Armchair Generals

And the lives they play with

As the saying goes, the first casualty of war is the truth. For years, we were told that plucky Ukraine was on the verge of defeating the Russians. That was always a lie. More recently, there have been competing claims over whether people in Gaza are starving or not, and depending on the source, Iran’s nuclear program is either in shambles or has suffered a momentary setback. Knowing what to believe is often a matter of what a person wants to believe.

The second casualty is far more tangible. This casualty is quantitative, not qualitative. The only thing in genuine dispute with the Ukraine/Russia conflict is how many young men have been killed, maimed, or injured. Estimates range from a few hundred thousand to more than a million. The same is true of the Middle East regarding a credible count of Palestinian civilian deaths and also how Israel is coping with the dual realities of prolonged conflict.

Suicide is on the rise, as are cases of post-traumatic stress. One researcher has gone so far as to call the latter “a mental health emergency.” Neither of these results should surprise anyone. For the most part, Israel is a country whose military leans heavily on reservists. It’s hard enough to adequately prepare professional soldiers for the horrors of combat. Imagine doing that with engineers, bankers, schoolteachers, and assorted other laymen. And laywomen. For comparison, cases of PTSD in the US are twice as prevalent among active-duty troops vs. the general population.

Armchair generals and keyboard warriors have the luxury of distance and the guarantee of safety in opining over the details of combat. Those engaged in it have neither. In a previous professional life, a co-worker’s son was an Army Ranger who deployed to Iraq when the war on terror ramped up. After his first deployment, he was full of tales of “tracking Haji” and other exploits. After his second deployment, the stories were replaced by a dead-eyed thousand-yard stare. It didn’t take a professional to understand that this young man was different, perhaps irrevocably.

I bring this up because the bad is going to get worse. The Israeli Prime Minister is publicly indulging his fantasies of a Greater Israel, which extends well beyond Gaza and threatens other Middle Eastern nations. The ensuing backlash from those countries could well jeopardize Trump’s Abraham Accords initiative, which opened relations between the Jewish state and several Arab nations. Netanyahu’s expansionist aims cannot co-exist with diplomatic and business relations, and if he follows through, whatever stress the IDF is experiencing now will only multiply.

The same is true in Europe, where multiple politicians are ready to reintroduce mandatory military service to indulge their fantasies of continued war in Russia. The current head of Ukraine is in lockstep with the Euros, even though hundreds of thousands of his countrymen have been killed, millions more have fled, and conscription now is often a case of random boys and old men being snatched off the streets.

The idea of young men being forced to fight old men’s wars should bother everybody, and it was among the reasons America ended the draft. When troops are committing suicide in larger-than-usual numbers, what is driving that? And when reservists take their own lives after just days in uniform, what does that say about the cause they are ordered to pursue? No one denies that war is a nasty business. Every conflict has its share of horror stories, which are almost always most acute on the ground.

Dropping bombs from the air, firing missiles from offshore, and guiding drones toward their targets are impersonal acts. The odds of someone shooting back are often remote. That absence of risk is not something to underestimate. Firebombing Dresden or carrying out nuclear strikes against Hiroshima and Nagasaki were much different events from D-Day. The hazard involved in the former is exponentially less than the latter, never mind the obvious fact that one involves a defenseless civilian population and the other entails armed combatants who are shooting back.

I argue that nothing separates humans from every other creature on the planet than the ability to consciously use violence. Animals engage in violent behavior for reasons of food, mating, and territory, and it is an instinctive mechanism. With people, it’s a choice. It may also be the single greatest source of power that exists. It should never be the avenue of first resort or even the second choice, but it is somewhere on the list of potential responses to real or perceived threats.

Where things can get sideways is with the degree of violence that is involved. When the target is painted as less than human, no shortage of atrocities can follow. History is full of examples; you can decide among yourselves if anything happening today will join that list. Either way, the Nietzsche quote comes to mind: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he become a monster.” That line was the prelude to the thought that if one gazes into the abyss long enough, the abyss eventually gazes back.

No one prosecuting a conflict believes himself to be a monster, of course, just like no one who complains about the greed of others thinks that he is also greedy. Dealing with uncomfortable realities carries a high degree of risk. In war, the greatest risks are assumed by those far removed from the decision-making. Perhaps the Nietzsche quote leads to another one about winning a battle but losing the war. Eventually, the shooting stops, and life returns to some level of normal. What does normal look like for the ones carrying scars no one can see?