In a rare fit of public service\u2014no, I haven\u2019t been convicted of anything\u2014I need to bring some self-awareness to the automobile drivers of America.\u00a0 We all enjoy funny bumper stickers; you can laugh with them, or at them, so no matter your ideology, you get a chuckle.\u00a0 Think of your own reactions to other people\u2019s bumper stickers.\u00a0 Preachy bumper stickers\u2014ones that convey your sense of moral and intellectual superiority\u2014tend to back-fire.\u00a0 That is, you don\u2019t end up convincing anyone, and no one\u2019s laughing with you (though some of us will be laughing at you).<\/p>\n
Case in point: a bumper sticker I saw recently in traffic.\u00a0 It proclaimed that \u201cYou cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war.\u201d\u00a0 Now, to those of us who actually know something about the topic, it just makes you look stupid (much like this blog\u2019s effect on me).\u00a0 Because although this did not come from the lips of the President, it is still a progressive statement to which the most appropriate response is that progressive slogan, Yes We Can!<\/p>\n
In those immortal words, let me explain.\u00a0 In order to prevent others from attacking, one must convince them that attacking you will be more costly than beneficial.\u00a0 The only ways to do this are to make yourself so wretched that the benefit is too minimal to justify any expenditure of effort\u2014and for many years, one might have thought North Korea was pursuing this strategy\u2014or to make the effort required to conquer you too great for any benefit to be enough.<\/p>\n
Of course, since the greater the wretchedness of your condition, the less the effort required to beat you, the first is a difficult race to win.\u00a0 Beyond that, it requires a degree of self-destructive zeal that healthy humans don\u2019t have.\u00a0 The second alternative, though, has been a constant in human history.\u00a0 And the means to accomplishing it, to raising the cost of an attack, are precisely to prepare for war, whether with defensive armament (fortifications) or offensive (nuclear explosives).<\/p>\n
In fact, the long (if nervous) peace in the last century resulted from this logic.\u00a0 Mutual Assured Destruction meant that, because each side knew the other could make the consequences of an attack unbearable for the attacker, no one had any desire to attack.\u00a0 Note that this required each to maintain a preparation for war.\u00a0 Even in a single-power context, such as the Pax Romana, it was the overwhelming military might of Rome that preserved peace in the empire.\u00a0 No one dared to poke the bear.<\/p>\n
Nor does this come as news, to any who care to pay attention to more than the moral superiority their outrage allows them to imagine.\u00a0 I may have mentioned this before, because it\u2019s one of my favorite snarks about hippies (original and recycled).\u00a0 This bumper sticker comes from the idea that it takes two to make war; if one side refuses to fight, there will be no war.\u00a0 This simply isn\u2019t so; it may be short (see France, World War II), but war there will be.\u00a0 Imagine there\u2019s a war, and no one goes, as Bertolt Brecht asks.\u00a0 Brecht\u2014hardly a part of the capitalist war machine\u2014did not blanche from answering his request: then the war comes to you.<\/p>\n
Another slogan with selective amnesia syndrome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a rare fit of public service\u2014no, I haven\u2019t been convicted of anything\u2014I need to bring some self-awareness to the automobile drivers of America.\u00a0 We all enjoy funny bumper stickers; you can laugh with them, or at them, so no … Continue reading