War is bad.

Truly groundbreaking perspective, I know, but I don’t think everyone means the same thing when they say that war is bad. Some people mean that war hurts people, so if war is done it should be for a good reason and minimize suffering. Others mean that war is an unfortunate reality but not much can be done about it. A third group mean that all war is unjust, for any reason whatsoever. All these three camps say the same slogan and are surprised when they start arguing about whichever war is actually occuring at the time. There are many, many more perspectives that are hard to put into writing, but they all can come to agree under the banal statement of “war is bad.”

Because of course it is - war is hell. War is sending people to march to their deaths. War is taking money and food from people who need it and setting it ablaze to destroy resources that other people need to survive. War is a negative influence for everyone involved, and typically hurts the groups that each society considers “the most precious” (kids, women, you name it). As such, this is typically the perspective that is hammered home when people discuss the cruelty of war: that it’s awful to suffer the reprecussions of it. Because it’s a simple perspective that can be easily understood, it echoes throughout society.

But it doesn’t actually convince people that war is bad, not really. What this tells people is that “war has a cost.” War is not a negative factor that should always be avoided, but instead is closer to remodeling your house - it’ll cost a lot, stuff will be destroyed, but the possibility of having a better life after the dust is settled (or is vacuumed) is tantalizing. Remodeling your house is not an uncommon activity, and similarly, many of the same people who’d say “war is bad” will eagerly explain why this war is actually good for us.

This is one of the many lovely perspectives I’ve been exposed to in the past two years, as my country decided that going into a forever-war with zero plans on how to back out was a great way to improve our foreign policy. I’ve seen flavors of racism and xenophobia that were previously only known to shrimp or europeans. It has been truly awful, but in a grim sort of way it helped strengthen my previous stances by showing me their vulnerabilities, and by having to argue them relentlessly against almost everyone I know. One of these vulnerabilities was the fact I couldn’t really convince people why attacking gaza was bad for us, despite both of us supposedly agreeing that “war is bad.”

The issue wasn’t that they were pro-war, is that they thought war was justifiable under the right conditions, and I did not.

I don’t blame them for this perspective, because as said before, everyone who talks about war justifies it under these lenses: “war has a cost,” and “war sucks to lose.” Anti-war movies and books that focus on the suffering done by the nation who “lost” does not actually explain why war is bad, because it still slots in with the mindset that “losing a war sucks, so we must win the war by any means necessary.” In fact it reinforces it. If you want to properly criticize war and explain why it’s unjustifiable, you need to explain why winning a war is a losing scenario. How you can’t actually win. You take the assumptions of the people who justify war, assume these assumptions to be true, and show why it still is not good.

Attack on Titan does this by accepting the assumptions of fascist ideology, and still presenting fascism as a self-destructive force that cannot solve any issues beyond the immediate short term. Waltz with Bashir does this by showing how even the soldiers of the “winning” side have been forever scarred and can’t accept the things they’ve done to other people. Catch-22 does this by presenting anyone involved in the millitary as disconnected from reality, and the war they’re stuck in as entirely pointless.

Some of you may be thinking perspective teeters eerily close to the “shooting and crying” criticism of some war-related media; a criticism stating that a given piece of media focuses on how soldiers feel bad committing massacres, and by doing so exonerates them of any wrongdoing. “It wasn’t me, I had to do it. I had orders. They were going to kill me first.” That sort of deal. American Sniper is the most well known example of such criticism. That’s understandable, but what I percieve to be the difference between the two is that media which is properly anti-war doesn’t exonerate any of the people involved. “Yes, they feel bad. And they should. They’ve done awful things.” The fact that the “winners” suffered is essential to anti-war rhetoric because, lacking that, you still allow people a way to justify eternal warfare under the guise of “we must win, by any means necessary.”

This perspective is something that, looking in retrospect, is present in a lot of israeli anti-war media. This makes sense as Israel’s millitary history is decorated with a sense of percieved invincibility and triumphs, so just going “we could lose!” is not a very convincing argument. So to finish this post off I’d like to quote a section of “Shir La’Shalom” (A Song for Peace), an anti-war song written during the war of attirition between Egypt and Israel. The song was famously read by Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister who signed the Oslo Accords and represented a possible peaceful future for the middle east, on the rally in which he was assassinated.

The ones whose candles were snuffed, and in dirt were buried Bitter tears won’t wake them up, won’t return them to us No one will rescue us from the dark, empty pit What won’t help us is the joy of victory, nor songs of praise