In his 2002 Nobel lecture, former President Jimmy Carter said, “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But, no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”
The truth of President Carter’s words has been challenged in the aftermath of Hamas’ attack on civilians in Israel on October 7. The anger many are feeling, me included, is justified when you read the stories of those like May Hayat, a survivor of the Supernova music festival, who, after witnessing the murders of several festival goers, survived only by smearing herself in blood and then laying motionless among dead bodies until help arrived.
Who wouldn’t demand retribution and revenge when confronted with such stories of death and survival?
And therein lies the problem, which points to the truth of President Carter’s supposition. For example, two days after Hamas’ initial attack, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced that he ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip. Gallant said, there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed…”
He went on to say, “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Several days later on FoxNews, United States Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “We’re in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to defend yourself. Level the place.”
Sen. Graham’s comments are not an outlier. I’ve heard various iterations across the political spectrum. Anger at a common foe during war tends to unite political opponents in the race to make the most extreme statement. It’s called being an edgelord.
The fundamental problem with war, even a just war, if you believe there is such a thing, is that the very nature of war requires all the combatants to engage in various levels of mental gymnastics and moral equivocations to legitimize violence, which is part and parcel of war. In almost every recorded instance of war, the warring parties have sought to gain the moral high ground by framing the conflict as a struggle between good and evil.
President Biden variously described Hamas’ attack on Israel as “pure, unadulterated evil,” “sheer evil,” and “indiscriminate evil.” It is difficult for any reasonable person to dispute that the deliberate and malicious murder of at least 1,200 people is not objectively evil.
The moral quandary with this language, especially language infused with religious zeal like Senator Graham’s comments, is that without any self-imposed moral and ethical guardrails, it becomes far too easy to justify what would normally be described as atrocities as necessities in war. This is because violence, no matter how justifiable, darkens the soul. This darkness stays with warfighters and civilians long after the war is over.
A 2011 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research is instructive. Their research concluded U.S. soldiers who have served in combat zones “are at substantially increased risk of suicide or thoughts of suicide, depression, and PTSD.”
This is also true for civilians. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Center for PTSD, as Americans confronted the possibility of war following the attacks of September 11, the war-related stressors normally associated with combat troops, such as death, injury, and loss of a loved one became prevalent among the civilian population. Not surprisingly, the stress and trauma levels are exponentially greater among refugees displaced by war, like the Palestinians. This begs the question of the value of war, if any, and at what cost.
There is a madness that comes with war. This is not per se a psychological madness but a madness that eliminates our normal ethical and moral boundaries. I do not write this to diminish the barbarity of Hamas’ most recent attack on Israel or to diminish their cruelty toward their own people.
Nor do I write to comfort those who wish to rationalize the policies that confine two million Palestinians to one of the world’s most dense parcels of land. I write because war comes with innumerable psychological, moral, and spiritual costs, which we often forget in our haste to assuage our anger.
Terrance Carroll is a former speaker of the Colorado House. The first and only African American to ever hold that position in Colorado. He is a Baptist preacher, attorney, and former police officer. He is on Twitter @speakercarroll.
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