relation to sustaining themselves or lack all constructive components. The modern slave uses language but without the ability to think constructively for himself nor for his fellow human beings he is without constructive dialog and he doesn't have anyone to practices with. On the contrary.
Would we suddenly free these people from themselves they wouldn't know what to do. They don't even know they could do something.
Think of big industrial cities where few big corporations hired a specific set of very skilled workers. The moment the big corporation leaves the stage you don't see the army of highly skilled and overly tailored selection of [proverbial] welders, designers and sales men try anything. They just sit themselves down and cry about the old days turning their city into a shity.
I'm afraid to go there but these people are not our friends, they are not the good guys so to speak. If you give them a gun or a club and instruct them to violate those people over-there they are simply happy to have a job and will do it regardless of ethical consequences, even if they may die in the process.
While in the old days we had to beat the slave into submission today people are happy to go do whatever their owner tells them to.
Every next generation is "better" at it than the one before.
Look how those protests against the Vietnam war were met with violence. Then when the genocide in Vietnam was finally over we got the veteran narrative. Look how the mind slave glorified the napalming rapists.
Nowadays the intend is to destabilize the middle east. Millions died for this nonsensical goal. We see these same drone serial numbers mass murder and then glorify the killing.
They will even buy their kids some war simulator funded directly by the military for the purpose of recruitment. If you confront them with this they will endlessly demonstrate that they use language has no aspect of action, they use words for the purpose of destroying constructive dialog and to prevent you from doing things.
For them there is winning the discussion and losing it. If they win then killing people is a good thing, if they lose then they walk away in anger.
They will try anything to accomplish the victory. The favorite seems to be to attempt to make the whole war thing your idea. You brought up the topic. You are the messenger who needs to be killed.
gaby
April 16th, 2015 at 11:50 am
I recently arrived at an even more disturbing picture….
If you have a bunch of instructions written down then either have people follow these instructions uncritically or [in case of criticism] have the person replaced. Then you have a system that is entirely without human influence. You are simply not living in a world ruled by humans anymore.
What we have in stead is a new kind of entity that [in my humble opinion] should be considered alive. It has the ability to think in that it can hire people who can produce the specific thought a situation calls for.
The board of directors is obligated to make money for share holders. This is every bit the survival instinct we see in all species.
If you are standing there with a bucket by the side of the road that doesn't equate to a position of leadership over that road. Your choices are limited to washing peoples car window properly and get paid or not. Your actions might merit punishment either way. It is all written down in the big book and the officer of the law is simply following instructions. His freedom as a person is limited to giving you a few warnings or not. He is not in charge of the situation. People who wrote those laws have a clear set of instructions too. They are to make traffic work. If people get in the way of traffic laws have to be written.
But the moment those laws are written down the law maker is assigned to a new task. Long after he dies the process that was the product of his effort is still very much alive.
We have this idea that we can change things when they need to be changed simply by voting but think about it, what percentage of rules and regulations in this world was written by dead people? How long did it take to write all that? Surely we have only the resources to review a highly insignificant percentage of them.
We portray our robotic overlords in movies the same way we portray aliens. The robot has arms and legs and a head that looks just like a human.
Everyone knows that our robotic overlords will look very different. So what will they look like? Would they perhaps be non-corporeal? Would their intelligence be such that they can take the child like humanity by the hand and tell her stories about father Christmas?
Why spend billions on advertisement if it doesn't directly write things to the collective subconscious of the humanity?
Do we seriously expect people to collectively get out of their chair, open the window and scream I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore? ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFvT_qEZJf8 )
gaby
April 16th, 2015 at 1:42 pm
ow… the hypocrisy of it… it makes me shake from laughter. I guess that makes me a bad person. I'm still embarrassed to be one of the humans. The dark side extends much further than I can even imagine…
Maybe we can end war this way, just pay all the warmongers some money under the agreement that war should end. Make a nice document, put some powerful sacred geometry on it. Just shooting them isn't going to work, not without becoming them.
dishonestabe
April 16th, 2015 at 7:19 pm
The problem is that now (as prior to the war of northern aggression), it's
the warmongers who have the industrial capacity and power and money.
The "bad guys" mostly just want to be left alone.