War is Sacrifice

Steve Rogers: I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.

Tony Stark: I think I would just cut the wire.

Steve Rogers: Always a way out... You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.

 

 

War is the most wasteful of human activities.  It's designed to do one thing - destroy.  That destruction comes in the form of lives lost, property damaged and societies fractured.  It's all so very wasteful.

 

It also requires an utter level of conviction; you must completely overcome your enemy, reduce them to a quivering mass afraid to ever lift a finger in your presence again or you must "...plant your foot on his neck, and keep him that way forever, lest he spring up and slit your white throat."

 

There is, in my mind, only one valid justification for war - and that's to stop the fatal suffering of other human beings at the hands of oppressors.  Up to that point you have many, many tools for coercion; legislative, advocacy, civil disobedience, million person marches, more nuanced tactics of persuasion.  When the guns start picking off the people, that is when you must recognize all other efforts have, in exclusion, failed - and that's when you supplement them with extreme prejudice.

 

The conflict in Syria is one of those times.  It is incumbent on world leaders (yes, many of whom have blood of some kind or other on their own hands) to do something to protect the innocent.  That's the whole point of being a leader.

 

Now here's where I stand apart from many.  I am not in favour of armchair military tactics that keep the aggressor out of harm's way.  There is, in fact, a rule for that - do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.  If you are prepared to put a bullet into another human being because you believe it is necessary, you must be prepared to take one back.

 

To declare war on someone and expect them not to retaliate if folly.  To try and take the risk out of war for yourself is equally short-sighted - it tends to involve harsh measures like landmines, chemical weapons and drones, escalating the inhumanity of combat.  When you keep your skin out of the game, you keep your enemy at a distance, making  it easier to dehumanize them.  The person you can't see can be an animal, a beast, a sub-human creature that needs to be put down at all costs - meaning, the ends justify the means.  That's the approach Assad has taken, as have so many dictators before him. 

 

When you look 'em in the eye, they are simple another soldier following orders on behalf of a cause that's been sold to them in the most flattering terms possible.  They have families just as you do; they are as frustrated, tired and questioning as you are.  If you have to kill them - and you may have to - recognize that killing for what it is and remember.

 

This is the same reason I believe he who passes judgement should wield the sword.  Leaders calling for war from the comforts of plush offices are playing testosterone-fuelled games using the lives of others as their pawns.  Assad feels like the Big Man on the Syrian campus; he'd feel a little bit differently if the carnage being done on his orders landed directly on his doorstep.

 

There are all kinds of reasons why modern leaders don't lead from the front - bigger theatres of war require broader line-of-sight to manage multiple engagements in an effective, coordinated way.  When the people calling those shots, however, have never experienced war in person, then there's a good chance that all they see are hills on maps.  The Bloody Great War I is full of such stories of lives destroyed because leaders didn't bother to get the lay of the land.

 

Politics is this kind of warfare writ large - leaders try to remove themselves from the consequences of their direction, fostering a chain of unaccountability.  You can always spin your way out of any crisis you have brought on yourself.  Everyone that gets hurt along the way is simply collateral damage.  By enabling leaders because we think that will serve our own best interests, we fuel the problem.  The role of a leader's team isn't to protect their leader but to empower them and provide them with the best counsel possible, whether it's palatable or not.  Leaders should wear the weight of their decisions personally - it's not a privilege, being in charge, but a responsibility.

 

War is sacrifice; in situations like Syria a necessary one, but a sacrifice none-the-less.  If you're going to commit to combat - if you're going to commit your own forces to combat - have the guts to internalize what you are doing and do it properly.  That means boots on the ground, preparations at home and a never-ending commitment to try and make non-violent alternatives work.  Destruction of the enemy is never the goal - you can't do that without becoming a war criminal yourself.  Keeping your foot on the throat of your enemy isn't sustainable, either - revolutions are born that way. 

 

If a leader is to commit to war, they should do so not in a bid for self-preservation; in fact, they should do so from a mindset of never asking their troops to do that which they would not.  That means being ready to put your own life on the line as well.  That kind of conviction discourages sloppy and wasteful planning, but it is also powerful beyond recognition - there is nothing more terrifying on the field of combat than an entire force that, from the top down, is prepared to put the mission before all else, including themselves. 

 

At the end of the day it's not a matter of us vs. them; it's one world, and we all live in it together, or we can die alone.  There is nothing heroic about killing someone else; the true heroes are those ready to die themselves so that others may live.

 

Wander, My Friends: Visionaries, Entrepreneurs and Political Nomads

Desert tribesmen, he argued, always have more courage and social cohesion than settled, civilized folk, so every once in a while they will sweep in and conquer lands whose rulers have become corrupt and complacent. They create a new dynasty — and, over time, become corrupt and complacent themselves, ready to be overrun by a new set of barbarians.

 

 

Sound familiar?  Such was RIM, now defunct.  Such were the Federal Liberals, now clawing their way out of the abyss (as the Federal Tories keep digging).

 

The greatest warriors, greatest thinkers and greatest visionaries of history never settled, literally.  Wealth was not their goal.  They were not their goal.  Something bigger was.

 

By never settling, by never getting comfortable, they never stopped - and in the process have changed the world.

 

Wander, my friends...

 

 

"There is God's wine, and there's this other.  Don't mix them.  There are naked pilgrims clothed only in sunlight - don't give them clothes."

 

  - Rumi as expressed by Coleman Barks

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Tom Cruise Never Wavers

If he finally conceded that he was gay, and gave us a guided tour of his sexuality, would that be enough? Unlikely, because the mood around him is one of terrible anger, not curiosity.

Ostensibly because he’s a liar, leading a double life in front of us – we who are exemplars in every way! More likely because he won’t do what we want, and that is to let us call him gay all the time.

Is Tom Cruise gay?  Does he have a mental illness?  Has he been brainwashed by Scientology?

As one of the top movie stars in history, there's obviously a lot of interest in Tom Cruise.  We love to scrutinize our celebrities; it has been thus since Zeus was a little fella.  Cruise himself has made this easy - through his couch-jumping, anti-post-partum medication-taking, Scientology practicing antics, there has always been fodder for a public hungry for controversy.  The fact that Cruise frequently comes across as sanctimonious doesn't help.

And yet... nobody can deny that Cruise throws himself fully into each role he performs.  He's certainly not afraid to push his boundaries.  Over his life he has picked up skills ranging from piloting to fencing; he stops to help complete strangers on the street.  Everything Tom Cruise does, he does with utter conviction. 

Who of us can say the same?  Not many.  It takes a certain kind of passion, of belief, to throw oneself so fully into a way of living that accepts no compromise.  The grand irony is, we demand that level of dedication from any leader (political, religious, etc) yet are mistrustful of conviction when we see it.  In a way, though, this does make sense; we create our leaders in our own image.

Me, I think Tom Cruise is delusional.  It would surprise me none at all if his position within the church of Scientology has fed that delusion.  Of course, I also believe that a certain degree of delusion (as long as it's accompanied by humility) is a good thing.  The best politicians I know thoroughly believe that they owe the world the benefit of their leadership.   If they didn't, if nobody did, we'd have no leadership at all.  Of course, the best politicians go out of their way to base their policy directions on fact, something Cruise himself has had trouble with.

Yes, Tom Cruise is larger-than-life and yes, there are some real, troubling problems with the way Scientology conducts its business.  But are those the things that really bother us?  I can’t think of a person I know that hasn’t supported sanctimony in one form or another when it supported an argument they believed in.  Maybe it’s the fact that he seems never to waver from his chosen lifestyle that irks us.  He says he believes in helping people and that’s what he tries (emphasis on tries) to do.  He believes in Scientology and lives its tenants to the letter.  If he’s got a homosexual skeleton in his closet, then that is a chink in his public armour that would scale him down to human size a little bit.

If that’s the case, though – if we dislike Cruise more for his constancy rather than the fact that we question our behaviour, does that say more about him, or about us?

I don’t believe in drawing lines in the sand, because I don’t believe there is any communication gap that cannot be breached, if we simply try hard and creatively enough.  And while I might not approve of all Tom Cruise does through the lens of Scientology, I’ll tell you this – if the zombie Apocalypse hits, you could do worse than to have Tom Cruie as a neighbour.

But again, that's the point, isn't it?  When times are uncertain, when we don't know what to expect next, when trouble is lapping at our shores, who do we turn to?  To those who demonstrate a dare I say it, ideological conviction.