I certainly agree. In my opinion, the basic principles are simple but in practice things get complicated very quickly. If I'm not careful here I'll be quoting everyone from pacifists through to Clausewitz and we will all be bogged down in a mire of detail. This is a huge subject, thousands of books have been written about it.

I'll keep it short. The propaganda and heroics are long inbred and they go back a very long way - thousands of years and there's no better place to start than with the famous Latin quote from the Roman poet Horace:

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"

"It is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland (one's country)"

Just about everyone knows these facts but for the few that may not I'll repeat them. During WWI the English poet Wilfred Owen wrote probably the most famous poem of the War and it's a very cynical and poignant reminder of how terrible war is. Therein he lashes out against the wisdom of Horace's quote.

Lttle else need be be said. The poem is short enough to quote here:

.

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer,

Bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

____

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_Decorum_est

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_et_decorum_est_pro_pat...

My comment and your reply provide an excellent example of why it's so difficult to post an adequate reply in short HN posts (see my detailed reply to anm89 in response to a similar issue).

No doubt, self sacrifice can end up being noble in circumstances where such action contributes to an overall better outcome but that's not the general case with WWI. (Please, I know that statement is grossly inadequate and that in specific 'local' instances it's not even correct—given that many of those soldiers who made such hugely noble sacrifices did so in order to directly benefited their buddies—not the nation state that actually sent them to war – however that explanation will have to suffice for now.)

Whether Owen fully realized it or not, the reason why his poem is so often associated with the negative aspects of Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori is that in the real political context of the First World War it is an undisputed lie.

At the time, if the average soldier, French, German, English, US etc., etc. had been fully informed of the actual reasons for the start of said war—the horribly degenerate state of the underlying politics of the nation sates involved, the pathetically inept and inbred thinking of both English and European monarchies—just to mention a few, then these soldiers would likely have walked away from those hellish battlefields and left the fighting to the protagonists who actually stated the war.

In short, millions of lives were lost unnecessarily over inept and faulty reasoning and the many 'petty' squabbles that occurred at both domestic political levels and similarly with international politics wherein diplomacy failed most spectacularly with enormously disastrous and tragic consequences for just about everybody. Moreover, many of these issues were never fully resolved let alone properly handled at war's end—Versailles and all that—which, in the end, led to WWII and even many more millions of unnecessary deaths.

If ever there were a war to make Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori the ultimate lie then the First World War has to be its quintessential example (it's why I selected it as the example).

And every single time there's been a look of revelation, if just a brief glimmer, as they realize the point I'm making.

Will it matter? Maybe. At some point one of them might be in a position to make better decisions about their fate and that of their subordinates. I do hope some random old guy saying "I hope they don't get you killed" certainly matters lot more than empty "thank you for your service" nonsense.

Yeah, let's hope it sinks in, but with some it can be too slow - after the event when they've PTSD.

I recall around the time I was drafted I occasionally got into discussion about these issues (it was never a big or oft repeated topic).

My current stance now has changed very little from my position back then. For some, the 'bravado' mob, perhaps 10% -15% of the platoon, took my position of war being the absolute last resort as me being 'yellow'. It never erupted into serious animosity but I was never part of their in group. Others thought similarly to me but wouldn't say much (or for that matter neither did I), still others said nothing.

The interesting aspect of this was that I developed these views very early when I was a child. My father and my uncles served in WWII and whilst the War was mentioned it was always a muted discussion and I learned quickly that there was something truly rotten about war - I sort of picked the notion up as if by osmosis.

I often wonder what the home environment of the 'bravado' mob was like. In one sense it can't have been too different to mine in that almost every father of kids in my school had also been in the War.

Perhaps it's one's temperament or personality in that I picked up the negative vibes whilst others did not.

I've often thought about it since but I can't say I'm any more informed now than in the past.

It would help if the US would actually teach history instead of pretend like it did not happen.

That's a worry. What kind? Those that put war in a negative light presumably.

"It would help if the US would actually teach history..."

The US isn't alone, many others do the same. The other worrying observation is that antiwar sentiment doesn't last more than a generation or so if that (the Vietnam generation was about as anti as it has gotten in my lifetime and come the 1980s/90s the feeling had almost totally dissipated).

In that sense I'm not a pacifist (I once had a unform on but I was lucky to avoid major trouble). If you've ever experienced the system and mil training it's impossible to unlearn it.

That's the extreme case, at what point on a sliding scale the options change is moot and subject to vigouos debate. That's where things become complicated, not far down the scale you'll be faced with a serious moral dilemma.

Let me give you a few well-known countries and you can think about whether there are any parallels between them and Afghanistan.

1 England: the English Civil War (very simplified description). The terrorists as we would call them nowadays [the Parliamentarians] won and King Charles I was executed. The people that now rule the UK have inherited the system of government originally set up by those victors. (Yes, there have been changes but we've stopped executing kings).

If we had Dr Who's Tardis and took a modern army back to restore the monarchy (the then rightful heir to the throne King Charles), then would this be a legitimate exercise?

2. What about that rebel mob of colonies in the US led by Washington in 1776? They defied the rightful King of Great Britain an Ireland, George III, and many, many people on both sides died during their act of succession.

3. Then there's the American Civil War/The War Between the States. It can be argued strongly that Lincoln started the war; and or did nothing to stop it or defuse the tense situation between the time of his victory in the polls and that of his inauguration.

In the process of saving the Union Lincoln started a war that killed more Americans than in all other wars that the US has fought in ever since - Spanish, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, etc. Like Pontus Pilate, he sat on his hands and did nothing to stop it.

It can be argued that by 1860 slavery was on the decline world wide and that given several more decades the South would have been forced to abandon slavery due to pressure, sanctions, from other countries such as the UK. A trade embargo on Southern cotton would have bitten the South very hard.

In the grand scheme off things, Lincoln could now be classed as a war criminal for starting a war that killed somewhere between 600,000 and a million people. Do the utilitarian equation - was that number of lives worth it when waiting a decade or two may have seen the same outcome? When you consider the inequlity and illtreatment that negros have had in the intervening 150+ years since the War then the answer may not be so obvious.

Today, current rulers in Washington are the beneficiaries of both of those conflicts. Thus one could ask the question about how legitimate is their rule nowadays (many Southerners would still probably question the victor's legitimacy).

4. 1789 France. The French Revolution culminated in the execution of the legitimate king of France Louis XVI in the Place de la Concorde by mob of essentially out of control 'terrorists'.

What followed was The Reign of Terror (la Terreur) - barbarism, death and destruction beyond anything seen since the Crusades of the 12th and 13th Centuries and not equalled again until the Nazis came to power in the 1930s.

The current government of France has inherited many aspects of that violent revolution and now claims legitimacy to rule the country as a republic instead of a kingdom.

5. The same goes for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the murder of the legitimate czar of Russia, Czar Nicolas.

I hear everyone saying hey, hey now. However, think about it for a moment, most of our governments today have their historical routes in one form of insurgency or revolution or another. Governing the world is no easy matter and it's always been thus.

I'm not here to argue one way or other except to say you're correct about Afghanistan but then that's only correct inasmuch as to who one considers to have legitimacy. My view is that the poor longsuffering ordinary people of Afghanistan should be allowed to live and run their lives as they see fit without hindrance and interference. But then that's taking the naïve view and it's certainly not the current reality.

Yes, terrorism is alive and well Afghanistan but it was also the case in Vietnam with the Vietcong. Now, that's all over and friendship has been restored between the belligerents. Trouble is that two million people had to die in the process.

Afghanistan has had a rotten time for much of its existence, especially so since the British tried to tame the country in the 19th Century.

Many of the troubles in the Middle East in the 20th Century can be traced back to the dissolution and break up of the Ottoman Empire after WWI together with interference from Western countries, the UK, France etc. Problems that arose from those ill-considered policies which were forced on those countries more than a centuary ago are still with us today. For example, the 1917 Balfour Agreement was a well meaning but somewhat failed attempt to sort out the Jewish-Arab problem in that area of the world and it is still in an unmitigated mess today.

Whenever grand political policies are introduced always expect there'll be fallout from them for hundreds of years to come.

1) > Pretty simple really!

2) > That's the big problem!

At all but the most superficial level you'll find armed conflict motivations over all of human civilizations isn't "pretty simple really" and you'll find there are a lot of "that's the big problem's". Trying to reduce a topic as big as armed conflict in human history to a single idea of "just" or "unjust" isn't a particularly insightful or explanatory approach.

...you'll find armed conflict motivations over all of human civilizations isn't "pretty simple really"

I have said in posts to this HN story and also in posts to other HN stories about similar matters that these issues are complex. Translation: I do NOT believe these issues are "pretty simple really". I have never said that either here or elsewhere.

From what I said, it ought to have been crystal clear that my comment about armed conflict were my own views and that I had no doubt about them in my own mind. I did not say that the view as presented were some universal understanding or edict. Had it been so then I've have spelt that out with references.

"2) > That's the big problem!"

The first issue is that I did not use the words just or unjust in the above post and by saying that I can only assume that you either didn't fully read what I had written and or that you hadn't read the full thread up to this point.

Nor did I reduce the idea to a single argument (I cannot conceive how you read that into what I had written). The point I was making was (and is) abundantly clear, which is that whether a political cause or action has 'legitimacy' or not is dependent on who actually holds that view—and not that that view is fixed in the firmament as if by some divine right. Like Lorentz transformations in Relativity, one's worldview depends on when and where one is standing (i.e.: one's specific circumstance).

I then went on to give you the reader a number of important—in fact, very significant—examples from history where key protagonists had a very different worldview to their [then] ruling establishments and because they were all successful winners in conflicts with their respective establishments, then their worldview ultimately prevailed, that is, over time (and for many and varied reasons), their respective positions in today's world have been 'legitimized'.

I even went as far as to ask and question whether such 'legitimization' was justified in today's world (i.e. with the para commencing: 'If we had Dr Who's Tardis and took a modern army back to restore the monarchy...').

Frankly, I do not know how I could have been clearer given the restrictions of a HN post. Sure, I acknowledge that, with time, I could have chosen my words more carefully but then I'm no Shakespeare, nor do I have his ability to paraphrase the way he does. I even plead guilty to not having properly proofread my post with sufficient rigor—hence my failing to correct the misspelling of 'century', however I'd excuse this given the fact that I was posting from a smartphone under somewhat adverse conditions.

So how pedantic should one be in submitting a post to HN? For example, given HN's international readership, should one's pedantry extend as far as having to explain the differences in spelling between British and American English and or the way hyphenations differ between both version of the language just to ensure absolute accurate interpretation by one's readers? I would certainly think not. (If you haven't already noticed, I'm guilty of intermixing both aspects of language with considerable inconsistency and indiscretion in that post, moreover I was aware of doing so at the time).

Back to my examples: each case ought to be well known to most HN readers, therefore one automatically has to make make assumptions about what the average HN reader knows about said subject matter (after all, they are responding to a story within a specific context so one has to assume they have some knowledge about the matter).

Moreover, one must assume the average HN reader has a certain (base) level of knowledge of those events, which, on average, would not be overly deep (if one had to explain the background information and history from first principles for every case then one would get endlessly bogged down in a minutiae of details. Not only would space not permit such a post but even if it did then most readers would never bother to read it.

Let's be clear about this: when posting comment about any involved matter one has no option other than to compromise and put limits upon what one has to say, and, by necessity, that significantly limits the scope and extent of what one is able to cover.

Here, even if one were truly expert and knowledgeable with respect to said events—and I'm making no such claim in respect of myself—then to cover them in sufficient detail in order that the reader would gain a full understanding of them simply isn't possible. To do so, the reader would have to study many tomes of information related to each example at an academic level, which in volume would well exceed the size of Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire many times over. Furthermore, the reader would also need to be versed in political philosophy to a reasonably sophisticated level. (I say that as one who once studied the subject as a subset of the main its discipline not to mention having studied history. Even then, I would never claim great expertise in these matters). That said, in this case such level of expertise is completely unnecessary as I am only stating the undisputed historical facts (as opposed to the myriads of disputed minutiae).

Ipso facto, such in-depth understating is not necessary to comprehend the point I was making.

Moreover, lecturing detailed points to HN readers serves little purpose (although I admit that it's sometimes hard to avoid). Doing so is likely to only alienate the average HN reader as it is an insult to his or her intelligence (HN readers being smarter than most). Also, grinding points overly fine serve little purpose, if a HN reader doesn't know a particular point then there's always Wiki to fall back upon.

That said, I always try to make my posts as explicit and unambiguous as is possible, and if you look back at my past efforts then you'll find that many of them are overly long specifically for that reason.

Even then, I accept that my attempts can fail as was recently brought home to me in a big way when on the matter of a COVID issue I replied to someone who had earlier offered a critical reply to what I had posted. Unfortunately, he was one of those increasing numbers people who are completely immune to facts. In my reply I provided him with additional evidence in support of my argument by way of undisputed facts (authoritative scientific references commonly agreed upon by experts in their relevant fields) only for him to further respond to effect that I could not have made such comments unless I possessed certain wartime and pre-war German sympathies (out of politeness I will not repeat what he said herein).

As you'd expect, HN quickly deleted his comment including my very retrained reply which also included my denial of such accusations. (In my reply I also mentioned that despite his unwarranted criticism of me, I was not going to attempt to flag his comment (and I did not) – and that it should stand as is as a testament to his view.)

As I see it, if one dares to comment online then one must come to accept such unwarranted criticism from time to time.

Why is it that so often it happens that if one comments on some topic or other then others automatically assume that one's of a certain belief and or that one belongs to some group or organization? I'd suggest that this likely shows a more narrowed thinking on behalf of those responding to the comment than it does of the comment's originator.

Often, in the grand scheme of things, the unfortunate outcome is that many people self-censor themselves to avoid being criticized or being in the spotlight.

This is very undesirable as it can shut down important debate.

You may not have the chance to run away as you'll be forced to stay, like it or not. We saw that played out many times in WWI, WWII and in Vietnam where conscription was rife and the rules of the draft were essentially inviolate and not negotiable.

I know from personal experience, I opposed the Vietnam and was drafted anyway much to my chagrin (I won't bore you with details as they're not relavant here).

However, the Vietnam War was not one of those conflicts to which I was referring above. This is why there was so much opposition to it. Simply, it was hubris and false logic on the part of those governments involved and that's only a tiny fraction of the story.

Where a war is not 'legitimate' (as I've defined above), I verily believe one has a moral duty to oppose it at every opportunity. However, that's much easier said than done. One should never lose sight of the fact that armies have been recruiting for millennia and they know evey trick in the book. Feigning illness, etc.in an attempt to escape is often extremely difficult.

There's always the conscientious objetion route but that too can be an unusually difficult path.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I believe there is an extreme case where one has no other option other than to fight, so I couldn't honestly argue conscientious objector case (perhaps I'm just a bad lier).

In the scenario where there's no other option, escaping to safety also has horrible drawbacks. First, you're leaving the dirty work for others thus increasing their burden, second if you have any conscience or moral fortitude then you'll live with that for the rest of your life. You may not think so now but you will later - perhaps many years later.