All war is nothing more than 'an organised crime'. Do you agree? (Promo 2002)

Organised crime is not relative. It is universally condemned, because most right-thinking individuals realise that such activity is detrimental to the human race as a whole. War on the other hand refuses to be evaluated objectively, because it is an act of violence sanctioned by the state, an amorphous entity claiming to represent the views, beliefs and morality of its citizenry, and that is why war is far more insidious than organised crime.

"Crime" is a word that brings to mind acts of selfishness, antisocial acts that disrupt the functioning of society, that cause hurt or suffering. It is always evaluated while bearing in mind fairness, and thus what is unfair is often a crime. Stealing relegates property that rightfully belongs to its owner to someone else. Murder deprives an individual of the right to live. It is this innate moral compass that helps the majority of men to be able to judge what is crime and what is not, and therefore crime appears to us as a cut-and-dried subject, easily defined and identified.

What about war? Indeed, there are still many men in this modern world who in their great wisdom proclaim that war is an amoral tool which can be used for good, or for the greatest evil. Genghis Khan, the Great Mongol Conqueror (if conquering through bloodshed accrues greatness) once said, "Let him who desires peace, prepare for war." His enemies all agreed with him on this point, yet perished underneath the unshod hooves of stocky Mongol ponies. Our leaders today tell us that war must be an option made available to the nation-state, lest we should lose our peace. Some primal instinct that makes us uneasy with war must still flow through our veins, for men to have to keep thinking of new, pallid platitudes and aphorisms to justify war.

Could it be that this primal instinct is related to the innate moral compass that helps us identify what is criminal? Let us look at the similarities between crime and war. The former involves taking property belonging to someone else; the latter involves taking territory belonging to someone else because you believe it rightfully belongs to you. Crime sometimes involves killing; war requires you to kill, to defend your nation. Once again we see the constant need to justify war. It is, in the eyes of its proponents, a very human attempt to deliver justice on a political scale.

The concept of a just war is not new. St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo in the 5th century in the year of Our Lord, wrote that a state should not be the aggressor, should not kill women and children and should strive to end the war as quickly as possible. This hardly seems criminal, since a just war strives to be fair. The act of war cannot be organised crime because of this aspiration, it is not even similar to crime because it claims to be sanctioned by a great body of people, a society. It is for these reasons that war is infinitely more horrified, more absurd and more insidious than organised crime.

Genghis Khan and St. Augustine lived in simpler times, when wars were declared by caliphs, kings and emperors. We now perceive our modern wars to be more "just" because they are declared not with the fasces[?], but with the righteous, raised fist of democracy. One sad Americanism dating from the Cold War is "Everyone loves a good war." The nature of domestic politics in America enshrines the importance of the individual will as expressed through the ballot box, in theory. The American public voted for Nixon because he claimed that he would end American involvement in Vietnam. He did withdraw US troops from the mire of the Vietnamese conflict, but not before the Watergate political scandal at home and bombing North Vietnamese cities with more ordnance than had ever been used in a single bombing campaign, eclipsing even the devastation the Allies wrought in Berlin during the Second World War. It is a great pity that the ideals of democracy are seldom fulfilled, until the last days of a president's term.

But what if democracy could work? Would war still be a crime if it were declared through the most holy tabernacle that is the ballot box? Depending on the constitution, a two-thirds majority may be needed for a referendum, or perhaps a simple majority. Therefore the ideal nation-state could possibly delcare a just war, should five million individuals vote against the war, and five million and one vote in favour of it. It is of course patently absurd, yet warmongers continue to use democracy as a means of justification.

War is insidious because it pretends to be just, disguises itself as an amoral political tool, and convinces us that ends justify means, no matter the human cost. In our enlightened age we have sought to control it, creating treaties to ban landmines and chemical weapons, and an International Court of Justice to try war criminals. Organised crime on the other hand makes no pretences. War refuses to be controlled, refuses to take on any of the mantles we bestow upon it, be they Infinite Justice, Enduring Freedom, or the most shallow yet, Pre-emptive Retaliation in the Name of Self-Defence. America knows that war is a tool difficult to control, and that is why it refuses to be beholden to the War Crimes Tribunal of the International Court of Justice.

A minor member of Parliament in Singapore once proudly proclaimed, during a budget debate, with much irrelevance, that he would be proud to send his son to die for Singapore in the name of safeguarding our peace and freedom. A clear-minded Singaporean wrote in the newspapers about how we would all have fewer wars if we were not so eager to participate in them. To praise such acts of violence in the name of anything at all would certainly be a worse crime than any other.

40/50 (A1): Content 23/30, Expression 17/20.