ON MAN’S INHUMANITY TO MAN

                      BYSy   Schechtman

 

       Robert Burns, the famous Scotch bard of the late 18th century, once said that “man’s inhumanity towardsmanmakes countless thousands mourn”.  That was almost a hundred and fifty years ago.  Nowthe growth of the mourning processhas acceleratedmarkedly.  In the last centuryit is estimated that well over 100,000,000 peoplewere killed   in the various World Warsnations have foughtamong each other,plus the less all consuming combats thatfrequently occurred between individual nationsor isolated small regions.  And then there was the uniquegenocidal experience of the 6,000,000 Jews in the Holocaust,only a small part of the larger totalbut stilla shocking commentary onthe biblical injunction to be “your brother’s keeper”;  not the inverse “your brother’s killer”as we have too oftenseemedinclined to do.  Not that we have been deficient in killing our fellow citizensthroughout human history, but the pace seems to have quickenednow as modern technologymakes the slaughterof our brothers and sisters more efficient.   I have heard someapologistsfor this fratricide explainthat percentage wise itis not as bad as it looks when you thinkof thelarge increase in populationthat wehave incurred.  Some even thinkthat its almost a blessing in disguise, like natural disasters, which are also a form of necessary, if involuntary,birth control.

       Prior to the last, andnot much lamented century,many of the internecine wars were fought for nationalist reasons,territorial defensive or aggrandizement  purposes---“for God and country”, but with the sublime assumption the God was obviouslyon “our” side.    But the geographicalreality of gaining finite territory was the prime object ofthe battle,perhaps first by diplomatic efforts and thenmilitary means after failed diplomacy.  The abhorrent, evil enemy simply wanted to annex as much territoryadjacent to the existingsovereign nation, usually in an irredentist guise, that this borderland originally belonged to theclaimant countryand was unfairly usurped.  This was thebasis of many warsthat had land acquisitionas its prime goal, althoughthere were religiousand ideologic wars too.Our own Warof Independenceand Civil Warare primeexamplesof powerful political and emotional forceswhose time had come and energized seemingly weaker foes to overthrow powerful seemingly invulnerableauthority, or entrenched institutions, such as slavery. And going far back in history there were the Crusades, religiously constructed to unseat the Moslem control of the holy Jerusalem in the middle east, with the added benefit of well designed pogroms along the way east among many reluctant “host” Jewish communities in Europe. There were several Crusadesduring the next century and Jewish deaths mixed in with the anti Moslem fervor on the way to continually overcome the Moslemhold on the common Holy Land of Jerusalem.And economic gain in the form of personal loot was not discouraged.

       However,most of the time, warshada basic economic thrustand acquiring your neighbors territory was a prime wayof beginning torealize this economic advantage,and this was true, more or less, of the First World War ( 1914- 1918).   And whilethere wasquite a bit economic advantageto be had in conquering all ofEurope, as Hitler almost succeeded in doing in Second World War (1939-1945), his dynamic thrust for hegemony was fueled enormously well by ideologic conceptsand jargontotally unfamiliarto theslogans of prior public conditioningfor war’s acceptance.  Rabid Jew hatred, the superiority of the Aryan MasterRace,the mongrel breedofRed RussianCommunism  and Jew capitalism that gave added impetus to Hitler’s “Drang Nach Osten (drive to the east)for “Lebensraum” (space to live).It was a struggle between the pure AryanGerman race and the dread combination of Jew capitalist/communist Red Russian.  One of the most powerful oxymoronic combinations imaginable.  The international scheming, controlling money bags Jew, financial wizard plotting to acquire capitalist control of all the wealthfor evil Jewish purposes and the Red Russian Bolshevik plotting to wrongly redistribute this same wealth and power to the struggling and oppressed worker.   All conflatedinto one powerful foe in SovietRussia and other more liberal nation states.  Powerful, incendiary material with just enough shreds of fact to make very successful rabble rousing, with which Hitler harangued his growing Naziparty   in many long rambling speeches.   There were indeed several successful Jewishbankers world wide, (Rothschild) and Jewish very liberal political exponents in Soviet Russia (Trotsky).Butonlythe demonic imaginationof a Hitlerfused them into a passionate, distortedpropagandarealitythat was to fuel his “thousand year German Reich.”

       But this rather controlled, nation state rather accountable conflict, where friend and foe were evident in definite differing uniforms has graduallyblurred into theconfusing and dangerously vague guerilla war concept, where small groups ambush, set offremote control roadside bombs, bring down hovering helicopters with shoulder fired rockets, and use the coverof night for unnverving continual foraysin familiar jungle territory, which was the insidious and successful strategy inVietnam.  In fact,the only full blown military encounter was the Tet offensivelaunched late in the war by the Viet Cong, and in whichthey were defeated by the combined south Vietnamese and American forces.But by then we had lost the public opinion support of the American people,who became disheartened at the mere fact of the enemies ability to mount whatwas a desperation attackat all and insistedon a complete military withdrawal.

       And now we have finally the complete leveler of all,and the most cost efficient weapon of all, and one fueled completely by religious fanaticism alone---the individual suicide bomberwho for exalted, profound emotional reasonsstraps him or herself withhidden bombswhich they detonate in very populous places for maximum lethal effect.  Their eternal reward for men are many compliant virgins in heaven.  For women who are now engaged in this deadly endeavorthe Koranis still being interpreted andpondered.   But oil rich Moslem sheikseven now, on earth, hasten to reward the families ofthese Moslem martyrs with sizeable mortal bounty, about $25,000 for each such suicide.   It is the prime growth industry in the Moslem world, which has literally no economy except the extremely fortuitous oilrich landsthey inhabit,and  which is owned by the rich sheiks and potentates of the Islamic world.

       But the reason for killing is now a purely religiousone.To rid the world of the infidel, the unbeliever,the one who does not believe in Allah, God in the Islamic sense, from whom   Mohammid receivedthe last heavenly divine messagein about 660 AD.  Most of this holy message was received over a period of a month or so with Mohammid the enthralled listener as Allah spoke.Much as Moses was an enthralled and humble listener to God on Mt. Sinaifor almost forty days, and took down allthe core concepts of what was to form the future Jewish religion down thru the ages,Muhammidtransmitted Allah’s messagein almost monologue form to his followersin what was tobecome the Koran, which replicated much of the legal and moral standards explicit in the Hebrew and Christian testaments, but also distinctlystated the superiority of this new manifestation of Allah’s willover the other prior monotheistic Jewish and ChristianGodly avowals-----even unto the point, with some large minorityof Islamic believers—of killing the infidel,the idolatrousnon believers,who were, of course,adherents of the Judeo- Christian  western cultural tradition.

       When Moses came down from Mt Sinai after his 40 day encounter with the Lord God his face was aglow with an other worldly white radiance. Which soon fadedas he tried to implement the profound ethical, moraland legal code God had given him, to make the “Jews a holy people, a nation of priests and teachers”.Indeed many positive and negative events occurred as they wandered in the desert for forty years, for “they were a stiff necked people”, before they were allowed to enter Canaan, thePromised Land, under Moses valiant leadership.With Mohammidhis first post Allah revelations were more mundane and pragmatic---- but very pertinent.While he failed in inspiring neighboring Jewish tribes with hisnewdivine message he gradually convinced his fellow Arab cohorts ofAllah’snew, urgent doctrines,whichproclaimedthe primacy of the new revelationas elaborated in the Koran, the testament that supersededboththe Hebrew and Christianscriptures.   While jihadic extermination was not stressed the militant spread of the supremacy of Islamic wasencouraged and within a hundred years of Mohammid’s death the Moslem Arabs had spread the new Islamic religion by military conquestinto a vast empire, including western Asia, North Africa, Sicily, the Balkans and Spain. Then extermination was not the goal, but many were slain fighting the conquering Moslem armies. Subject people who did not convert became slaves, or more likelydhimmis, second class citizens with restricted privileges.Such was the fate of the Jews and Christiansat the time,but with eras of notable exception, when thecaliphate did show respect andacceptance of Jewish traditions.Such was the benign fate of Maimonides, who was court physician toSaladin’s vizier in Egypt.

       Indeed, for many centuries Islam was a primefactor in the spread of learningand culture.  Advances in mathematics, astronomy, medicine and the preservation of ancient Greek and Roman classics were of great importance to the gradual enhancement of learning in the face of the “dark ages”late in the first millennium.  But past that time Moslem culture started to stultify and not make progress into modernity.   Today the ratio ofnew ideas and techniquesas measured by newpatents awarded shows Westernpatent and copyright approvals almost 100 times greater than Moslemones!!  And, of course, we have few, if any, Moslem works of art in our museums or galleries, even though international eclecticism in our museums and galleriesis one of our most courteous attributes.   What we have, alas, is a residue of frustration and hate by a younger Moslem generation who realize thatthey are in the backwashof a western civilization far ahead of them.One that they must bring down and destroy to make the playing field level again.Jihad to the fore---infidels be damned!—So Allah has decreed!  And because of the dread mix of suicide bombers and small “dirtynuclear bombs”individual obsessed fanatics are very, very dangerous now!

       Going back to the future, it is necessary to include, and conclude, with the granddaddy of struggle and killing, that of Athens and Sparta from about 431BCEtill about 404 of intermittent fighting, the Peloponnesian War, a struggle between a sea power, Athens, against Sparta a dominant land power, forcontrol of the key areas between them that were vital, so they thought, for the commercial and economicviabilityof their life.After thirty years of intermittent combat and occasional truce, and much loss of life,Sparta won out.  This marked the end of the flood tide of Athens dominance in the arts and sciences, although its influence still was of major importance world wide, andwas soon spreadalmost universally by Alexander the Great, a pupil of Aristotle,who was a prime product of the Athenian enlightenment prior to thedebacle of the war.Alexander spread the concept of Hellenism, a popularized version of the great Greek intellectual glories before the great Athens Sparta struggles that Athens finally lost.  Alexander was the missionary of this enlightenment because of his military genius, conquering much of the world to the east,even into some of India.Mohammid went westabout 1,000 years later, you remember.  But first the military slaughter prepared the way, evidently the spent human bloodfertilizing the way for civilization’s flowering in theHellenistic age that followed Alexander’s path.

       

       War and mass killing of one’s fellow man (and woman, of course)seems to be an integralelement of human history.  Probablyalmost as much time spentin the planning and execution of killing as in the peaceful aftermath of recovery from the devastationwrought.  But the recoveryhas been significant, even remarkable.  We have more than doubled our world wide population in the last hundred years.From less than three billion then to more than six billion now, despite all the killing involved, which seems to be overa hundred million people.And a significantly large number have been living above the so called poverty level, however you might define it. The crucial problem, however, is the relative ease that we now have of  destroying our fellow companions on this splendid planet.   Or even the planet itself.(If you want toput a religious spin on it, a midrash states that God createdand destroyed the world about ten thousand times before declaring Himself reasonably satisfied.  Perhaps He might try once more and start all over againwith man’s destructive help!)

       But we have been down this dangerous destructive path several times in the very recentpast,with the League of Nations after WorldI, and the present United Nationsafter World War II  in place to prevent aWorld War III, where nuclear weapons could be involved. The League of Nations failed, of course, leading to World War II, and the current United Nations, which now has the United States in an active role—which was not the case after the World War I---does not seem too powerful a possible deterrent to strong orwillful nations, as Iran and North Korea seem to portend.Indeed, mutualarmed deterrence (MAD) during the nuclear stalematebetweenthe United States andthe once all powerful Soviet Union, each with a large storehouse intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),capable ofvast destruction, was the fearful deterrent for almost fifty years.Now, of course, the United States is the sole super power, not opposing but perhaps supplementingthe United Nations.  That is, if the US and the  UN agree on a mutual course of action, which is not exactly a foregone conclusion, nor is the US financial situationas solid as it was before the Iraqi “adventure” began.  We are not, at times, because of limited resources, able to accomplish some wished foroutcomes,nor do we have willing allies to add their manpower or money—accept the gallant Tony Blairand the English!

       But. of course, as Winston Churchillsaid,“Jaw, jaw is better than war, war”.But there is something to be said for overwhelming forceandunconditional surrender, as were the Allied Armies terms at the end of World War II.   Or, to put it most simplisticallyby Mao Tse Tung, leaderof the revolutionary Chinese Communist forces,“justice comes out of the barrel of a gun”.    Orin Plato’s Republic, one of the disputants says that “Justice is the rightor the stronger.”Or in the immortal words of Leo Durocher, “Nice guys always finish last”.

       But above all dialogue and words, words, words.

Better than “Peace in Our Time”—like Neville Chamberlain’s dupedand deludedtriumphal declaration at Munich. And then ceaseless effort to see that the treaty terms are enforced.And making sure that we not stint on continued military and securityupgrades. And so, perhaps, make Man’s Inhumanity To Man much easier to avoid.