Jay Nordlinger noted a passage in President Obama’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech that I’d missed:
“War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease.” How do we know that? How do we know that, at the dawn of history, the morality of war was not questioned?
Now, that’s a silly comment from an educated man. (Obama, not Jay!)
The dawn of history is the dawn of writing. But we don’t get much literature at first, which would be necessary in order to get any kind of insight into what people believed about the morality of war.
There is Gilgamesh, though. It doesn’t deal with war directly, but its elegiac tone and overarching theme of despair in the face of mortality indicate a more ambiguous viewpoint than the picture Obama paints of sub-rational man shrugging over the carnage of war.
Next up, how about a little Homer? The Iliad certainly celebrates heroism—but it also grieves for the dead. And here’s the point: it’s the dead of Troy who are more keenly mourned in the poem. The desecration of Hector’s body is not portrayed by Homer as a glorious act, but an outrage. Here we see evidence that the ancients believed in at least some sort of rules of conduct in war, and that they certainly recognized their enemies as human beings just like themselves.
When we get into the ancient Greek playwrights, counter-examples to Obama’s claim begin to come fast and furious:
- Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus ends [spoiler alert!] with the death of the two sons of Oedipus at each other’s hands, having waged war against each other in violation of their agreements. (It’s a tragedy.)
- Its “sequel,” Antigone by Sophocles, describes the aftermath of this war. Its heroine, Antigone, defies the state’s orders to leave her brother’s—the rebel’s—body to rot unburied. Civil disobedience directed against the rulers in order to show proper respect to a defeated enemy is shown to be the proper moral stance. (Although Antigone is surely motivated by filial [oops! familial] duty here, the gods themselves agree with her.)
- The Trojan Women by Euripides was first performed during the Peloponnesian War, in the same year that Athens slaughtered and enslaved the inhabitants of the island of Melos. It chronicles the fates of the women of Troy after the events of the Iliad, as they are subjected to rape, abduction and slavery.
- Lysistrata or Peace, by Aristophanes. Take your pick. Each comedy is a commentary on the Peloponnesian War, and each is less respectful of authority than any episode of M*A*S*H you’d care to name.
My goal here is not to claim that the ancients were pacifists. It’s just to point out that here is another example of our President’s seeming inability to grasp the fact that history didn’t begin in the 60s (or, more specifically, the year of his birth).
Questioning whether a given war is or is not just, and the legitimacy of your side’s tactics in pursuing even a just war, is nothing new. In fact, it goes back to the dawn of history. To claim otherwise is to claim that humans somehow became endowed with a moral sense sometime in the last thousand years or so, and such a claim cannot be supported by history, biology or theology.
Cain kills Abel, God orders Cain to wander the Earth as punishment for his actions. Story’s in the Koran as well as the Bible amd Torah, Mr. President.
Why would Obama read the Bible, Eric? He’s not one of those bitter Bible-clingers.
“It’s just to point out that here is another example of our President’s seeming inability to grasp the fact that history didn’t begin in the 60s (or, more specifically, the year of his birth).”
You hit the nail on the head – right there! NOTHING existed B.O. (Before Obama.)
Nothing except the U.S. being a mean, rotten, overbearing superpower that is. Ugh.
Oh, yeah, right. Silly me forgetting we were standing in the way of the Communist utopia. Bad U.S.A! Bad, Bad, Bad!
Nature is red in tooth and claw, and war is very much a part of that. If a beta male takes out the alpha male in a wolf pack or a lion’s pride, then it kills off its competition and its comeptition’s offspring, it gets more food, and it gets to breed, thus propagating its own genes.
If a country fights a war and wins, it either survives as an entity, allowing it to continue ‘living’ or it defeats an opponent, allowing it to take that opponent’s lands and resources, thereby (A) propogating the victorious country’s views and (B) improving the standard of living in their own country to some degree.
If we assume culture and language are the DNA of a country, then England is surely the most successful country in history as it at one point or antoher controled 1/4th of the world’s land surface, and spread its culture and language everywhere. Now those cultures are speciating, becoming new things.
This is basic evolution. It seems odd to me that someone who believes in biological evolution as I know Obama does would neglect to consider that violent conflict is an inherent part of evolution.
Whacky!
And before all that the Books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, Samuels, Kings,and Chronicles are replete with moral statements on wars of conquest, etc. As usual the Jews beat the Greeks by a few centuries (of course Homer was probably around the time of King David)
I thought this was obvious: In the the beginning was the Obama, and the Obama was with God, and the Obama was God. He was in the beginning with God. (John 1:1&2, The New World Order Translation.)
Fr. Ron,
Doubleplusgood!
Father Ron that is awesome.
Is it wrong of me to feel that I really don’t care about war in general? Its well if we look at history natural human condition…so whose chasing the rabbit down the hole?
Man, if I was uncomfortable with them saying God was Republican on the other thread, I’m even vastly more uncomfortable when Fr. Ron pulls stuff like that.
Offended twice in one day on Threedonia. Didn’t see that coming…
@Steph: The best I can say is that beating up on each other to get our way has been around since Cain and Abel, and it won’t come to an end until The End, unfortunately. War will always be with us. That’s probably why the Catholic Church came up with the Just War Doctrine. Does that make war right? No more than disease and poverty are right. But it is all part of the sin of this world. I myself am hardly a pacifist, and fighting against a belligerent is a necessary evil.
@Republibot: All I am stating is a snark at Obama once again teaching us from on high, and talking through his hat, as is his wont. Sorry for any offense, but unless you are an Obama-worshipper, I don’t even know how I offended….
No worries, Fr. Ron. Your snark was funny to me and the intent was understood. Good to see you around Threedonia.