The Pacifist and The Warmongerer

So, I was standing outside the auditorium waiting for the event to start when the woman with the man setting up the book seller's table approached me. I was wearing a business suit since I arrived from work near by. She asked me if I could arrange another table for Bellavia to sit at and sign books. I told her that I could not, but knew who she should talk to; the event manager was standing in the hall.

After directing her to the right person, I went back and continued to wait. The book seller noted that I was holding Bellavia's book and he asked if I had read it. After a few shared comments on the book, which told me he had not actually read it, he said, "These young men go to war, go through so much, and come back terribly wounded physically and mentally."

Well, what was there to say to that? "Yes," I replied, "sometimes they do." I was thinking about the young men who I had met who had, indeed, come back from war, wounded physically and mentally. I thought how different, though, my perspective was from his. I was willing to bet that he had never actually met or spoke to, for any length of time, a young man returning from war. He felt pity. I felt respect.

The young men I had met, even those whose lives had changed profoundly, were, for the most part, filled with determination. If they had moments of self-pity, it did not define them or their service. They would rather be spit on than to be offered pity. Pity only re-enforced their "otherness". These men struggle to bring the three worlds that they live in into alignment. They are injured and/or psychically wounded which places them in that world, a world of uncertainty, when, not long ago, they had been confident and capable. They are torn from the life of service that they had dedicated many years to and the family they had made with the men and women they served with. The third world, our world, they are the furthest from because we do not know what they know. We have never been where they have been. But, they are coming back to our world.

That was not the end of our conversation. The worst I could say about this gentleman was that he was well meaning though disconnected. A conscious and purposeful decision, to distance himself from violence. The world needs men like him to keep it from sliding into the Hobbesian wilderness, but he will never understand that the world needs men like Bellavia, too, to keep back the jungle.

He could not know, a few moments later, I would feel utter revulsion, rejection, for him and his words. He said that he was too young for Viet Nam (I placed him in his very early fifties), but his brothers were old enough. His father was in the military and did not want them to go so he arranged for one son to go into the navy while the other, as he said, was lucky to be stationed state side as an adjutant in the army. As if it was something to feel pride in or relief. I felt a hot rush of something go to my face. It was anger, but more akin to contempt for something vile. How could he know?

I looked away for a moment. I wondered what I had said or done that made this man believe I was like him. "My uncle served a tour, '70-'71. He enlisted so my dad would have his draft number pushed back. My mom was pregnant with me. He died two years ago from diseases related to exposure to agent orange." I ground my teeth together to say nothing else. Later, I thought how his story of his brothers avoiding combat somehow dishonored that service.

"Oh," he looked down at the floor somewhat sheepishly, not knowing what to reply or searching for the words. "Men did many brave things then." I felt sure that he included evading the draft as one of these "brave acts".

I wanted to walk away then, but not seem rude. I looked towards the doors to the auditorium for escape. I felt that my next words would be angry words. I was not there for that. I was there to listen to the veterans, their experiences and what information was available.

Then I went from anger to bemusement. In the pause, he had obviously thought that we still had something in common. That my words were a lament for his service as well as his death. The tears I felt behind my eyes were for neither. They were for the man I missed who taught me to ride a motorcycle and shared my interest in history during long talks over a coke and bologna sandwiches.

Out of the blue, "We have war because people make money off of it." Again, that's true, but to leave it there as the only cause or effect is not really the truth nor any real, mature evaluation of the human experience: the capacity to love or hate or desire something so much that men are willing to kill or die for it.

I was surprised by that even more than his original comment. "We have war because people decide that is the way they will settle their problems. When one side wants war, you either give them what they want or you fight for it." Profiteering is a symptom, not the cause, of war.

Still, he didn't buy that. "Eisenhower warned us about the dangers of the military-industrial complex."

I know, some must be thinking as I did at that moment. Nobody ever says that anymore, do they? Apparently, they do. I know, at this point, he took my stunned, silent bemusement as a prompt to continue his erstwhile, yet friendly, discussion, "If we stopped making weapons, the world would be much more peaceful."

Those were not angry words, only very earnest. As I searched for words that would bring a polite close to the conversation, I realized I was experiencing my first, true moment of no longer being "one of them." We live in two different worlds. I can't say which of us lives in the better world.

The one where I accept that violence is a part of the nature of man, but we hold it back as best as we can; holding it back, occasionally living in peace, while we watch the jungle outside our windows. The other, where peace is possible if we but try harder, work harder, accept that violence is the nature of others, but not necessarily our end condition. He sees soldiers and war as a symptom or victim of our worse nature. I see soldiers as an honorable and necessary occupation, keeping the violence of others away from us, they are the best of us.

It was strange that in the beginning he had expressed pity for our soldiers, then I had been angry for a moment and, now, it was I who felt pity for him. He would never understand that these men and women are us; the best of us, not the least or worst, not a victim.

Finally, I realized I was holding Bellavia's book in my hand. One of the many reasons I was there to hear these men and hear what they had to say was because I disagreed with the notion of soldiers as victims of anything, any "machine", other than our needs as a nation to defend and their need to prove something, to become something else than what they were. Even if they thought it was a good way to get college money or get out of a bad economic situation or develop skills for future work. Even if these things, it showed a particular drive that served them well in serving our nation and did not bring dishonor on them or the idea of national service.

If we did not produce another weapon..."Well, sir, if we didn't do it, someone else would. And, they do."

He was silent for a moment, then agreed, nodding his head, "That's true." Then, silence. He might be thinking now.

"I've read a lot of history." I continued, "As far as I can tell, men have been at war for more centuries than we could write about it. I believe that, if no one made another gun, plane or bomb, men would pick up rocks and sharpen sticks to either get what they want or defend what they had." I'm also sure, somewhere along the way, someone would figure out how to make money supplying the rocks and sharpening the sticks. A symptom, not the cause.

I wonder if anyone ever considered the armorers and fletchers of ancient and medieval warfare "war profiteers"? I wonder if a pacifist bookseller had ever read about the medieval "military-industrial complex" that is often looked back upon as both the height of brutality and the creator of such ideas as honor and chivalry? Or, ever imagined that the "military industrial complex" was present at large and small communities throughout history: Rome, Greece, viking settlements on Iceland, the American Revolution, the Civil War, the entire 19th century long before Eisenhower was even a twinkle in someone's eye?

Right then, a young man came out and announced we would be going to another location in the building for the conference. I thanked the bookseller politely and walked to the conference room where I spent two hours listening and asking questions.

For several days I pondered the irony of meeting a pacifist at a "pro-mission" (ie, support the war) event, hawking a book about war, written by a man who believes that war is necessary. More irony that he had somehow pegged me as a potential fellow pacifist.

Then again, we weren't that far off in what we wanted for the world: peace. We just have different ideas on how we're going to get there.