A rchive Date
[ 16-02-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.N ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
There is no good war, but some wars are just
By SALIM MANSUR -- For the Toronto Sun
February 14, 2003
LONDON, Ont - There is no good war. But when war occurs, it is often for a complex set of reasons. History also reminds us there is yet no escape from wars, as there is none yet from disease, nor death itself.
The best effort of fallible human beings to abolish war has been directed to limit its destructiveness, to confine it by rules, and to prevent it by diplomacy.
In our times, scarred by the 20th century terrors of wars and genocide, the effort to abolish war resides in the mechanism of the United Nations.
We committed the UN to the words of the prophet Isaiah, "And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
But there has been no temporal ruler in all of recorded history who renounced war and became an apostle of peace and non-violence in the manner of Ashoka, the greatest of kings in the annals of India.
Ashoka ascended the throne of Chandragupta, his grandfather and a contemporary of Alexander of Macedonia, around 260 BC. Following the most gruesome war he fought in conquering Kalinga (roughly the province of Orissa in modern India), Ashoka recoiled from the horrors of war, abjured violence and became a messenger of peace to the world of his time.
In History of the World, H.G. Wells, recalling Ashoka, wrote: "He would have no more of it. He adopted the peaceful doctrines of Buddhism and declared that henceforth his conquests would be conquests of religion. Such was Ashoka, greatest of kings."
Theologians and philosophers, from Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) to Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), have wrestled with the problems of evil and war. A Spaniard, Franciso Suarez (1548-1617), and a Dutchman, Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), were the earliest codifiers of the principles of international law and proponents of the "just war" theory, as a new Europe was shaped by blood and steel of religious wars of Reformation and counter-Reformation.
There is no good war. But there are wars that may be just, in defence against all sorts of aggressors, for liberation from alien occupation and against tyrants propagating ideologies of racism, militarism and totalitarianism in oppressing people within national boundaries and threatening others beyond.
There was a time when liberals and others on the left understood the need for just war and responded. In the 1930s, Canadians who founded the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation recognized instinctively the threat to peace from those evil men who glorified race and military might while assuming power in Europe and Asia.
These common folks did not require any prompting to recognize the threatening nature of fascism, militarism and racism that was about to engulf Europe.
They responded to the desperate cries of freedom in the Spanish Civil War, and some went to fight alongside the Republicans in Spain against Franco, who was supported by the Roman Catholic Church and the Nazis of Hitler's Germany.
The list of brave individuals who volunteered to fight in Spain for democracy and freedom is long. There was Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell, Andre Malraux and Octavio Paz. Orwell's book, Homage to Catalonia, should be required reading for those who have forgotten the meaning of just war.
Canadians organized the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion of volunteers, and among them was a young doctor, Norman Bethune from Orillia via Montreal, who went to Spain, and then to China where he died and is buried. They shamed the Liberal government of W.L. Mackenzie King, who favoured the policy of appeasing Hitler in the company of European leaders, and they maintained Canada's honour in those dark years of fascism preceding World War II.
History has a lot of lessons to offer as we wrestle with the dilemma of the right response in dealing with the Iraqi tyrant, Saddam Hussein.
One lesson is reminding ourselves of Bethune and Orwell, and how they dealt with the problem of war when confronting the evils of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com.
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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