The relentless loss of life witnessed in Gaza serves as a somber prelude to a truth long acknowledged by Benjamin Franklin, who wisely noted, “There never was a good war, or a bad peace.”
War’s true essence is revealed as a dreadful sanctioning of first-degree murder; it’s an encounter with death in its most grisly form. It was former Vice President Dick Cheney’s “one percent doctrine” at work: Destroy every person or thing that has a 1 percent chance of assisting the enemy—currently or in the future—and allow for a considerable margin for error. Gut-wrenching civilian casualties—all dismissed as collateral damage—ensue.
Israel did just this when it bombed a refugee camp to take out a Hamas leader. But despite Israel’s actions in killing civilians as collateral damage, does the United States—does anyone—possess the moral high ground to lecture or rebuke Israel? Think of the staggering civilian casualties in World War II in the bombings of Dresden (25,000–35,000), Tokyo (100,000), Hiroshima (66,000), and Nagasaki (39,000). Think of how these numbers were dwarfed by premature deaths caused by wincing privations of life: no food, no water, no power, no shelter, no medicine, no clothes, and no hope.
These atrocities aren’t anomalies in the world of conflict, but part of a broader web of human conflict. In fact, the civilian war atrocities of our enemies have been the same or worse. Look no further than the Rape of Nanking, the V-1 and V-2 rocket attacks on British cities, Dr. Mengele, and the biological warfare of Manchuria’s Unit 731. Man’s inhumanity to man is limitless and universal—so, it seems, is its hypocrisy.
Pro-Palestinian and Pro-Hamas protesters roam the streets chanting for Jewish blood. They conveniently ignore the atrocities their own sides have committed and focus squarely on their adversary’s. Never mind the calls for the extermination of Jews. Never mind the discriminate killings of over one thousand children, women, and men. Never mind that they use refugees as human shields to protect their leaders and weapons. And never mind that the Palestinian government refuses to condemn these acts.
Lincoln’s cautionary words bring us to the 20th century’s global conflicts, where the “war to end all wars” failed to fulfill its promise, ushering in an era even more devastating. Tragically, World War I proved no more than an intermission before the unspeakable horrors of World War II. The Kellogg-Briand Pact purported to outlaw war, but the ink was barely dry before Japan invaded Manchuria and Mussolini invaded Ethiopia.
What is the lesson for the United States? Refrain from utopian quests to purge the world of evil? The intent is benign, but the execution requiring war is a cure vastly worse than the disease.
Ultimately, our greatest export shouldn’t be the might of our military but the power of our ideals. We, as every country, should learn from experience and the wisdom of our gallant, valorous, intellectually unexcelled Founding Fathers—especially George Washington, James Madison, and John Quincy Adams. We should embrace a national policy of invincible self-defense, promising the annihilation of any nation that attacks the United States. Our land, sea, air, space, and cyber boundaries should be impregnable. We would save staggering sums and eliminate resentments abroad engendered by status of forces agreements by dismantling our 800 military bases in foreign countries.
We don’t need allies for invincible self-defense. We are the safest and most militarily powerful nation in the history of the world by orders of magnitude. We uniquely confront zero existential threats. Our influence abroad should be the influence of example, not bayonets. The ideas of liberty, freedom, and the rule of law that underwrote the American Revolution gave birth to the French Revolution that topped the French monarchy. Ideas are imperishable. They spread even without the internet or the digital age.
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she does not go abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. ... She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. ... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit. ... [America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace.”
