WARS: Some people died on the battlefields...

MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2024

...some in the prison camps: "Now we're engaged in a great civil war," President Lincoln once said.

In one colloquial sense of the term, the war in question was something less than "civil." The leading authority on the matter offers this report on its immediate human costs:

The war resulted in at least 1,030,000 casualties (3 percent of the population), including about 620,000 soldier deaths—two-thirds by disease—and 50,000 civilians. Binghamton University historian J. David Hacker believes the number of soldier deaths was approximately 750,000, 20 percent higher than traditionally estimated, and possibly as high as 850,000.

[...]

Based on 1860 census figures, 8 percent of all white men aged 13 to 43 died in the war, including 6 percent in the North and 18 percent in the South. About 56,000 soldiers died in prison camps during the War. An estimated 60,000 soldiers lost limbs in the war.

Some died on the battlefields, some in the prison camps. Wars which are necessary, even just, do come with vast human costs.

As we've noted in recent weeks, the first European "poem of war" is something like three thousand years old. It describes a largely mythical war which would have taken place centuries earlier, "at the time of the Late Bronze Age collapse, in the early 12th century BC."

It tells the story of a ten-year siege of a mighty walled city—a siege conducted by the Achaeans (most simply, by an assembly of Greeks) against the inhabitants of Ilium, more commonly known now as Troy.

That war was conducted in bloody but simpler times. For those who participated in the war, there seemed to be no real doubt concerning which side you were on.

Participants in this mythical war knew which side they were on! Inhabitants of Troy were under a state of siege, facing an existential threat from a powerful collection of Achaean armies. Fairly early in the poem, Hector, the son of Troy's King Priam, described the stakes to Andromache, his generous wife:

And tall Hector nodded, his helmet flashing:
"All this weighs on my mind too, dear woman.
But I would die of shame to face the men of Troy
and the Trojan women trailing their long robes
if I would shrink from battle now, a coward...
For in my heart and soul I also know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die,
Priam must die and all his people with him,
Priam who hurls the strong ash spear..."

The day will come when sacred Troy must die! For inhabitants of the great walled city, the endless, ongoing ten-year siege was an existential threat. 

The masses of Achaean warriors also knew they had to wage their endless war: You see, Late Bronze Age culture was built around the pursuit of war, and the Achaeans were acting on a point of honor! A point of honor concern (with apologies) the most beautiful woman in the world, Menelaus' former wife!

Given the warrior culture which prevailed at that time, Achaean warriors were eager to seek glory on the field of battle in the course of conducting their siege.  Hector shared that cultural outlook:

Glory was earned on the field of battle, a point he explains in much greater (and astounding) detail as that conversation with his generous wife continues.

Given the offence to honor which had occurred; given the nature of Late Bronze Age culture; none of the Achaeans ever questions the reason for conducting this endless siege of Troy. Indeed, no one on either side in this Bronze Age war ever expresses any doubt concerning which side he (or she) is on.

From its opening pages, the poem turns on expressions of rage—expressions of rage brought on by perceived slights to honor. For the record, these slights all involve disputes about sexual and marital relations between men and women, a general point of concern which lingers today, in various forms, in our own political war.

Today, our struggling nation, such as it is, is involved in a growing political war. As with Lincoln's war, so too with our own—this is an internal war, not a war between two groups of geographically distinct populations. 

In the development of our war, citizens of a pre-existing nation-state are forced to decide which side they're on, or it they want to be on a side at all. 

Achaeans and Trojans had no such choice. In theory, we moderns do.

Theirs was a Late Bronze Age war; ours is a war of the Information Age. But certain impulses—perhaps including the impulse to wage war itself—may not have changed all that much over the thousands of years.

As we conduct our political war here within our struggling nation, can we possibly learn to see ourselves more clearly through a review of our earliest literature—through the way the impulse to war was carried out in a much less complexified time?

Our current political war involves two major populations—Red America and Blue. Because our war isn't being fought over a single offense to honor, our alignments in this ongoing war have to be built around a wide array of causes and slights.

With that in mind, we'll riddle you this:

Are points of difference sometimes created by those who want to drive us to war—by those who are still gripped, perhaps unknowingly, by that ancient, primal impulse? Can we trust the things we're told by the various people who are creating the points of honor which will recruit us into this war?

Hector told his generous wife that he knew sacred Troy must die. Civilizations can die in our human wars. It happens all the time!

Lincoln wasn't a Bronze Age man. "We must not be enemies," he fruitlessly said. "We are not enemies, but friends."

Tomorrow: Senator Britt declines to relent. How about President Biden?