When Napoleon
Bonaparte was still a young General, not yet 30 years old, commanding his first
Army, the Army of Northern Italy, it was almost his first Battle when he
trapped the Austrian Army between his own forces and a river. His underlings, most of them older with more
actual combat experience were seemingly delighted. Defeating Austria here would deprive them of
one of their major Armies and seriously weaken them for years to come. Advance, advance, advance!
But Bonaparte
hesitated. He assembled his Staff and
told them that most battles are won when the men on the losing side get the
feeling, the suspicion, that they are beginning to lose, and that this ‘feeling’
becomes a contagion that runs through the ranks, and then the men break and
run, and then their Officers have no recourse but to immediately wave the White
Flag for Truce and then to apply for conditions of surrender. But with their backs against either
Mountain, Cliff or River, then the dynamics of a Battle change in the
extreme. If there is nowhere to run,
then they won’t run. They will have to stand
and fight. And those on the other side who
are pushing them where they cannot go, well, they feel the desperate
resistance, of men scratching and clawing for their lives, and can’t help but
sense that if they did not push quite so hard, they would not be in nearly so
much danger themselves. “After all, where
is the greater motivation here”, asked Napoleon, “To fight for the mere vanity
of a Victory as our men would do, or to fight for their lives as they will? So, it is that the Army with clear room at its
back is the most likely to break and run.
And THAT would be us”, Napoleon finally told them.
So, sobered
by these second thoughts, the French plan went forward, to harass the Austrian
forces while not impeding their move up river until they could get to a town
with a bridge. He allowed the Austrian
Army to cross over the bridge, and while the Austrians did put up a significantly
valiant fight to keep the French Army of Northern Italy from crossing over
themselves in pursuit of an all-out attack, still, once the Austrians had room
at their backs, they felt the inexorable pull of fallback and retreat, and with
Napoleon sending riders forward, under White Flag, to assure livable terms to
the Austrian Commanders, they soon stopped the rear guard actions and surrendered.
Beaten and Humiliated on the Field,
still, the bulk of the Austrian Army were back eating and drinking, singing and
dancing in Vienna before the month was over.
What lesson
does this teach us? To win a Battle it
helps in a significant way if your Enemy feels as though they have a better
Future in Running then in Fighting, and that if they do Surrender, that they
know they will be able to walk away, and not be executed or tossed in Prison. Soldiers
and Generals surrender much more easily if they realize it is not a fate worse
than death.
When this
kind of Battlefield common sense prevailed, Wars could sometimes come to quick
conclusions.
But then,
there was the non-sense of the First World War, what they called the Great War,
before there was a Second World War. They
also had called it, stupidly enough, “The War to End All Wars”. Being so optimistically oriented they decided
to invent the Concept of War Crimes (and why not, since if there were to be no
more Wars, then they could make up any such silly feel-good things, and never have
to worry about how they would actually apply and take effect). The War Crimes scheme would set up a
framework of consideration whereby there would be legal and illegal ways to
conduct Wars and that after Wars were ended, then all actions taken during the
War would be reviewed for Legality and those individuals found having committed
War Crimes would be subsequently prosecuted, tried and hanged. Now, the practical effect of that was to
completely dissipate the Utility of the Idea of Surrender, that is, the concept
that with the acceptance of certain terms, there would in effect be a blanket
and universal Amnesty covering all combatants.
By insisting on War Crimes Prosecutions, hangings and Imprisonment,
well, nobody in their Right Minds would ever surrender to That. By insisting on War Crime Prosecutions, Wars
are made endless, up to the point of the complete devastation of the vanquished
Society. Every soldier would understand
that it would necessarily be a fight to the death – the choice being to die now
somewhat honorably on the Battlefield, or later on the hangman’s gallows as a
humiliated prisoner. And the
Politicians and Government Officials would not feel any safer – The Power
Structure of the Country would pull together and fight with everything it got,
until there would be absolutely nothing left.
Now, wouldn’t it be nice if we could Evolve to the Point where we could
end Wars by allowing the Combatants to sue for liveble Terms and then
Surrender. It once worked. It could work again… and does still work as I
will point out later.
I saw on the
News that while they are trying to set up negotiations between the Government
of Syria and all of the bands Terrorists, Anarchists and Opportunists that
started the War, that some silly U.N. Commissioner came out and announced that
there would be numerous indictments for War Crimes against the President of
Syria and those up, down and throughout the Chain of Command. Okay, now think for a second. What good would a negotiated peace be to any
Syrian Official, now that they have been explicitly told that once hostilities
cease, then they will all be arrested, tried and hanged. That silly U.N. announcement was in effect a
Declaration of Total and Unending War. And once damned for War Crimes, as the Syrian Administration is now, well, “in
for a penny, in for a pound… might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb”. It simply makes common sense now to use any
weapon at their disposal. They are
already considered guilty (and when in the History of War Crimes has anybody
ever been acquitted?), so refraining now will get them nothing, but hitting
with a harder punch might get their Country back. As long as they don’t surrender, the U.N.
War Crimes arrests can’t go forward, and there is hope. Well, hope in War is the enemy of Peace, just
as much as a hopeless Peace would be.
And even
without U.N. Announcements, everyone in the World can see what is going on…
what the going Trend is. Iraq was devastated
by a War, and then, disarmed, its leadership was gathered up, shot and hanged,
and the middle and lower levels of Officialdom, Police and Army were dismissed,
and placed in the status of an official Persecution that would hamper their
ability to get business licenses, own property, live their lives, etc. There would be a Democracy, oh yes, except
that the Political Party, of all those who had fought for it, as it was their
sworn duty to fight, and of all those who had governed and administered Iraq
for the last quarter century, well, that Political Party would be outlawed and dissolved – disenfranchising that major segment of the Population who had surrendered
and laid down their arms in Good Faith that they would be treated equitably. The lesson there? Well, we can all see now that they would
think that they should have fought harder and dirtier, if such capabilities had
been at their disposal… even using their Mass Weapons of Destruction if they
had any. Not only should they have
fought the Americans with such more zeal, but after-sight would show them that
they should have also done their best to clear the board of their internal enemies
who did their best to betray the Country over to the Americans and who would
subsequently take the Victory from the hands of the Americans and cash it in for
themselves by leading all of the prosecutions and persecutions against all
those who had been Loyal to their Country. In short, their lesson would be that they were
far too laid back, and it might have ended for them better, or more honorably
as they would see it, had they fought harder, more ruthlessly, and more
illegally – more totally. This probably
isn’t the best lesson we can be teaching the Roque Regimes of the World.
We saw it
again in Libya. If the Regime’s men only
knew how they would be treated after Surrender, maybe they would have put up a
stronger fight. And it is difficult to
wonder what the West learned about Libya, because there can’t be a single coherent
person on earth that would not trade the Libya of After for the Libya of
Before. Pushing for the total destabilization
of Libya that had been one of the primary pillars of strength on the African
Continent, well, it caused a Geo-Political Earthquake that still hasn’t stopped
shaking.
So, anyway,
all of these annoying Countries that the West does not care for and would wish
to topple over with ‘Regime Change’, well by now they all know that their ‘Backs
are against the River’, and there will be no equitable or even livable Terms
for Peace. Our Modern Structure of War
Crimes and their Prosecution will end up giving us the most Extreme and Endless
Wars. It is ironic, but because of War
Crimes, now Belligerents are forced by the most desperate necessity… fighting
for their Lives… to use the most Terrible Weapons at their disposal to keep
ahead of arrest and execution. That’s
progress for you, and what they have come to call “unintended consequences” –
but so easy to anticipate by anybody with the least bit of experience, or even just
reading… and a dash of discernment.
And I am not
alone here. Look at South Africa and
Northern Ireland. The only way those
conflicts were finally resolved was that there were explicit guarantees issued
that there would be full Amnesties issued and absolutely no vindictive pursuit
of War Crimes Charges issued later to Cloud the clear blue skies of vb Peace. It
tells us something when the only way peace can be achieved is when we purposely
decide to ignore the idea of War Crimes.
Besides,
think of the most important point. If
you know that a neighboring people of a different tribe, culture, religion or
race has over-crowded its own land and feels the itch for more, and has
launched an invasion into your country and obviously plans to kill you and all
of your people to take the land and settle it for themselves, well, could you
possibly imagine anything that would be ‘criminal’ in stopping them. How could there possibly be any excess in
fighting for your own or national survival?
In such a context the idea of War Crimes simply looks silly and effete.
And then,
afterward, what of those who do commit the most atrocious ‘War Crimes’… can we
just let them get away with it? Well,
do the Monsters of War necessarily survive into the Peace, or do their
desperate actions done in the time of War lose their meaning and coherency in
Times of Peace? Really, in Peacetime are
these people still monsters? Do they
represent a continuing threat? Perhaps the
Monster of War ends when the War does, and then the Man of Peace takes over
from there. We can’t ignore the
possibility that there is something Life Affirming in Peace, and that, given a
New World, people can make themselves anew. And then, perhaps it is the eternally
resentful and vindictive, the War Crimes Investigators and Prosecutors, who
become the monsters, scraping back up the stink of War and stomping down the
green shoots of Peace.
