Remembering the Costs of War

April marks the time when the guns of war began to fall silent across the South in 1865, after four years of war. On April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia. General Nathan Bedford Forrest stood down his cavalry on May 9. By June 23, General Stand Watie had surrendered the last of the Confederate soldiers still fighting, the First Indian Brigade which included his own Cherokee Braves.

When the guns fall silent, it does not suffice simply to forget about the war and move on. It is necessary to pause and reflect on what we can do to promote lasting peace.

As John V. Denson argues in The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, war is ever the greatest enemy of liberty. Denson reminds us that, “We need to understand the ‘total’ costs of war in order to appreciate the true dangers that war in general, and the New World Order in particular, pose to individual liberty.” The New World Order—whose dangers he highlights—is one in which “the United States is to become a permanent garrison state and also the world policeman…”

There are growing signs that the lessons of history are not being heeded. The USA is introducing automatic military draft registration. Under Germany’s new Military Service Modernisation Act, military service is being reintroduced:

The [German] law that came into force in January brings back conscription in principle, though it will be implemented only if not enough people sign up for the army voluntarily.

Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said he wants to create Europe’s strongest conventional army.

As of January this year, all 18-year-olds in Germany are being sent a questionnaire asking if they are interested and willing to join the armed forces.

The questionnaire is mandatory for men and voluntary for women.

Denson does not argue in favor of pacifism or isolationism. He recognizes that war may be just when fought in defense of home and hearth. The point he emphasizes is that no matter how just a war may be, we must remember that it is inevitably deleterious to liberty. For example, Murray Rothbard regarded the Southern cause as just, but even so, we must recognize that when the South lay in ashes much more had been lost than the Southern bid for independence.

Lord Acton, in his letter to Robert E. Lee, wrote that, “I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.” As Jefferson Davis, the Confederate President, put it, the cause that was lost was “not that of the South only, but the cause of constitutional government, of the supremacy of law, of the natural rights of man.”

One of the residual threats to liberty highlighted by Denson is the “abuse of the presidential powers regarding wars.” The convention seems to have arisen that the president has power to do whatever he deems necessary to police the world’s criminals and tyrants. Denson explains:

We have now reached a point in our history where it is strongly asserted that the president of the United States claims the power to declare a crisis and then send troops wherever he pleases without Congressional authority or approval. Shakespeare dramatized this same point with Mark Antony in Julius Caesar where he states: “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.”

Denson also highlights the danger posed by war propaganda, reminding us—in the words of US Senator Hiram Johnson—that, “When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.”

First comes the spin. For example, the Trump administration insists that their attack on Iran is not a war requiring congressional approval, but merely a “military operation.” Then follows the slander against any who dissent. In recent weeks the neo-conservative radio host, Mark Levin, has been calling anyone who disagrees with President Trump’s latest war a “traitor” to America. He believes any opinions that differ from his own are “anti-American.” Do people who warn against the dangers of war thereby become traitors to their country? 

What is meant by love of country? In his book Capitalism and Freedom, the economist Milton Friedman offered some remarks that may shed some light on this issue. Readers will be aware that Murray Rothbard was no admirer of Friedman. He described Friedman as “a favorite of the Establishment,” a “Court Libertarian,” and a “statist.” But statist though he was, Friedman deserves some credit for reminding his statist followers that love of country and loyalty to a common heritage do not entail worship of government. Friedman rejected the notion that “free men in a free society” should view their government as synonymous with their country. He observed:

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.

Although Friedman did not agree with the libertarian view of the state as inherently criminal and tyrannical, he argued that “the scope of government must be limited” and that “government power must be dispersed.” He favored decentralizing political power. He drew Rothbard’s ire for viewing the government as essentially well-intentioned, but he did at least recognize that good intentions do not mitigate harm. He wrote:

The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm. The great tragedy of the drive to centralization, as of the drive to extend the scope of government in general, is that it is mostly led by men of good will who will be the first to rue its consequences.

That being the case, disagreeing with government policy certainly does not make one a traitor to his country. The historian Clyde Wilson argued, in Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture, that even the Pledge of Allegiance, which is popularly seen as a way to express love of country, may be viewed as superfluous because “the virtuous do not need a Pledge and the rest will not honor it anyway.” Wilson argues that in that light, the pledge ironically amounts in reality to “a pledge of allegiance not to the country or people but to the federal government.” He remarked that:

Such pledges did not mark the early years of the United States. They were unknown until they were employed as coercive devices in the South during the War Between the States and Reconstruction.… The present Pledge was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a defrocked Boston minister and Marxist… It was taken up and promoted by the National Education Association as a way to enforce conformity to “Americanism” among its captive students, especially the first and second generation immigrants.

Wilson, like Denson, is no pacifist. He remarked in his Defending Dixie essays that his direct forefathers on both sides of his family fought in every major war since America was founded, including the American Revolutionary War, the War for Southern Independence, and both World Wars. With that ancestry, Wilson is as good an authority as any on what counts as loyalty to America. His comment on the recent attack on Iran, in his essay “Marching to Persepolis,” is that it “fails every rule of Christian ‘just war’ theory. It trashes what little is left of the Constitution. And possibly worst of all, it is stupid.”