NEW ZEALAND’S PARTICIPATION in the war against Islamic State
has already prompted angry criticism from the Left. This country boasts a
pacifist tradition extending back at least 100 years, to the First World War
and the persecution (among many others) of the conscientious objector,
Archibald Baxter.
Less honourable, perhaps, and certainly less grounded in the
pacifists’ profound ethical objection to the taking of human life, is the Far
Left’s historical opposition to “imperialist wars”. Significantly, their
protests against these conflicts were generally organised on behalf of “the
victims of capitalist aggression” – whose victories in such “wars of national
liberation” were eagerly anticipated. These were the unabashed revolutionaries,
who, in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, chanted: “One side right, one side
wrong. Victory to the Viet-Cong!”
Somewhere in the “middle” of the Left stand those who are
willing to accept that in some circumstances (World War II being the most cited
example) the taking up of arms is not only an urgent, but also a profoundly
moral, necessity. This idea of the “Just War” goes all the way back to St
Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, whose arguments are still drawn on by members
of the UN Security Council whenever decisions have to be made about whether or
not to authorise the use of military force.
The greatest anti-war movement of the last century was
undoubtedly the international movement against the US involvement in Vietnam. All
three of the great anti-war traditions: the Christian prohibition against
waging “unjust war”; the revolutionary socialists’ objection to “imperialist
war”; and the pacifists’ uncompromising opposition to the taking of human life;
were intermingled in the global “mobilisations” against the Vietnam conflict.
What elevated the anti-war struggle in the United States to
a cultural watershed, however, wasn’t opposition to US imperialism, or even the
appalling loss of life, although both of these considerations played a part.
No, what really transformed the anti-war protests into a genuine mass movement
was conscription. Overwhelmingly, the young men sent to fight and die in
South-East Asia were draftees – conscripts whose “number” had, quite literally,
come up.
Not In My Place: American university students whose call-up had been 'deferred' strove to rescue their conscripted brothers by ending the war in Vietnam.
One of the few ways to avoid the draft was to enrol in a
course of university study. It is only when one grasps the importance of
“deferment” that the crucial role played by university students in the American
anti-war movement makes any historical sense. As the number of American
soldiers in Vietnam began to escalate, those whose service had been deferred
felt an increasingly urgent obligation to bring the conscripts home. Young
working-class Whites, Blacks and Hispanics were literally dying in their place
– and for no good reason. The US wasn’t battling Hitler in Vietnam, it was
napalming and carpet-bombing peasants whose only crime was an iron-clad
determination to rule themselves.
America’s experience in Vietnam brought home to its leaders
the huge risks entailed in fighting what came to be seen, increasingly, as an
unjust war with conscripted citizens. If a government’s intention is to use its
military resources for any other purpose than national defence against an
imminent and existential threat, then it is best that the soldiers, sailors and
air personnel employed are professionals – not draftees.
Doing Their Job: New Zealand's highly professional special forces personnel in Kabul, Afghanistan.
A professional standing army, precisely because it is not
composed of the voters’ conscripted sons and daughters, may be deployed in
relative political safety for any number of purposes (many of them, these days,
decidedly dark). The usual left-wing suspects will complain – but with
considerably less effect than during the war in Vietnam.
Professional soldiers look forward to war. Fighting for
their country is exactly what they signed-up to do. Should they fall in battle,
their families, their comrades and their country’s leaders will mourn and
honour them, but at the back of everybody’s mind will be the thought: “They
knew this might happen, but they weren’t deterred. They died doing the job
they’d always wanted.”
Try making an anti-war movement out of that!
True pacifists are few and far between. Anti-imperialists
almost always have a dog in the fight. And unjust wars, providing the “enemy”
is rendered sufficiently terrifying, and providing the participating military
forces are made up of highly-trained professionals just itching to get amongst
it, are unlikely to cause the governments that wage them very much in the way
of serious political bother.
Few Kiwis will march in the streets for Islamic State.
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 7 November 2014.
