War Acceptance 101
By David Swanson
July 21, 2015 "Information
Clearing House"
- Behind John Rawls' veil of ignorance, an
American ethics professor would imagine himself or herself choosing
a society of wonderful economic and social justice, unheard of
equality and liberty, and the "right" to "defend" itself through the
counterproductive and self-destructive instrument of military empire
and war. Peace isn't permitted even in utopia, in U.S. academe. Why?
Because John Rawls murdered Japanese people "in defense" and
occupied their nation as philanthropy.
And why do others support other wars? Principally because of where
they happen to have been born and what flavor of fairy tales they
have been told as children. Which ancient religious claptrap were
you fed? Where were you born? Which political party do you identify
with? Answer those questions and nine-and-a-half times out of ten
we'll know which wars you support. We'll be wrong mostly in the
cases of people who have rejected the acceptability of war.
What if, in the moral "original position," you chose to be born into
a society that didn't accept murder, including government sanctioned
mass murder? To reject the killing of non-human animals you'd just
have to include them in the list of possible beings you might be
born as. You wouldn't choose a carnivorous society if you might be
the carne. You wouldn't choose an environmentally destructive
society if you might be born as someone who cared about their
offspring. And you wouldn't choose a warmaking society any more than
you would choose an extreme plutocracy, because your chances of
being a war profiteer experiencing short-term and superficial
benefits would be miniscule compared to your chances of killing or
dying or being injured or being traumatized or losing a loved one or
being hated when traveling or paying an economic price or losing
your civil liberties or experiencing vicious blowback or bitter
shame.
You also wouldn't choose a warmaking society because you would have
no war propaganda behind your veil of ignorance. Despite being
defined as an impossibly isolated individual, you would have no
reason to choose massive suffering even if the odds were against
your being one of the victims.
And, of course, if you imagined yourself ignorant of whether you
were an American or an Iranian, it might jolt you into some
reluctance to support dropping bombs on Iran.
Extremists who reject all racism do not exist, because such a
position is not deemed extreme at all. The same applies to extreme
opponents of rape, child abuse, or polygamy, of cannibalism, human
sacrifice, or slavery, of the torture of kittens, or of criticism of
John McCain. Opposing these things does not involve extremists, only
good liberal participants. But oppose all war and you are simply
going too far.
But if you are going to support some wars, how do you pick which
wars not to support?
Let's take the proposed U.S. war on Iran. Let's suppose you don't
oppose it simply because you obey President Obama or because you
were not raised a particular sort of Jewish or Christian. Let's
suppose you came to your opposition to a U.S. attack on Iran against
all demographic odds and after considerable thought. What thought
was that?
I really want to know this. Because a good majority in the United
States opposes attacking Iran for the moment. Is this just because
Iran elected a new president and the new guy hasn't yet been
properly demonized? Or is it just because there have been no reports
on videos of Iranian beheadings? Isn't it more likely because no
emergency outcry has been raised to defend innocent civilians from
imminent slaughter by Iranians, requiring that Americans bomb them
first? Isn't it even more likely because the FBI is posing as ISIS
members, not Iranians, when it entraps troubled and challenged
people in charges of terrorist violence? Or -- dare we hope? -- is
it because, after so many years of holding off a war on Iran, the
idea that there's something urgent about starting one now just
doesn't pass the smell test?
If you could choose what sort of economic and political structure to
be born into, wouldn't you choose one that learned from trial and
error, and from trial and success? Wouldn't you place yourself in a
society that couldn't avoid war through basic diplomacy in one
instance and not notice that the same basic tactic could be applied
in many other instances? And if you chose a society that rewarded
success in the pursuit of the social good, you would be choosing a
society that viewed war as on a par with cannibalism. Tragically, if
you published such a claim in academia, it would not make you feel
any better about your colleagues when they roasted and devoured you.
David Swanson is an American activist, blogger and
author.
http://davidswanson.org/blog/1
