war

[darkoshi]

Something the protagonist of the book I'm reading did recently
disturbed me a lot and got me thinking...

She was engaged in guerilla warfare and snuck into the enemy's
garrison, intending to set it on fire, to burn it down. She
had gunpowder/paper/fuse concoctions ("fireworks" in our modern
tongue, I imagine), to start the blazes with.

But what she did was... placed them in the windows of the
garrison's stable, pointing inward, and lit them so that
they exploded /into/ the building, which was (apparently)
/full of horses/! Seemingly irregardless even, if the
explosive fireworks hit the horses directly, as opposed to
hitting into the hay or the opposite walls! The logic being
that the stable, with its hay and other combustible materials,
was an obviously good place for starting a conflagration.

And furthermore, the way it was written, it made it seem that
even though she cared not one whit about the horses, she still
wasn't quite comfortable with causing the humans to burn
alive... she didn't set fire to the barracks until after
all the soldiers had run out of them!

Now, given that her own village had been burned down by the
enemy, and all her family killed, and some of them possibly
even burned alive... It makes sense that she wanted vengeance.

But still, to deliberately kill innocent animals in a cruel
manner like that, as part of getting vengeance on a human
enemy?

The idea of someone doing that bothers me a lot.



Yet...

Even if a person is only trying to kill humans, they may
kill innocents too. Even some /soldiers/ may be considered
innocent... They may have been drafted, with no option of refusal;
they may not have actually taken part in combat yet, and they
may not even intend to; they may be opposed to the war and have
no intention of actually fighting; they may even be doing
things to try to stop the violence and injustice...

Or maybe they've been brainwashed by the powers-that-be into
thinking they're fighting for something just and necessary...
Are they really guilty?

And so, if you're willing to kill innocents to achieve your
goals, what difference can it make to you, if you kill
non-human innocents as well as human ones?

And really, there's no practical way to fight a war without
harming or killing innocents. Unless your enemy is just as
determined to also avoid harming innocents, it would cause
you to be at a great disadvantage to them, and you would most
likely lose.

So therefore, why even care at all? Why not just put your
objectives foremost, and disregard all else? If your objective
is to kill enemy soldiers, why wouldn't you do so in whichever
manner worked best, irregardless of what other harm was done?
If it works, that's all that matters, right? Why should you care
about ethics and how anyone who isn't you is affected
by your actions?

That's what inevitably happens in war. Even if each individual
soldier isn't thinking that way about it, this mindset eventually
takes prominence.

I don't like war. It disgusts me. If both sides of a war were
determined not to harm innocents, then perhaps I could handle it.
But if both sides were that rational and caring, they'd probably
not be fighting in the first place.

And even when both sides think themselves above
purposefully harming innocents... All it takes is a few instances
of innocents being harmed on each side (perhaps inadvertently)...
And then each side begins to think that their enemy has no limits
as to what they will or will not do, and so therefore if one wants
to win (and one must win, since surely allowing an unethical
and immoral enemy to win and to have power over you would be wholly
unbearable!), one must match the enemy's cruelty... and so each
side inevitably loses their qualms over harming innocents, since it
is surely a necessary evil, made necessary by the nefariousness of
the enemy.

And when the main reason for the war in the first place is to curb
the enemy's nefariousness, becoming nefarious yourself in order to
defeat them doesn't make sense at all. And once one has engaged
in cruel, nefarious acts, can one ever go back to being what one
had been before? Can one just turn the cruelty off like a switch,
and go back to being an ethical, caring person?

Yet one can't just sit back doing nothing, allowing anyone without
moral qualms to come and take away other people and one's own
rights and freedoms... one must resist, yet how?

Resist by doing what one wants to do, what one has the human right
to do, regardless of the consequences? Just do it and be killed
for it? Or be put in prison for the rest of one's life?
Perhaps.

It depends on what things one considers most important. People like
me, I think, would be doomed to unpleasant lives and deaths.
(Are doomed?)

Some people think there can be limits in war. A certain level of
cruelty, but not too much... As if one can still maintain a sense
of ethics while killing and destroying... Perhaps.

It just goes on and on. Overall human nature does not change.
There is no solution. Sometimes there may be temporary successes,
but they're certain to be followed by further failures. It's
human nature. The people who care will always be at the mercy
of those who don't, as well as being in danger of themselves
turning into one of those people who don't care.