Ten Most Effective U.S. Presidents

October 30, 2009 — jamieumbc

American presidents can (and routinely are) ranked in vague categories such as “Best” and “Worst.” Of course, these terms are wholly dependent on your political philosophy, and so are poor choices for assessing value. They make for great arguments, but that’s about all. I’ve taken a different approach here.

In my view, a president arrives in Washington with an agenda, and is either successful or unsuccessful in implementing that agenda. Often, their agenda is expanded or modified by changing events in their times, and again, they are either successful or unsuccessful in responding to these dynamics. This Friday’s History List examines how effective presidents were in implementing their agendas: how much legislation they initiated, to what degree they set the tone for government policy, the extent to which they shaped their times.

Let the second-guessing begin:

10. Richard Nixon: Love him or hate him, the late 1960s and early 1970s were all about Richard Milhous Nixon. He entered office with the undeclared war in Southeast Asia as the nation’s albatross, and personally directed its prosecution. Without a mandate to do so, he escalated the conflict, and then shifted the emphasis from ground forces to air power, and eventually negotiated with the North Vietnamese. He successfully split the Soviets and the Chinese from Hanoi by playing the two superpowers off against each other, and then initiated the foreign policy objective of Détente to reduce tensions between the East and West. In doing so, Nixon laid the groundwork for much that was to follow. Domestically, he implemented new economic policies and rallied the “silent majority” to action, and was returned to office for a second term in a landslide of historic proportions. The only real threat to Richard Nixon was, in the end, himself. Were it not for his self-inflicted wounds, his presidency would have been seen as an unmitigated triumph.

9. Woodrow Wilson: Entering the White House as a progressive, Wilson is credited with a number of legislative landmarks, such as the Federal Reserve Act (which created a banking system that is largely unchanged in a century), the Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and America’s first-ever federal progressive income tax in the Revenue Act of 1913. Wilson lowered tariffs where others had failed to do so, and generally had his way with a like-minded Democratic Congress. (Before you write off his accomplishments because of his legislative majorities, remember the examples of the Clinton Administration in 1993 and the Obama Administration today. It’s not as automatic as you might think.) Wilson was also a wartime leader, mobilizing a nation completely unprepared for war in 1917, and eventually sending millions of troops to France in 1918, in what would be the death blow to Imperial Germany. He also raised the international profile of the United States at the Paris Peace Talks, making America one of the world’s major powers for the first time. Like Nixon, Wilson’s failure, his inability to get the Versailles Treaty ratified, was largely due to the quirks of his personality. A devastating stroke effectively ended his presidency in 1919.

8. Ronald Reagan: For eight years, Ronald Reagan was America’s chief cheerleader and its patron saint of conservative politics. Under his leadership, the Republican Party regained its prestige, and the nation enjoyed a period of economic prosperity fueled by lowered taxes and greatly increased spending, especially in the area of national defense. Entering office during a period of economic stagnation, with high unemployment, interest rates and a general feeling of cynicism about the nation’s future, Reagan, ever the professional actor, took center stage and personified America’s newfound optimism and vigor. His rapid recovery from an assassination attempt just a few weeks into his presidency cemented his image as a tough, unflappable leader. Democrats found that policy attacks, even when seeming to be successful, did little to Reagan’s approval ratings; this led to one one his many nicknames, “The Teflon President.” He was also known as “The Great Communicator” for his ability to share his vision of America as a land of prosperity and opportunity, and he easily won a second term. The Iran-Contra scandal tainted his image and his effectiveness in the waning months of his administration, but the American people stayed largely supportive of him. A testament to his influence can be seen even today in the way in which conservatives invoke his name to add gravitas to their ideas.

7.  James Knox Polk: Responsible for the second largest land acquisition in U.S. history, Polk came into office committed to Manifest Destiny and intent on extending the country’s borders north, south and west. Upon his election, Texas was immediately allowed to enter the union, pushing the U.S. border to the Rio Grande, which aggravated Mexico. He then moved aggressively to initiate war with Mexico in his second year, a war which was swiftly won, in spite of the Americans having a typically small professional army that would be compelled to invade and conquer its enemy. (Many observers, including Wellington himself, predicted disaster for Winfield Scott’s army as it marched on Mexico City.) In the peace treaty that followed, Polk confiscated what is now the Southwest United States, including California, from his defeated neighbor. He bluffed an intention to take the Oregon Country as far north as the 54th parallel, and then negotiated a treaty with Britain to split the territory at the 49th parallel. Domestically, he reduced tariffs, established an independent treasury system and the Department of the Interior. Having achieved everything he wanted in one term, Polk retired to Tennessee and exhausted, died a few months later.

6. Lyndon Johnson: In his five years in office, LBJ accomplished almost everything that his predecessor, John Kennedy, could not. While Kennedy dreamed of a civil rights bill but was incapable of getting Congress to pass one, Johnson muscled and maneuvered legislation through Washington like it was his private playground.  With over twenty years on Capitol Hill, including six as Senate Majority Leader, Johnson was highly skilled in the delicate nuances that were necessary to get bills successfully to his desk. Johnson championed his vision of “The Great Society,” which he saw as a second New Deal, and was responsible for The Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Voting Rights Act of 1965, aid to education, Medicaid, Medicare, urban renewal, conservation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and other programs to funnel federal funds to economically depressed regions. Were it not for increasing American involvement in a war Johnson inherited, and the ugly public backlash that became associated with it, LBJ might be remembered as one of our greatest presidents. Like a doomed hero in a Greek tragedy, Johnson saw his future clearly but was powerless to change it: “I knew from the start if I left a woman I really loved — the Great Society — in order to fight that bitch of a war in Vietnam then I would lose everything at home. My hopes my dreams.”

5. Andrew Jackson: Old Hickory rolled into Washington with such force that an era is named after him. Ending years of what he (and many Americans) considered to be elitist government, Jackson threw open the doors of power to the people, and remade the executive branch in the process. Previous to Jackson, Presidents tended to work with Congress to shape the national agenda. Jackson determined that he would have his way in spite of Congress, or the courts for that matter. Jackson distrusted big government, and he hated debt. The two ideas combined as Jackson became the only American president to completely pay off the national debt. Jackson called for the abolishment of the Electoral College and encouraged the regular replacement of government bureaucrats with his loyalists, and punished those who were suspect. The “spoils system,” in many ways, lives on today.  Jackson came into office planning on ejecting all Indians living east of the Mississippi to what is today Oklahoma, resulting in the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which even the Supreme Court could not stop. Hundreds of millions of acres in the American South were soon free for development. Jackson also personally destroyed the Second National Bank of the United States, which he considered a bastion of privilege and corruption. When South Carolina, angered at tariffs that favored northern manufacturing,  began to speak openly of secession and nullification, Jackson made it policy that the state would remain loyal by force, if necessary. South Carolina opted to compromise instead. At the end of his second term, hating banks and paper money to the end, Jackson enacted his “specie circular” that forced all government lands to be purchased in coin, which he thought would end speculation and leave the land to common people. What it did instead was help to hasten an economic depression (but he would leave Martin Van Buren to wrestle with that). The sheer force of Jackson’s dynamic personality defined a generation and rippled across the American political landscape for decades to come.

4. George Washington: Washington ranks this high on my list because everything he did established a precedent, and almost everything he did is still practiced today, which in my view, is pretty strong evidence of effectiveness. To provide you with a sampling, Washington initially saw it as the president’s duty to take a prospective treaty to the Senate, and then work alongside the senators on the details of the treaty. This is how he read “advice and consent.” He only had to experience this once before he determined that he would never do it again. From that point forward, all presidents have executed treaties on their own, and then sent the finished product to the Senate for a ratification. Washington fought to have his executive officers (cabinet members) reporting not to Congress, but to him. Washington, in eschewing the trappings of a European head of state, forever established the position as one close to the people. By not seeking a third term, he established by custom that which is now a part of the constitution. By acting quickly to enforce federal taxing rights, he established the authority of the federal government to use force against its own people, if necessary. The Jay Treaty, while immensely  unpopular, was critical in keeping the then-fragile United States out of a potentially disastrous war with England.  Lastly, it must be noted that Washington, D.C. is aptly named, as it was George Washington who worked so hard to enshrine the capital within a day’s ride of Mount Vernon, on land he knew well and had surveyed often. When he had finished his second term, he (along with Alexander Hamilton) penned a farewell address, another presidential practice that continues today. Washington perhaps wasn’t the policy force of many other presidents, but then again, he was probably too busy creating the office of President of the United States to notice.

3. Theodore Roosevelt: Roosevelt entered the White House unexpectedly, after the death of William McKinley. TR never would have been elected in his own right, because no party machine in its right mind would have set such a wild and independent spirit at the controls of government. Roosevelt was a 180° change from the low-activity standpatters who had preceded him. Not beholden to party politics, and determined to make a difference, TR sued mega-conglomerates or trusts, dissolving them into smaller, less threatening companies that were no longer monopolies. For this he earned the epithet of “Trustbuster.” Roosevelt also got legislative approval for stricter food and drug laws, and his “Square Deal” economic program focused on helping average Americans at a time when 95% of the nation’s wealth was controlled by the top 1% of the population. Theodore Roosevelt was a great lover of nature, and as president, he set aside hundreds of millions of acres of federal land, created wildlife preserves where none had ever existed before, and restricted federal land sales in protected areas. TR was a committed expansionist, and he worked hard to build up the U.S. Navy; at the end of his second term he sent much of it around the world on a goodwill cruise to display American power and reach. Roosevelt’s greatest display of presidential power may have been in the creation of the Panama Canal. When Colombia, which controlled the Isthmus at the time, refused to let Teddy construct his canal, TR interjected the U.S. into a Panamanian rebellion against Colombia, and then negotiated with the people he had helped into power the rights to build and control the canal. While Congress debated his excesses, the Canal was completed in record time and under budget.  And, during his spare time, he helped negotiate the end of the Russo-Japanese War, earning himself a Nobel Prize. By the time he was done, Roosevelt had turned the office of the President into a “bully pulpit,” and remade American conceptions of presidential power forever.

2. Franklin Delano Roosevelt: No one has been president for so long (12 years) or faced quite so much hardship in his time of office (the Great Depression and World War II). Four times elected president, FDR became the personification of American power and perseverance, and projected it while carrying two ten-pound metal braces on his legs so that he wouldn’t fall down. Elected with a mandate to rescue the nation from its worst economic crisis ever, Franklin Roosevelt exuded hope to a people accustomed to despondency. Acting immediately, in his fabled first hundred days in office, FDR enacted much of the framework of his “New Deal” economic program, intent on getting Americans working again, even if it cost the government a fortune to do it. Roosevelt recognized that being employed was key to a person’s sense of dignity, and he created agency after agency in an attempt to put people to work. Some programs worked; others failed. As the years went by, Roosevelt kept getting legislation passed, much of it regulatory in nature, hoping to reign in the excesses of free market capitalism that he blamed for the crisis, such as the establishment of the  Securities and Exchange Commission and the FDIC. Roosevelt also looked to protect Americans at risk of impoverishment by establishing federal programs to support individuals financially with programs like Social Security and the establishment of a national minimum wage; Roosevelt protected unions with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act. And after briefly skimming over his domestic agenda, then there’s the whole “world war” thing. While FDR was trying to spend America out of the depression, Europe and Japan were coming under the influence of militaristic and expansionist governments. By 1939, the world was once again at war. Roosevelt, for his part, professed neutrality while quietly helping England to stay afloat. Two years later, Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor settled the matter, and FDR became a wartime leader. As always, the United States had no peacetime military to speak of, so the early months were about calming fears and revving up the war machine. Roosevelt became part the Allied triumvirate that included Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. For the next three years, FDR, his health fading, led America through its greatest military challenge. In 1945, with the war winding down in Europe and the atomic bomb almost completed in the deserts of New Mexico, Roosevelt began a historic fourth term.  By April he was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage, having endured what was probably too much for any man.

1. Abraham Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln entered office in the worst possible way. Half of the nation that had elected him was so outraged that they had rebelled rather than submit to his authority, a sizable portion of those who stayed loyal thought little of him personally, and the politicians with whom he would have to work thought even less of him. He was threatened with assassination before he had even taken office. The leadership of his own republican party, almost to a man, thought that they would make a better president than he, and some secretly plotted to take the nomination from him in 1864. Once forced into a war he did not want, he was compelled to create an army he did not have, spending money that did not exist. Before Fort Sumter, the regular United States Army numbered 17,000 men, fewer than those who fell in one day at Antietam a year and a half later.  Complicating the matter even further, there was no great moral imperative at the war’s outset, no grievous outrage to avenge. Men were being asked to die to restore a political arrangement between local governments, but die they did, in numbers that were incomprehensible to Lincoln’s constituents. Once it became clear that the Union as it had been could not be restored, Lincoln chose to create a new nation from his own vision, no matter that most people in 1862 disagreed with that vision. His Emancipation Proclamation was to be the single most unpopular act of his administration; his top generals, far more popular than was he, referred to him as “the original gorilla.” His party lost seats in the Congressional midterms and sought to replace him as candidate for president. None of this changed Lincoln’s singular purpose and his ability to focus on the task at hand. He worked eighteen hours days, even as his eleven-year old son lie dying of fever in the White House.  With a patchwork army, precarious financing and shrewed political maneuvering, Lincoln stayed the course and saw the war through to its completion. When it was over, he had expunged America’s original sin of slavery, realigned the balance of power in the federal government and given the nation “a new birth of freedom.”

Posted in History List Friday!, U.S. History. Tags: , , , , . 3 Comments »

Why We failed In Iraq (from the collected works)

October 30, 2009 — jamieumbc

(This opinion piece appeared in the Retriever Weekly on April 19, 2007.)

Previously, I mentioned that the United States made a mistake in invading Iraq. Not because they failed to find any “weapons of mass destruction”, which I believe Saddam had the smarts to get into neighboring Syria long before the first American humvee rolled across the border.

No, the sin the U.S. committed in Iraq was in assuming that they were bringing with them something better for the Iraqi people. It’s easy to understand why Americans might have felt this way. After all, Hussein was a brutal tyrant who oppressed most of his population, and was responsible for a bushel basket of “crimes against humanity” during his reign as dictator.

Even so, we were wrong in thinking that we had something better.

This idea that the American style of government is the greatest in the world, and that it’s only a matter of time before all people bask in its warming rays, goes way back to the heady days after the American Revolution.

In 1789, with the American experiment still in its infancy, the French Revolution unleashed forces that not only overthrew a monarchy, but also resulted in mass executions in a virtual police state. Yet despite this, many of our founding fathers rejoiced at the news. People like Thomas Jefferson applauded the French people and downplayed their excesses – all because he believed they were emulating the American experience in republican democracy.

Our history is replete with American attempts to export our representative form of government to other nations, sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. As the targets for Americanization shrink, they tend to become less and less industrialized – places like Iraq.

The truth is that some peoples, in their present state of development, are not yet ready for a parliamentary life. Religious and sectarian rivalries, tribal ties and ethnic hatreds run too deep in some countries, and only a strong-arm dictator can keep the lid on the boiling pot. It may not be pretty to watch, and it certainly goes against all of our republican instincts, but sometimes, tyranny is better.

Such a case was the old Yugoslavia, led by Marshal Josip Tito from 1943 to 1980. Tito’s Yugoslavia was technically a Communist state; however, Tito remained independent of Stalin and the U.S.S.R. The important thing to note was that Tito’s dictatorial rule kept the Serbs and the Croats from killing each other for four decades. Shortly after he died, Communism fell; Yugoslavia became a republic and then disintegrated into the nations we see today. Ethnic “cleansing”, mass murders and genocide followed shortly thereafter. Remember Slobodan Milošević? The lid was off the pot.

In Iraq, Saddam was another run-of-the-mill dictator, a strong man who had his political enemies killed early on and then ruled with terror and violence. Nevertheless, it worked. Iraq was stable. There were no competing Sunni and Shi’a militia trying to kill everyone in the country as fast as they could. Then, in April 2003, we got rid of Hussein.

Since that time, it is thought that hundreds of thousand of Iraqis have died in sectarian violence. Now Uncle Sam struggles desperately to keep the lid on the pot. If we ever pull out, the lid will be off the pot, with cataclysmic results. A formerly stable nation in the Middle East is now the focal point of regional instability, and threatens to become the first battleground of the next world war.

The lesson that should have been learned by now is that representative democracy is not the appropriate form of government for every country, and that, for some nations, a brutal tyrant may be the lesser of many evils. In Iraq, we rid the world of a brutal, evil regime, this is true. However, for the Iraqi people, the brutal, evil regime may have been the lesser of a great many evils, and now, four years post-Saddam, they and we will have to live with those evils for many years to come.

Posted in Policy Debate, War on Terror. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

On Government-Sponsored Torture (from the collected works)

October 30, 2009 — jamieumbc

In this essay, I will address the moral issues that pertain to the justification for government-sponsored torture as a means of extracting information, in this case the government being the United States. I will demonstrate that while torture might be an effective method for gaining such information, it is by no means a fool-proof method, and the infrastructure required to maintain an efficient torture program would inevitably be subject to corruption and would become detrimental to both the individuals involved and, in the long term, to the United States itself.

When torture is discussed in America, there only seems to be one setting in which most people believe that the practice would be justified, and that, of course, is the “ticking time-bomb” scenario. In this scenario, a terrorist has planted a time-bomb in a public place, and only torture can make him reveal the information necessary to stop the bomb. The choice presented is very narrow: the rights of one terrorist versus the rights of perhaps thousands of innocents. In this scenario, a majority of Americans agree that torture is, in fact, justified.

The reason most people accept torture at this point is that most people are utilitarian in thinking; that is, they seek the option that “maximizes total aggregate happiness.” (Allhoff, 245) This school of thought weights the offended right of one against the offended rights of many and favors the many. The opposite school of moral thought is that of deontology, which teaches that people should never be treated as merely as means to an end, and that regardless of the circumstance, a person’s rights must never be violated. (Allhoff, 246) This protection of individual rights would not be abrogated by that person’s participation in criminal or violent activity, no matter how heinous that activity may appear. (Allhoff, 248) In fact, it would be argued that it is exactly those people who we find most offensive that are in the most need of our protection, because public sentiment so willingly denies them sympathy.

Most Americans tend to reject the absolutist nature of deontology, and are more comfortable in the more practical elements of utilitarianism. Alhoff argues that torture is permissible under the following conditions: “…the use of torture aims at the acquisition of information; the captive is reasonably thought to have the relevant information; the information corresponds to a relevant and significant threat; and the information could likely lead to the prevention of that threat.” (Allhoff, 255) No doubt, most Americans would tend to agree with this rubric.

Once the legality of torture is established, the discussion of which tortures are themselves permissible ensues. For example, how much pain is too much pain? Allhoff sets the bar at “the minimum trauma necessary to obtain the desired compliance.” (Allhoff, 256) What is, after all, a minimum amount of pain? Since pain thresholds vary from person to person, setting an objective standard is impossible, so this would be left to the interpretation of the torturer, who is necessarily in a conflicted position from which to judge what pain has exceeded the “minimum”; in these situations, restraint is rare, while “escalation is the rule.” (Luban, 1447) Even if one could imagine a scenario whereby this threshold would be observed, myriad other problems present themselves, one of which Allhoff himself recognizes, the problem of misinformation. (Allhoff, 258)

Since most interrogations are largely “fishing” expeditions, it would be a comparatively easy thing for a detained individual to reveal “misinformation”, or inaccuracies designed to mislead the interrogators. Soldiers and other combatants are routinely trained to do just this by their governments, and it may not be known for months or years exactly what information was true and what was not. Under torture, prisoners would be far more likely to tell the interrogators what they think they want to hear, whether it is true or not, complicating the information gathering process.

Another complication is that genuine information that has been obtained through conventional investigatory methods can almost never reveal exactly what any one prisoner may be withholding, or even a group of prisoners. Therefore, since the interrogators do not know what it is exactly that they are looking for, it would become necessary to torture nearly everyone to be sure that all pertinent has been obtained, and then to cross-check that new information against the torture-acquired information just obtained from other prisoners. If there were any conflicts between accounts of tortured prisoners, more torturing must occur, so that confirming information can be extracted, which must then be cross-checked again, ad infinatum. Eventually, those prisoners that have survived would be saying almost anything to avoid increasing pain. Deciphering the truth from the lies would be nearly impossible. It seems that torture is a poor interrogation method at best.

From my perspective, however, the real problem with legalized torture is the creation of a permanent state-sanctioned torture infrastructure. This new government bureaucracy would by necessity be populated with individuals who would be trained to inflict pain on their fellow humans while feeling nothing themselves. Because of the chain of command, they would be automatons executing decision made from above by people who have no direct contact or responsibility for the individuals being tortured. (Luban, 1447) The current poster child of this “torture culture” is Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where ordinary American soldiers committed terrible crimes against prisoners. This outcome is not remarkable once torture is institutionalized, and would be replicated on a far greater scale if torture in general becomes an acceptable interrogation tool. (Luban, 1452)

The persons who would be part of this culture of torture would themselves likely become psychological casualties, as …”virtuous people are probably not involved in the intentional and coerced causation of pain and suffering in other human beings…” and could be considered”…damaged goods.” (Casebeer, 268) The difficulty of soldiers returning from combat assimilating into normal society has already been well documented. One can only imagine the difficulty to be encountered when one’s occupation is to torture and maim professionally.

This culture of torture clashes not just with American values, but also more directly with American identity. Since the founding of this nation, Americans have always considered themselves a “city on a hill”, a shining example of the greatest aspirations of humanity and even perhaps morally superior to the “old world”. In past wars, Americans have prided themselves on not retaliating against an enemy they considered ruthless and barbaric. When the enemy committed crimes against soldiers and civilians, retaliation was still frowned upon. (May, 317) The enemy was not treated as they deserved to be treated, but as human and vulnerable. (May, 318) When those wars were over, veterans were welcomed home having not just vanquished an enemy, but also having reinforced American values and identity. If the United States were to establish the legitimacy of institutionalized torture, that identity would be rapidly eroded.

In my view, torture must be prohibited at all times not just because it is ineffective as an interrogation tool and it complicates other more conventional interrogation practices. In a free society, a society where people grow up secure in the belief that they have value as individuals, a society that believes it has values to offer the world, torture is a lethal threat. American identity depends upon the belief that we are morally better than nations that routinely torture, and we must recognize that government-sponsored torture does great damage to the individuals who direct and inflict it. Torture may damage the bodies of terrorists; it would certainly destroy the soul of America.

Posted in Policy Debate. Tags: , , , , . 1 Comment »

On Warfare as a Natural State (from the collected works)

October 30, 2009 — jamieumbc

In this essay, I shall demonstrate how war is a natural state of humanity that derives from a normal psychological reaction in individuals and groups. I will trace the development of law within the community and relate it to the use of force both inside and outside the community. I will also elaborate upon the psychic benefits of war to a community, and I will explain how these benefits are key to the development of identity within a community, without which the community cannot survive.

War has always been a part of the human experience, because war is an integral part of human nature. It is no more possible to be rid of the human need to go to war than it is to be rid other uniquely human psychological needs, such as the need for possessions or land ownership. Sigmund Freud, in a letter to Albert Einstein, reflects on this, calling war “the original state of things: domination by whoever had the greater might – domination by brute violence or by violence supported by intellect.” (Freud, 275) He notes that this “death instinct” enhances a creature’s ability to survive, by being able to destroy another creature, and therefore represents a “biological justification” for violent human conflict. (Freud, 282, 283) He even goes so far as to admit that it is pointless to attempt to eliminate this proclivity for war, and that any society that claims to have done so is perpetrating a fraud. (Freud, 283) In the end, he asks, “Why do we not accept it as another of the painful calamities of life?” (Freud, 285)

What is it that prompts people to react violently? Freud attributes war to “conflicts of interest between men” that are only settled when “one side or the other (is compelled) to abandon his claim or his objection by the damage inflicted on him and by the crippling of his strength.” (Freud, 275) J. Glenn Gray says it “arises from the frustration of action and consequently thwarted self-realization and deprivation of freedom” that, in turn, leads to passions for which the response is “violence, usually unplanned and spontaneous.” (Gray, 29, 11, 12) Gray goes on to differentiate between “force” and violence”; he gives “force” the legitimacy of authority while denying that legitimacy to mere “violence.” (Gray, 14) However, Freud notes, “law was originally brute violence and that even to-day it cannot do without the support of violence.” (Freud, 280) He says that law is simply the raw power of a community, as opposed to the “violence of a single individual.” (Freud, 275)

Key in development and the maintaining of any community is identity, which is often expressed as nationhood. Freud says “the structure of human society is to a large extent based upon” identifications. (Freud, 284) Michael Gelven calls these identifications the “we-they principle”. He calls the “we-they principle” an essential way in which we think about the meaning of our own existence. (Gelven, 14) He demonstrates the need for belonging to a larger group, the nation, saying that for humans, “being a native of my country matters (emphasis original).” (Gelven, 12) He goes on to say that this identification as a people typically outweighs our normal desire for peace. (Gelven, 17)

Part of this identification with the nation is the willingness to eliminate threats to the nation, which Chris Hedges calls “part of the redemption of the nation.” (Hedges, 139) Hedges insists that while war is “nearly always a sordid affair”, the state requires the “myth” of glorious, heroic warfare to survive as a community. (Hedges, 173)

In War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, Hedges says, “War fills our spiritual void”, giving the nation a shared purpose or calling, satisfying our core beliefs, such as the belief in self-sacrifice. (Hedges, 158-159) Gelven notes this when he says, “…the more vivid and ghastly the depiction of (war’s) misery, the more it is treasured. (Gelven, 9) In this regard, war imitates love, and often feels like love at its outset. (Hedges, 159) Sullivan Ballou, a major in a regiment of Rhode Island volunteers in the Civil War, refers to this strong emotional pull in a letter he wrote to his wife only days before he was killed in battle. Ballou says, “Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.” This part of our communal identity can be traced back for centuries. The idealizing of “suicidal self sacrifice…is…part of the liberal state’s pre-Enlightenment Christian heritage.” (Huq, 1)

For many, war becomes a substitute for love. Hedges proposes, “…the most acute form of suffering for human beings is loneliness”, and he speculates that some “found fulfillment in war, perhaps because it is the closest they ever came to love.” (Hedges, 161)

In many ways, however, war can be more like a narcotic than love, in that it requires “…a higher and higher dose to achieve any thrill…finally, one ingests war only to remain numb.” (Hedges, 162) Hedges describes fighters in Central America engaging in a frenzied orgy of death, speaking in unintelligible shouts, “high on the power to spare lives or to take them.” (Hedges, 171)

Yet, Hedges insists that drugs are themselves a “pale substitute” for the “awful power and rush of battle.” (Hedges, 163) Coming down from war’s high can be difficult. Hedges notes that once removed from war, “we sink into despair, a despair that can lead us to welcome death.” (Hedges, 164) He furthers this connection by branding war as “necrophilia…hidden under platitudes about duty and comradeship.” (Hedges, 163) Hedges concludes that war leads us “into a frenzy in which all human life, including our own, seems secondary.” (Hedges, 166) Some can never relinquish the thrill of warfare, and are drawn back in until they are destroyed by it, consumed, Hedges says, “by a ball of fire.” (Hedges, 170)

For all of its destructive power, Freud insists that there is in war the potential for good. Sometimes, even within a community, there are injustices that will not be remedied by the ruling power, which creates laws by itself and for itself, with little regard for lower classes of society. (Freud, 276) Often “rebellion and civil war follow, with temporary suspension of law and new attempts at a solution by violence.” (Freud, 277) If war can become the vehicle for establishing a more lasting peace, a peace that “makes further wars impossible”, then war might be seen as appropriate. (Freud, 278) In this case, if war promotes justice and restores a long-lasting peace, future wars become less likely.

Freud says that “Wars can only be prevented with certainty if mankind unites in setting up a central authority to which the right of giving judgment upon all conflicts of interest shall be handed over.” (Freud, 278) Unfortunately, nations will never agree to such a surrender of sovereignty or self-interest, because to do so would be to dispose of their national identity, which, as we have seen, is indispensable to their survival as an individual people. Further, even if this universal surrender of authority were agreed upon, there would still occasionally be the rise of small groups or individuals for whom the rule of law or rights of the innocent are of little account, and for whom violence is the accepted path. For people such as these, war is often the only weapon that promises the restoration of peace.

So while it is impossible to permanently eradicate the scourge of war, it remains within our power to limit it to situations where war is the last available remedy for injustice, or in the instance where violence must be met with violence to restore peace. To do this, we must fully comprehend human nature as it is, rather than simply wish for human nature, as it is not.

As Michael Gelven so aptly put it, “To understand war is thus to understand ourselves.” (Gelven, 18) If we anticipate the factors that bring on war, such as permanent states of injustice, a people’s sense of powerlessness and situations that encourage acts of naked aggression, we might react with foresight and avoid large-scale conflicts later. Denying the human need for conflict is eventually counterproductive. Rather, by accepting the reality of warfare, we can then begin the process of making war less likely, which in this imperfect world might just be the best we can hope to do.

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