“Phil, do you have any more questions?”
“No.”
“You don’t look happy. Sure you don’t have anything else to say?”
“Well… Look, you talked about doing good things even if it’s a bad war. But what about the bad things that happen to innocents? There are an awful lot of innocent people that get caught in our wars. What about them?”
“That’s a good question. I can tell you that we try very hard not to kill the wrong people. Civilian casualties keep going down from war to war.”
“But it still happens.”
“Yes, it does and I won’t try and pretend otherwise.” He thought for a moment. “Say, are you boys ready to go?” They were. The went up to the front and paid and were soon in Arthur’s car.
“Phil, we can sometimes look at casualties and condemn a war because of them. If ten thousand innocent civilians die, maybe we should have just stayed home and not fought. I can understand that, and the math certainly works that way sometimes. But not always.
“Again you have to look at the larger picture. Often you have to ask what will happen if such and such dictator isn’t stopped. What will happen if they get bigger and more powerful? Will even more people die?”
“So it’s just a numbers game?”
“Not always. There are other things than death you have to keep in mind. For instance, the Civil war was fought because of slavery.”
“Not just slaves.”
“No, it’s more complicated than that. I know all about the states rights arguments. But I think it’s impossible to take slavery out of the equation. If the South had decided to just drop that issue, the whole war would have been avoided. Ok?”
“Ok,” Phil conceded.
“The civilian deaths during the Civil war were enormous. The damage done to the normal infrastructure was incredible. Lots of innocent, non-slave owning people were killed. Hell, the North even had to kill some of the slaves themselves. If you could go back in time and tell them that, would you? Would you try and stop the war from happening?”
“No. Well, I don’t think they would have listened to me anyway. Maybe I would have done something else, though.”
“Like what?”
“Maybe I would have gone down to the South and told them how bad it would be for them. Make them see that it wasn’t worth it for them to fight!”
“That’s not a bad idea. Not that they would have listened to you either. They thought they could beat the North quickly and be done with it. They needed to have the stuffing knocked out of them before they’d concede and change their ways. That’s another reason why war is sometimes necessary.”
Arthur could see that Phil was chewing on all of this. Maybe he should ease up a bit. He didn’t want to be rough on the kid. This was a lot of new stuff. These weren’t popular ideas even though Arthur believed they were true.
“I really do like the idea of going back in time and talking to the losing side though. Imagine if you could somehow convince Jefferson Davis not to go to war. Lots of people would have been better off. Or just think about going back and talking Hitler out of invading the rest of
They stopped at a light. The car in front of them had two bumper stickers. One that said “If Women Ran the World There Would Be No War” and another that read “Polite Women Rarely Make History”. Arthur pointed at them and laughed.
“You see what I mean? Lots of people just don’t understand ‘war’ and why it happens. This lady ahead of us probably thinks that it’s all due to excess testosterone or something like that. She isn’t willing to understand the really complex stuff. She just wants to blame men.”
Both of the boys were quiet. One of their mother’s friends had the same bumper sticker. They hadn’t really thought about it before. The light changed and the two cars were separated.
Arthur continued, “I wonder if she realizes that those two stickers contradict each other. On the one hand she wants a woman in charge because she thinks her maternal nature would keep us out of conflict. On the other hand, she wants women to overcome that nature and act more like men do.”
“Are you saying that polite nations don’t make history?”
Arthur chuckled, “Yes, Phil, I believe I am.”
Alex spoke up, “Women aren’t always peaceful anyway. We had two girls running for student council president against each other. It was vicious. I’m surprised no one got poisoned or something.”
“You’ll see some more of that as you get older. Women can be very nice. On average they’re nicer than men are. Least I’ve always thought so. But they can be just as mean. In fact, sometimes it seems like they have depths of evil that men just can’t find.”
“Are you going to talk us out of women, too?”, asked Phil.
“No, of course not. Just trying to give you a little battle readiness is all.” Arthur glanced over at him. “Why, do I see a smile on that face of yours?”
Alex, from the back seat, “Don’t worry about him. He’s a battlefield veteran already!”
“Good for you, soldier. Just make sure you keep your weapons in good order.” They all laughed.
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