Idiots All Around Us

We really seem to be living in the realm of idiots. Ever since WW II, we seem to have learned to love killing people.  We are raising children who have never known a period of peace.  And, it seems different than the old days of global war.  I guess, in the era of Empire, they held wars, but often called them something else.  I mean, when the Moghul Emperors were acquiring territory, they didn’t wage “war” per se. They simply marched into various places and declared themselves the new rulers. And when the Brits decided to take over India, they just declared themselves the new owners. Of course, when the Indians rebelled in 1857, the Brits termed that event the Great Indian Mutiny, although the Indians called it the First War of Independence.

Then, we entered the realm of real wars. That Civil War thing in 1861 in America was a proper WAR. Armies, separately uniformed and following different flags, engaged, killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and then declared Peace, with one side (the Official United States Government, aka The North) the official winner. But the point is, at one stage we were at a state of War, and then, suddenly we entered a state of Peace. That is, no one was killing anyone in this period.

And then we had those World Wars. In both World Wars I and II, Germany led the rush to War, by deciding to acquire territory not its own.  In both cases, official States of War were declared and Nations, not just groups of folks, joined forces and then engaged in deadly and prolonged War against one another.  In both cases, one side overwhelmed the other and official Peace declarations were announced. The Wars were over, and the sides simply stopped shooting at one another. That is, after all, the purpose of a Peace Declaration. But the official ending of War, in 1945, led to the beginning of something we called the “Cold War”.  During that Cold War, it was apparently ok to have groups shooting at one another, with no War State.  Each side, “East” (Russia, China and their protectorates) and “West” (everyone else) decided it would be ok to periodically begin shooting at one another informally.

We had one final war thing, when North Korea decided that the country should no longer be split, but that was really a part of the Cold War thing, with China egging on the North. The country of Korea had been separated after the great wars into two states.  The North decided that it didn’t like the two-state thing and invaded the South. Since we represented the South, we engaged and fought back with the South. When I say “We”, I mean a larger group than merely the US. The world formed the United Nations after the Great Wars. In Korea, the fighting was between the UN-sponsored forces, and the North, backed vaguely by China. 

 But then, the Cold War shootings began deteriorating into even less “formal” states of “War”. We seemed to drift into some permanent state of killing amongst organized gangs. Sometimes, as in Vietnam, the gangs represented a large region of the world. Again, as in Korea, the state of Vietnam had been divided after the Great War into a North and a South. Again, as in Korea, the North decided it didn’t like the separation imposed by the great powers. But rather than “invade” with formal armies, organized gangs (Viet Cong) began forming and arming and then killing throughout the South. That conflict, also a UN operation, lasted for many years. Officially, the French had attempted to retain their old Empire possession, Vietnam, but they were never too good at the War thing. So in 1954, they got properly routed by the Viet Cong (or the North) and tossed out. Enter the UN (really, the United States). We began engaging, first by arming the South, and then by introducing our own troops. So, from the early 1960s until roughly 1975, we were engaged in fighting these organized gangs, called the Viet Cong (VC) and finally the North Vietnamese themselves. Richard Nixon ran a presidential campaign on his ability to end the war (killing state) in Vietnam. Actually, all he did was expand the killing zone by bombing in countries heretofore neutral.  Then, finally, Nixon gave up in disgust. He entered a mock peace negotiation with the North, and we finally walked away with our tail between our legs, officially having lost our first “War” (except it wasn’t a real War).

One would think the World would have delighted in that ending, despite the fact of loss for the US.  Any War ending, it seems to me, is a good thing, because we stop killing people.  But that Cold War thing continued. I guess, even when we are not killing folks directly, we seem to get off on hating one another.  Just cuz. Part of the problem, apparently, in ending Wars, as in WW II, is that we seem to be in too big a hurry, and we neglect  all the sideshows of anger/hatreds that developed during or even as a result of the wars.  After WW II “ended”, the Cold War began, but the Cold War was really a direct result of the War itself. Russia and China had both engaged in the Second World War, at least theoretically on the same side as the US and much of Europe.  But those nations had been undergoing their own internal disputes/revolutions. After overthrowing their own internal ruling regimes earlier, both countries assumed a new government approach, called Communism. That system eliminated/reduced the role of the private sector, transferring all developmental powers to their governments.  So, despite our mutual opposition to the German/Japanese regimes, we were not fully aligned, such that, almost as soon as the war ended, we began opposition anew in the form of that Cold War. That “War” resulted in a number of shooting fronts.  For example, both Korea and Vietnam can be traced to that Cold War rivalry between “East” and “West”. And after those shooting matches ceased, the Soviets decided to invade Afghanistan in 1979, in order to support a communist takeover in that country, which was met by opposing anti-communist forces. The invasion of Afghanistan began in late December 1979 by troops from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union intervened in support of the Afghan communist government in its conflict with anti-communist Muslim guerrillas during the Afghan War (1978–92) and remained in Afghanistan until mid-February 1989. During that little conflict, we armed and supported the opposing “guerrillas”. Funny thing. Turns out, we armed what became the Taliban . . . yeah that group that instigated the 911 attacks here in the US.  So, we hold some responsibility for the current mess.

And then, right around the same time, the Shah of Iran was being challenged. Several factors contributed to strong opposition to the Shah amongst certain groups within Iran, the most significant of which were US and UK support for his regime, and clashes with leftists and Islamists. By 1979, political unrest had transformed into a revolution which, on 17 January, forced him to leave Iran. Soon thereafter, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ruhollah Khomeini (known in the West as Ayatollah Khomeini). And then we had an enemy in Iran.

Enemies . . . enemies everywhere. All around this poor benighted globe, we have enemies. Apparently, all it takes to forge an enemy-relationship is a different system of government.  We never seem capable of simply running different systems, without hatreds or shoot’m ups. 

But the big change that has occurred over, say, the past fifty years is the growth of what I now call organized crime gangs. We have in Latin America actual organized crime gangs of the classic cosa nostra style.  Now to be fair, Cosa Nostra required that you originate in Sicily, and that you were not allowed to have any cops in your clan.  The gangs in Latin America are very large, brutal, with killings galore. They largely make their money in the drug trade, made possible by the existence of an unlimited drug market in the USA. They wage organized crime war continuously by killing people they don’t like. They make money by selling us drugs.

And then, we have ISIS and The Taliban in the Middle East. They also make their money by killing folks wholesale, in an attempt to take over large swaths of various countries. They want territory, and love killing other folks to acquire it.  But they aren’t Nation-States. They are simply organized gangs. They don’t sell drugs, they impose religion, instead. Well, technically, some of them also sell drugs to make money.

It is not clear that these gangs are directed by a central authority, ergo, it is very difficult to restrain or defeat them. You beat down one group in one township, and several more pop up in the next township.  Afghanistan is a classic nation-state within which they can flourish. Babur was one of the earlier conquerors of Afghanistan, but throughout its history, various nations have attempted and failed to take control, including the British, the Russians, and the Americans.  But it now extends way beyond Afghanistan. The entire Middle East is afflicted with this organized gang/crime groups, all of a pseudo-religious order.

And the killing never seems to end. These groups get off on killing any way they can. And they seem not to care who they kill—innocents as easily as armed opponents.

It is by no means clear how the world can end this global killing phase. There are no Nation-States we can confront and defeat. There are simply mindless thousands, perhaps millions who are disaffected by the mindless autocracies in which they live, and decide to join gangs and kill for a living.

We await some solution. The UN seems powerless and the world’s great powers seem intent on allowing this killing to continue. No world leader seems to have the conscience required to propose ending it. All of the powers that be seem to derive their own power by having states of hatred and violence around them. They love hating and killing (see Trump and the Republican Party). Until that changes, the killing will continue.