Excuses

Answering prompt 2) McNamara asks, in the film, “How much evil must we do in order to do good? We have certain ideals, certain responsibilities. Recognize that at times you will have to engage in evil, but minimize it….I think the issue is, in order to win a war should you kill 100,000 people in one night, by firebombing or any other way? [U.S. Air Force General Curtis] LeMay’s answer would be clearly ‘Yes.’” What do you think? Were the firebombings of dozens of Japanese cities “justified” in the context of WWII? Was the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) “justified”? Were these strategies, as McNamara advises in war, “proportional”? Did the ends justify the means?

Saying that in order to do good you may have to engage in evil is an excuse. The ends cannot be said to justify the means because then there are no boundaries on human behavior. You cannot reasonably say that the ends justify the means, but only up to a certain point because that point is not measurable and basically lets a person who is savvy enough do anything they want. As McNamara said, if we had lost we would have been persecuted as war criminals. Then how was it justified?

So long as people believe that up until a certain point the ends can justify the means they will also believe that humans war by nature and that human nature cannot change. That we will always have war. And so we shall. People can always say, invading this country will have this good result for me so I can justify the loss of life and resources to the war, or similar situation. People will not go through as much effort to exhaust all diplomatic options because sometimes war is just easier. I don’t believe we can change human nature, but I don’t believe war is in human nature. I believe humans are just too lazy to engage in political pussyfooting for long periods of time. The stress is too much. The idea of war, to relieve the stress and to end the pussyfooting becomes more and more attractive as time wears on.

Disclaimer: Of course, I have never taken a psychology class and I have not really studied human behavior. I may be totally wrong about human nature, but I may not be.