Swanson: Europe Does Opposite of Restoring Names to Departments of War
Europe Does Opposite of Restoring Names to Departments of War
The European Commission, far from eager to restore the non-Orwellian name to departments of war — long since rebranded as departments of “defense” — is pushing to get deadly weapons categorized as especially ethical “investments” meeting Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria. Specifically, the tools of war, according to the European Commission, advance the cause of peace.
Those who buy most seriously into the war-makes-peace propaganda have reservations about particular means of destroying men, women, children, infants, and all life on Earth — for example, nuclear weapons, incendiary munitions, depleted uranium ammunition, and blinding lasers — and presumably about defining peace so broadly as to include a dead rock rid of all human and other living things. But if you slaughter people with respectable missiles, bombs, and bullets then you are not only engaged in a necessary evil, but are a philanthropist of the first order.
Leading the humanitarian death push are 96 UK members of parliament who tell us that nothing could be more ethical than keeping the war in Ukraine raging and the risk of nuclear Armageddon increasing.
A deep divide has been opened up in recent news stories between two longstanding veins of war propaganda. One of them used to be more popular in the days when U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was unashamed to maintain that any war at all would be a good thing, and when war was believed a benefit to those waging it and even to those subhuman heathen creatures slaughtered by it. Philosophers like William James struggled to find some alternative that could provide the moral benefits of war. Death counts were exaggerated and bragged about. Exterminations were given scientific stamps of approval.
The other strain of war propaganda maintains that war is a philanthropic enterprise bestowed on the world through the generosity of those incidentally happening to profit from it. Death counts are hidden and reported as small fractions of the truth. So-called “defensive” imperial escapades are a “service” done in “proportion” as an eagerly sought out “last resort.”
The odd development, I think, is that the newer, more Orwellian line — that war is progressive and philanthropic — relies more on ancient myths, whereas the older, more vicious and barbaric, lust for sadistic violence accepts more modern facts. If you’re going to claim that war is defensive and necessary, you have to have accepted that some people are inferior creatures with whom one cannot negotiate, who “only understand violence.” You have to pretend that wars happening in people’s cities and villages are on an ancient “battlefield” free of civilians. Otherwise, you cannot justify defunding numerous enterprises that facilitate peace while dumping resources into what builds momentum for wars. But if you simply declare your love for the glory and disgusting gore and evil of war, then your underlying beliefs need only include that there’s stuff in various parts of the world that could make you richer or more powerful, which is perfectly true, at least in a shortsighted blinkered way.
The remaining odd fact about these forms of war support is that they continue to need each other. Without the pair of them, with either of them alone, war support and acceptance would be too weak for wars to continue. Together, they provide a significant slice of a population, as well as the illusion of an all-encompassing debate. Which excuse do you use for the genocides you back? What? Oh no, I use the other excuse entirely!
Some day, if we have enough days left, we need to think outside the Pentagon.
https://davidswanson.org/europe-does-opposite-of-restoring-names-to-departments-of-war/
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