War, at first, is the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that he isn’t any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone’s being worse off. – Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
Dr. Albert LaCugna was my advisor in college. He was the head of my department, Political Science. That was a long time ago. I remember only three things about him:
he was uncommonly short, probably not more than five feet two inches tall;
he loved opera, especially the works of Verdi, and most especially the grand spectacle of Aida;
he wasn't really a doctor of philosophy.
I have certain knowledge of the first two facts, having been invited to his home with other PoliSci majors. I learned the last from a gossipy student, who confided, somewhat disdainfully, that Dr. LaCugna had not yet received his PhD. Students and faculty referred to him as "Doctor" out of courtesy. Those were the days when civility prevailed.
LaCugna hadn't been granted his PhD. because the university wouldn't accept his doctoral thesis: There is no such thing as a just war. This proposition has been kicking around in Catholic theological and philosophical circles since medieval times, but no one has paid much attention to it, then or now. Back in the fifth century, St. Augustine of Hippo, one of the Fathers of the Church, declared that if a pious man believed in a just cause and loved his enemies, it was permissible to go to war. This argument has been invoked repeatedly for the past fifteen hundred years—from the Crusaders to the jihadists to the Christian Right.
I felt a great sadness for my advisor—because of the topic to which he had chosen to devote so much time and energy and because of the stubbornness with which he pursued it. Few people in the 1950s believed that war could not be completely and wholly justified. A mere ten years had passed since the end of World War II—a military adventure in which there were clearly good guys and bad guys, and we were the good guys. Since then we have been able to conjure up foes as evil as Hitler and Tojo, but we have not been able to sustain the purity of intention and action of our side.
While my advisor was assembling the points of his thesis, the Cold War began to heat up; Korea served as an outlying remnant of the last war of its kind—hordes of infantry face to face (cannon fodder); and the nuclear arms race forced us to revise our views about empty skies. Warfare and diplomacy would change beyond all recognition, but America still insisted on wearing the white hat of a cardboard cinema hero.
Did LaCugna eventually receive his PhD.? Did he alter his thesis in order to get it accepted? Did his peers change their position? All that was fifty years ago and I don't have the answers. I do know that I changed my opinion.
Since the signing of the surrenders to end World War II, at least one war has been playing out somewhere in the world. The United States has watched some of them from the sidelines, sometimes it has sent in players, sometimes it carried the ball, but it has never located the goal posts. I have watched from the bleachers and read a lot of history and this is what I have learned: War is glorified, peace rarely. The patriotism of those who oppose hostilities is questioned; doves and peaceniks rank in the league of traitors. Armies gather in the poor, the disadvantaged, the unemployed, the undereducated and ship them off to the killing fields and out of the home culture where these young men are a disturbing and disrupting element. We no longer have the Crusades and the Westward Movement to move the teenagers and twenty-year-olds, those most prone to violence, on to another location, but we do have the Middle East and Central Asia, interestingly enough areas where most of the inhabitants are poor, disadvantaged, unemployed, and undereducated. And we have figured out how to engineer a conflict that has no end in sight.
A few months ago I ran across this quote from General Dwight David Eisenhower, commander of the European Theater of Operations during WWII. I don't know when he made this statement—was it during or immediately after the war or when he was a tired but wiser old man?
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
He doesn't mention the justness or unjustness of war, rather, its stupidity. That seems to be enough.