“His gaiety came in contact with the seriousness of war, like a butterfly –“
“Oh, very like a butterfly,” I said. “Too much like a butterfly.”
“I am not joking,” said the manager. “You see it? Like a butterfly and a tank.”
– From the short story The Butterfly and the Tank, by Ernest Hemingway
This brief essay is about the war that is in process today, and which will not end with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is also about the unending war in the Middle East, the violence in Africa, and the various clashes around the world. In a sense, this essay is about Warfare itself. Not about how or when it should be waged; that is the business of politicians and soldiers. Nor is it about its justification; that is the concern of philosophers. It offers a perspective on warfare today.
The first and most important point is this: Wars do not end, ever. If victories of one side over another do occur, these victories themselves become the seeds of further conflicts down the road.
Consider. In the country once called Annam, thereafter French Indo-China, and now Vietnam, the Japanese were fought, defeated and driven out in the 1940s and the French in the 1950s. During the 1960s, the USA plastered Vietnam with carpet bombings that showered down on its people more explosive tonnage than in all the wars in human history, multiplied by two. But, thanks in part to consistent Soviet assistance, April 1975 saw America defeated and scuttling in disarray from Saigon. As a post-script, China also invaded Vietnam and was also repulsed in 1978.
[quote]Superpowers embark on great military enterprises, only to be bogged down, demoralised and humiliated[/quote]
But that is not where it ended. The Americans were determined to salve their humiliation by punishing the USSR for backing Vietnam. In Afghanistan, the social radicalism of the Parcham-Khalq revolutionary regime brought it into conflict with the Afghan clerics, tribal chieftains and landowners. By October 1978, resistance to the Saur Revolution’s reforms had become open revolt. A major insurgency in Herat, led by Ismail Khan, was assisted by Afghani expatriates operating out of Pakistan, and Pakistani volunteers.
The unconstitutional regime of the usurper Ziaul Haq sought to exploit a self-proclaimed ‘Islamisation’ project as a pretext for clinging to power — and for hanging, flogging, lashing and imprisoning Pakistani citizens. The Mujahedeen’s continuing raids into Afghanistan, in collusion with Ismail Khan’s Heratis, offered Zia the opportunity to use these anti-communist Islamist guerrillas to gain acceptance for his repulsive regime with the US and other governments, as well as for securing large inflows of military and other aid. US National Security Advisor Brzezinski saw the opportunity of preparing his ‘bear trap’.
We know from the published memoirs of former CIA Director and later US Defence Secretary Robert Gates that the CIA armed and trained the Mujahedeen under President Carter’s executive order of July 3, authorising CIA covert operations and funding for the Mujahedeen. This was nearly six months before December 24, 1979, when the Soviet Army actually entered Afghanistan.
Brzezinski would later recall, “That secret operation... had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: we now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.”
The Soviet Army was fought to a standstill by the combined forces of the Mujahedeen, Pakistani intelligence services, US weaponry and US and Saudi funds. The USSR itself collapsed and disintegrated a couple of years after the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan morphed into armed conflict between various militias. Eventually victorious, the Taliban militia permitted headquarters to be created for the Al Qaeda multinational enterprise’s terror campaigns against the US. With the US and NATO actively entering the theatre, the war in Afghanistan took yet another form. It also spilled across the border into Pakistan.
And so it goes on: unending warfare, insurgency, terrorism, anarchy, state failure, enormous refugee displacements, human misery and millions of lost lives.
Does the reader note this continuum between the Japanese occupation of Indo-China in 1940 and what is happening in our country and in Afghanistan today? Wars do not end. They perpetuate themselves and spread in a kind of domino effect around the globe. In his book The Shield of Achilles, the historian Philip Bobbitt in fact suggests (in another context) that the Epochal War of our times began with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in August 1914.
Consider, also, the consequences of modern warfare, the nations, economies, roads, factories, homes, lives destroyed. Consider the ranks of the jobless, the homeless, the destitute. Again and again, writers and commentators have decried the senseless destruction caused by warfare. Wars do not, as we have seen, either achieve their objectives or, in most cases, even come to an end. Therefore, this is the next observation: warfare is irrational, causing completely gratuitous destruction. And this is without even considering the extraordinary horrors of nuclear war.
My final point is that modern armies and weaponry are extremely expensive, requiring huge chunks of a nation’s GDP to sustain them. Even the mighty USSR crumbled, unable to support the military expenditure necessitated by its superpower status. Thus, war is clearly an economically senseless enterprise. If a nation must destroy its people’s livelihoods and homes in order to defend them, what exactly is it supposed to be defending?
In one person’s adult life, I have seen both the superpowers embark on great military enterprises, only to be bogged down, demoralised and humiliated. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — surely, these examples are sufficient for even a child to appreciate the fatuity of modern warfare. Clearly, war – at least as we know it – is, paradoxically, an unsound way of combating an enemy.
The irresistible juggernaut of war, symbolised by Hemingway’s tank, can and does crush the butterfly of the human spirit under its treads. But how effective is it against nests of scorpions? Consider what scorpions, released inside a tank, can do to the tank’s crew. This will be discussed in another piece.
For the moment, let us understand that the mature nations of the world — Japan, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, among several other examples, and, increasingly, China as well — emphasise commercial relationships over territorial issues and peaceful handshakes over military pugnacity. It is all in the mindset, all in the attitude that rejects the teaching of war songs and encourages playing on the pipes of peace.
“Oh, very like a butterfly,” I said. “Too much like a butterfly.”
“I am not joking,” said the manager. “You see it? Like a butterfly and a tank.”
– From the short story The Butterfly and the Tank, by Ernest Hemingway
This brief essay is about the war that is in process today, and which will not end with the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. It is also about the unending war in the Middle East, the violence in Africa, and the various clashes around the world. In a sense, this essay is about Warfare itself. Not about how or when it should be waged; that is the business of politicians and soldiers. Nor is it about its justification; that is the concern of philosophers. It offers a perspective on warfare today.
The first and most important point is this: Wars do not end, ever. If victories of one side over another do occur, these victories themselves become the seeds of further conflicts down the road.
Consider. In the country once called Annam, thereafter French Indo-China, and now Vietnam, the Japanese were fought, defeated and driven out in the 1940s and the French in the 1950s. During the 1960s, the USA plastered Vietnam with carpet bombings that showered down on its people more explosive tonnage than in all the wars in human history, multiplied by two. But, thanks in part to consistent Soviet assistance, April 1975 saw America defeated and scuttling in disarray from Saigon. As a post-script, China also invaded Vietnam and was also repulsed in 1978.
[quote]Superpowers embark on great military enterprises, only to be bogged down, demoralised and humiliated[/quote]
But that is not where it ended. The Americans were determined to salve their humiliation by punishing the USSR for backing Vietnam. In Afghanistan, the social radicalism of the Parcham-Khalq revolutionary regime brought it into conflict with the Afghan clerics, tribal chieftains and landowners. By October 1978, resistance to the Saur Revolution’s reforms had become open revolt. A major insurgency in Herat, led by Ismail Khan, was assisted by Afghani expatriates operating out of Pakistan, and Pakistani volunteers.
The unconstitutional regime of the usurper Ziaul Haq sought to exploit a self-proclaimed ‘Islamisation’ project as a pretext for clinging to power — and for hanging, flogging, lashing and imprisoning Pakistani citizens. The Mujahedeen’s continuing raids into Afghanistan, in collusion with Ismail Khan’s Heratis, offered Zia the opportunity to use these anti-communist Islamist guerrillas to gain acceptance for his repulsive regime with the US and other governments, as well as for securing large inflows of military and other aid. US National Security Advisor Brzezinski saw the opportunity of preparing his ‘bear trap’.
We know from the published memoirs of former CIA Director and later US Defence Secretary Robert Gates that the CIA armed and trained the Mujahedeen under President Carter’s executive order of July 3, authorising CIA covert operations and funding for the Mujahedeen. This was nearly six months before December 24, 1979, when the Soviet Army actually entered Afghanistan.
Brzezinski would later recall, “That secret operation... had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: we now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War.”
The Soviet Army was fought to a standstill by the combined forces of the Mujahedeen, Pakistani intelligence services, US weaponry and US and Saudi funds. The USSR itself collapsed and disintegrated a couple of years after the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan morphed into armed conflict between various militias. Eventually victorious, the Taliban militia permitted headquarters to be created for the Al Qaeda multinational enterprise’s terror campaigns against the US. With the US and NATO actively entering the theatre, the war in Afghanistan took yet another form. It also spilled across the border into Pakistan.
And so it goes on: unending warfare, insurgency, terrorism, anarchy, state failure, enormous refugee displacements, human misery and millions of lost lives.
Does the reader note this continuum between the Japanese occupation of Indo-China in 1940 and what is happening in our country and in Afghanistan today? Wars do not end. They perpetuate themselves and spread in a kind of domino effect around the globe. In his book The Shield of Achilles, the historian Philip Bobbitt in fact suggests (in another context) that the Epochal War of our times began with the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in August 1914.
Consider, also, the consequences of modern warfare, the nations, economies, roads, factories, homes, lives destroyed. Consider the ranks of the jobless, the homeless, the destitute. Again and again, writers and commentators have decried the senseless destruction caused by warfare. Wars do not, as we have seen, either achieve their objectives or, in most cases, even come to an end. Therefore, this is the next observation: warfare is irrational, causing completely gratuitous destruction. And this is without even considering the extraordinary horrors of nuclear war.
My final point is that modern armies and weaponry are extremely expensive, requiring huge chunks of a nation’s GDP to sustain them. Even the mighty USSR crumbled, unable to support the military expenditure necessitated by its superpower status. Thus, war is clearly an economically senseless enterprise. If a nation must destroy its people’s livelihoods and homes in order to defend them, what exactly is it supposed to be defending?
In one person’s adult life, I have seen both the superpowers embark on great military enterprises, only to be bogged down, demoralised and humiliated. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan — surely, these examples are sufficient for even a child to appreciate the fatuity of modern warfare. Clearly, war – at least as we know it – is, paradoxically, an unsound way of combating an enemy.
The irresistible juggernaut of war, symbolised by Hemingway’s tank, can and does crush the butterfly of the human spirit under its treads. But how effective is it against nests of scorpions? Consider what scorpions, released inside a tank, can do to the tank’s crew. This will be discussed in another piece.
For the moment, let us understand that the mature nations of the world — Japan, Switzerland, the Scandinavian countries, among several other examples, and, increasingly, China as well — emphasise commercial relationships over territorial issues and peaceful handshakes over military pugnacity. It is all in the mindset, all in the attitude that rejects the teaching of war songs and encourages playing on the pipes of peace.