4 ms·

I think the author's assumption here is out of whack. There is nothing noble about warfare, it doesn't compare to playing an instrument. BTW, I've been to war m

by RUG3Y 10y ago

I think the author's assumption here is out of whack. There is nothing noble about warfare, it doesn't compare to playing an instrument. BTW, I've been to war myself.

dfc 10y ago
You mention your combat experience as if it establishes your credibility to adjudicate the nobility of war. Mr. Marlantes is also a combat veteran. He was not awarded the Navy Cross for his time in the rear with the gear. More importantly, given this piece or any of his other writings, I do not think it is accurate to say that his writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.
- zepto 10y ago
  It does establish his credibility by comparison with someone who has never seen it first hand and is basing their option on media reports and fiction.
  - dfc 10y ago
    I apologize if I am being dense but this is such a strange position to me that I do not understand how you could arrive at this conclusion. I am genuinely interested in understanding what is that I am missing. "War" seems to be a distinctly societal enterprise; this societal component is so important that it does not make sense to think about it on an individual level. If you do approach "war" at the individual level how do you distinguish it from simply carrying out violence? I also have trouble with the notion that someone is better equipped to identify and assess moral principles and ideals (I dont think it matters if you are a universalist or relativist here) simply because of one's participation in and proximity to combat. Is a mercenary as credible as someone that was motivated by political idealism? Bloodlust? The simple desire to avoid a prison sentence? What do you do with the devout Quaker who would rather be incarcerated than violate their commitment to pacifism? In general how does someone establish there bona fides for the identification and characterization of moral principles and ideals? On an entirely separate note: I don't care if Chesty Puller or Audie Murphy show up; I think it is absurd for anyone to maintain that Karl Malantes' writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.
    - zepto 10y ago
      I think you raise a good point, which I interpret as something like a statement that moral philosophy is complex and situated in a broad social and historical context, and having been a participant in combat is irrelevant as a qualification for doing it well. I tend to agree. However in the absence of a well informed and reasoned moral argument, I still think that first hand experience lends credibility to a commenter over one who has consumed only media reports.
zeveb 10y ago
> There is nothing noble about warfare Sure there is. There's gallantry and bravery and … nobility. There's also ugliness and cruelty and murder. Clauswitz commented famously that war is diplomacy carried out by other means; more accurately, war is humanity carried out by other means. It's inhumane but carried out by men; it's uncivilised but carried out with the fruits of industrial civilisation. In short, it's paradoxical. I know that the author is right: there are people who are suited for war. They're not psychopaths — it's not that they don't have empathy for others (they do), but I wonder if they have reduced empathy for themselves.
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  I disagree that bravery and gallantry are qualities of war - they're human qualities that war sometimes reveals. A man's bravery doesn't lend nobility to war, in my opinion. I generally see war as exploitative. I can see where Clauswitz is coming from but those are intellectual arguments to me, they don't carry a whole lot of weight when bullets are flying and your buddies are getting hurt. Of course, I'm just sharing my opinion. I don't have any data to support how I feel about this.
  - Retra 10y ago
    I don't understand why you'd say war is itself exploitative in lieu of those who are participating in it in exploitative ways. I would agree that war is an opportunity for exploitation to occur. But then maybe I don't understand what war is in a way that is different from a bunch of people who are willing to go to battle (for their own various reasons.)
- Pamar 10y ago
  I suggest watching "The Hurt Locker" for a very interesting portrait of what you describe ("reduced empathy for self").
jcranmer 10y ago
You may think nothing is noble about war, but by and large, you're probably in disagreement with the majority of the ~120 billion humans who have ever lived. Particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, war was generally seen as a noble thing and generally a focal part of high culture. Think of the glorious portrayal of "doomed last stands"--the Alamo, Pickett's Charge, the Charge of the Light Brigade. It's largely only WWI (it should be noted that the German High Command fairly indisputably saw a coming Great War as an ultimately good thing--the dispute is mostly in how much this influenced their actions immediately prior to the war) that created a massive cultural cynicism in the portrayal of war. And even after WWI and the Vietnam War, we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner (even if critics tend to be less thrilled about it).
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  Yes, you've sorta made out point-we don't live in the pre-20th century world, the world of those battles are long gone. And the American Civil War was (since you mentioned Pickett's Charge) more of a porto-WW1 in many respects rather than some sort of bizarre image of a masculine gentleman's war that you seem to have.
- vacri 10y ago
  Napoleon himself stated that you had to trick the common man into going to war. Hitler said similar as well. War is glorified so people continue to be soldiers and kings get their muscle, but it's just not true that the majority of people who have ever lived think that war is noble - particularly those who have seen war. History also doesn't talk about most of the endless numbers of doomed last stands, only the occasional one gets special mention. > we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner Not so in continental Europe. The US has barely had it's homelands touched in half a dozen generations - the US people are very removed from the reality of war, so revelling in the glory has little tangible cost these days. One example is that the entire decade-plus of US involvement in Iraq has seen fewer US deaths than the bloodiest single day in WWI saw (counting all sides), yet American talking heads keep on crapping on about the 'high' level of US casualties in Iraq. > the Charge of the Light Brigade Depends on your nationality. For Australians, our 'Charge of the Light Brigade' was a great success. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29#Light_Horse_charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29...
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
There's quite a lot "noble" about war, in the sense of "aristocratic". I think this every time I see a TV news story about a dead soldier and the soldier's family have a "normal" accent, and the commanding officer sounds like someone from a BBC period drama. But it extends to whose interests we fight the wars for in the first place.
- RUG3Y 10y ago
  I think your response gets at part of what I wanted to say, but couldn't think of how to say at the time. War is not in the interest of those who fight it, most of the time.
wbl 10y ago
War saved my grandparents from Hitler, freed the slaves of the US South, ended the ghetto and brought rule of law to all of Europe, freed the US from England, ended the tyranny of the British monarchy in favor of Parliamentary rule, brought freedom of religion to the Netherlands, etc. Not all wars are fought in nobel causes, and even the nobelist war means the death of countless innocent individuals and scores of soldiers. But sometimes it is heroic.

by RUG3Y 10y ago

I think the author's assumption here is out of whack. There is nothing noble about warfare, it doesn't compare to playing an instrument. BTW, I've been to war myself.

dfc 10y ago

You mention your combat experience as if it establishes your credibility to adjudicate the nobility of war. Mr. Marlantes is also a combat veteran. He was not awarded the Navy Cross for his time in the rear with the gear. More importantly, given this piece or any of his other writings, I do not think it is accurate to say that his writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.

zepto 10y ago
It does establish his credibility by comparison with someone who has never seen it first hand and is basing their option on media reports and fiction.
- dfc 10y ago
  I apologize if I am being dense but this is such a strange position to me that I do not understand how you could arrive at this conclusion. I am genuinely interested in understanding what is that I am missing. "War" seems to be a distinctly societal enterprise; this societal component is so important that it does not make sense to think about it on an individual level. If you do approach "war" at the individual level how do you distinguish it from simply carrying out violence? I also have trouble with the notion that someone is better equipped to identify and assess moral principles and ideals (I dont think it matters if you are a universalist or relativist here) simply because of one's participation in and proximity to combat. Is a mercenary as credible as someone that was motivated by political idealism? Bloodlust? The simple desire to avoid a prison sentence? What do you do with the devout Quaker who would rather be incarcerated than violate their commitment to pacifism? In general how does someone establish there bona fides for the identification and characterization of moral principles and ideals? On an entirely separate note: I don't care if Chesty Puller or Audie Murphy show up; I think it is absurd for anyone to maintain that Karl Malantes' writing is based on the assumption that war is inherently noble.
  - zepto 10y ago
    I think you raise a good point, which I interpret as something like a statement that moral philosophy is complex and situated in a broad social and historical context, and having been a participant in combat is irrelevant as a qualification for doing it well. I tend to agree. However in the absence of a well informed and reasoned moral argument, I still think that first hand experience lends credibility to a commenter over one who has consumed only media reports.

zeveb 10y ago

> There is nothing noble about warfare Sure there is. There's gallantry and bravery and … nobility. There's also ugliness and cruelty and murder. Clauswitz commented famously that war is diplomacy carried out by other means; more accurately, war is humanity carried out by other means. It's inhumane but carried out by men; it's uncivilised but carried out with the fruits of industrial civilisation. In short, it's paradoxical. I know that the author is right: there are people who are suited for war. They're not psychopaths — it's not that they don't have empathy for others (they do), but I wonder if they have reduced empathy for themselves.

RUG3Y 10y ago
I disagree that bravery and gallantry are qualities of war - they're human qualities that war sometimes reveals. A man's bravery doesn't lend nobility to war, in my opinion. I generally see war as exploitative. I can see where Clauswitz is coming from but those are intellectual arguments to me, they don't carry a whole lot of weight when bullets are flying and your buddies are getting hurt. Of course, I'm just sharing my opinion. I don't have any data to support how I feel about this.
- Retra 10y ago
  I don't understand why you'd say war is itself exploitative in lieu of those who are participating in it in exploitative ways. I would agree that war is an opportunity for exploitation to occur. But then maybe I don't understand what war is in a way that is different from a bunch of people who are willing to go to battle (for their own various reasons.)
Pamar 10y ago
I suggest watching "The Hurt Locker" for a very interesting portrait of what you describe ("reduced empathy for self").

jcranmer 10y ago

You may think nothing is noble about war, but by and large, you're probably in disagreement with the majority of the ~120 billion humans who have ever lived. Particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, war was generally seen as a noble thing and generally a focal part of high culture. Think of the glorious portrayal of "doomed last stands"--the Alamo, Pickett's Charge, the Charge of the Light Brigade. It's largely only WWI (it should be noted that the German High Command fairly indisputably saw a coming Great War as an ultimately good thing--the dispute is mostly in how much this influenced their actions immediately prior to the war) that created a massive cultural cynicism in the portrayal of war. And even after WWI and the Vietnam War, we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner (even if critics tend to be less thrilled about it).

ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
Yes, you've sorta made out point-we don't live in the pre-20th century world, the world of those battles are long gone. And the American Civil War was (since you mentioned Pickett's Charge) more of a porto-WW1 in many respects rather than some sort of bizarre image of a masculine gentleman's war that you seem to have.
vacri 10y ago
Napoleon himself stated that you had to trick the common man into going to war. Hitler said similar as well. War is glorified so people continue to be soldiers and kings get their muscle, but it's just not true that the majority of people who have ever lived think that war is noble - particularly those who have seen war. History also doesn't talk about most of the endless numbers of doomed last stands, only the occasional one gets special mention. > we've again returned to a condition where glorifying war is a sure moneyspinner Not so in continental Europe. The US has barely had it's homelands touched in half a dozen generations - the US people are very removed from the reality of war, so revelling in the glory has little tangible cost these days. One example is that the entire decade-plus of US involvement in Iraq has seen fewer US deaths than the bloodiest single day in WWI saw (counting all sides), yet American talking heads keep on crapping on about the 'high' level of US casualties in Iraq. > the Charge of the Light Brigade Depends on your nationality. For Australians, our 'Charge of the Light Brigade' was a great success. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29#Light_Horse_charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Beersheba_%281917%29...

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

There's quite a lot "noble" about war, in the sense of "aristocratic". I think this every time I see a TV news story about a dead soldier and the soldier's family have a "normal" accent, and the commanding officer sounds like someone from a BBC period drama. But it extends to whose interests we fight the wars for in the first place.

RUG3Y 10y ago
I think your response gets at part of what I wanted to say, but couldn't think of how to say at the time. War is not in the interest of those who fight it, most of the time.

wbl 10y ago

War saved my grandparents from Hitler, freed the slaves of the US South, ended the ghetto and brought rule of law to all of Europe, freed the US from England, ended the tyranny of the British monarchy in favor of Parliamentary rule, brought freedom of religion to the Netherlands, etc. Not all wars are fought in nobel causes, and even the nobelist war means the death of countless innocent individuals and scores of soldiers. But sometimes it is heroic.