Love and war show humanity at its best and at its worst. Acts of courage, dedication and self-sacrifice shown by those in the extremity of war are unequaled in the mundane round of everyday life. My student's will read journalist Chris Hedges' book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning. In some strange way, war gives a sense of purpose beyond the ordinary. War is glorious technicolor. Everyday life a dull greyscale. Hedges wrestles with the horror and awfulness he has seen as a war journalist and the sense of emptiness he has felt when he is not in a war zone. But, clearly, war shows us at our worst. Philosophers and theologians make distinctions between that which is acceptable in war "ordinary killing" and that which is malum in se—an evil in itself. In international law we separate ordinary acts of war from "war crimes." To kill a soldier with gun or bomb is acceptable; to use rape as a weapon of war is malum in se. A thousand pound bomb is acceptable when used by the military, and disallowed when used by the insurgent. Big bombs are fine, but weapons of mass destruction not. For the soldier to bayonet the enemy until he dies is acceptable. When the crazed citizen does the same in a cinema it is considered an evil. Distinctions are necessary, for without them then anything goes and we slip further into the abyss. But distinctions are hard to make. The violation of human flesh is always an evil. Yet, love and war bleed into each other. I watched again the movie My Boy Jack (Director David Haig, 2008). The movie is based on Haig's stage play about John (Jack) Kipling and his family—his father, writer and British Empire apologist Rudyard Kipling, his American mother and his protective sister—during the First World War. Jack is killed aged 18 years and one day. The story shows the complexity of love between all the family members, but also shows the power of love of country. Jack is sent to war in the name of love for England and Empire. "I vow to thee my country, all earthly things above," goes the hymn by Cecil Spring Rice:
Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love.The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test,That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best;The love that never falters, the love that pays the price,The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.
So goes the mythic love of country. But how misguided. Mythic patriotic love separates "us" from "them." "They" become less than human, mere things to be destroyed. Such love sent a generation of young men British, French, German (including Jack Kipling) to their deaths in the futility of imperial greatness amid the myths of various nationalisms. Such love has a certain nobility to it (at least we tell ourselves it has). But what if the ancient myth Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country—is merely a phantasmagoria. What if the myth is a dream we tell each other to give the barbarity and foolishness of war a meaning it cannot bear? What if such misguided, misdirected love is merely love at the service of the ignoble?
St. Paul said, "If your enemy is hungry feed them, if they are thirsty give them something to drink." Jesus said, "love you enemies."
+Ab. Andy
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