Hey, everyone – I’m experiencing some technical difficulties here in the Bunker. I upgraded my system to the newest OS and then my system wouldn’t boot, then when I fixed that it started taking half an hour to start up while encrypting itself, then when I fixed that, Photoshop wouldn’t work, then when I fixed that, my tablet stopped working.
So until I get this nonsense sorted out I’m afraid we’re on a rain delay here. More news as it develops.
I don’t think this is a memory Colonel Haulley wants to have. This is the beginning of a scene I wrote way back while I was working on Chapter 1, and it’s nice to finally be here. I feel very accomplished having gotten this far.
This week, man… oy vey iz mir. God knows, nothing I have to say is likely to make any great difference, and I’m not in the market to rile people up – flames will be suppressed, I warn you now. That said, however, the past few days have really driven home to me how totally screwed up we’ve allowed our world to become. People who know more about these things than I do are starting to talk about World War III, God help us, and the prospect is starting to look less like science fiction and more like a distinct possibility. It appears, from the Western perspective, which is what I’m stuck with, that there’s some kind of imperialist adventure afoot in Eastern Europe, and the war in Ukraine, where several friends of mine live, has begun taking on frightening new dimensions.
On the radio this week, I heard what I can only imagine is a particularly right-wing member of the Russian Duma talking about Ukraine as being pathetic and worthless, expressing his willingness to send in the Russian army to dispose of the Ukrainians themselves, his confidence that it could and should be done in a matter of hours, and discussing this kind of destructive warfare with a kind of brutal relish that I find unworthy of a leader of a modern nation. And all of this, supposedly over what language people are speaking? I find it hard to understand, as hard to understand as the rush in some quarters of my own government to start sending weapons into the fray to escalate the violence even further, which strikes me as similarly wrongheaded and crazy. And at the same time, in the Middle East and Africa, well… the level of depravity and barbarism there is already reaching levels that would have been worthy of the greatest of the Fascist atrocities, in brutality if not yet in scale. Although I’m sure they’re working on that, as well.
What can possibly come of all this? I don’t know if this is the start of something horrible for the world, or if it’s just another sign of the times. Maybe this will fizzle out as well and become another footnote to history. But it’s instructive to remember that in 2001, India and Pakistan came to the brink of a nuclear war. This is a thing that actually happened, and nobody remembers it now. But it happened. And this kind of thing can so easily get out of hand. This may mark me as an impractical Western libertarian or a stick-in-the-mud, but as a builder, I know exactly how hard it is to build beautiful things, and how easy it is to destroy them. And given the fear of fascists in all quarters, let me instead paraphrase the Communists, and say that I think everyone here has a duty to remember that we’re all just workers shedding blood for the benefit of the ruling classes. Don’t be blinded by the propaganda and don’t fool yourselves about what’s really happening here. In amongst all the rhetoric and politics and reptile-brain instinctive responses about ethnicity and race and religion and all that crap, please, God, you HAVE to remember that every weapon of war has a human being on both ends.
Even the ancient Greeks knew that if you’re fighting a war for the most righteous cause you can imagine, you’re still doing something evil. They knew that in 1500 BC. It’s a lesson we’re likely to forget unless we’re constantly reminded of it. The only thing this will lead to is destruction for its own sake. We can’t conquer each other, and have no reason to do so. We can only wreck what we have.
Put the guns down. Please.
I do NOT think this bodes well for Col. Haulley. I can think of all KINDS of ways this would not be good.
As for your comments…
For FAR too many people in the world guns are the first, last and only resort. Me have gun, me show you me better. Simple.
NOT.
A weapon does not make you powerful. The willingness to USE said weapon does not make you powerful. It makes you DANGEROUS, to be sure. but powerful? No. The power resides with EVERYONE who has the weapons, not JUST the ones who yell loudest.
I am a student of military history. I see where this is going even if so many other people do not. Yes, I remember Pakistan and India even if SO many other people do not.
And yes, I am watching the Ukraine/Russia fiasco unfold.
Because YES, it is GOING to be fiasco.
‘What the people need is a short victorious war to restore their faith in government’. Russian politician on the eve of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904.
It NEVER ends the way the politicians want. EVER.
Just ask the Athenians…
Unfortunately, it has ended the way the politicians of one side wanted several times. See the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. This gives politicians evidence that the “short victorious war” is possible. Since self confidence is the only requirement for entering politics, the politicians tend to think of themselves as superior managers, tacticians, strategists and visionaries combining all the abilities of Helmuth von Moltke and Bismarck. They strongly tend to be wrong.
Those wars which end quickly are very much the exception and not the rule. More often, it better suits the goals of those in positions of power to prolong a war as much as they can in order to solidify their grip on it. Power, like any kind of “rush,” leads only to the pursuit of more power. That’s the trap. And a war like what seems to be happening in the East, both Europe and Arabia, is just the latest and most subtle manifestation of the lust for control over other people. It feels good to be obeyed, and some people are so hopelessly enamored of that kind of feeling that they’ll kill and manipulate whoever they have to to get more of it. It’s a profoundly disordered part of the human condition, and one which may ultimately destroy us all if paired with the right kind of science, social order and military-industrial apparatus.
“What the people need is a short victorious war to restore their faith in government”
“The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.”
It would seem that illusions, in many ways and meanings, are a cornerstone of the human nature.
Particularly destructive, as well as addictive, are any illusions about quickly fulfilling any desires, cravings, lusts or the like, be that for power, sex, drugs, affection or whatever.
Even more destructive is the illusion that those can be fulfilled if only… Anyone heading in that direction is already on the wrong path, a path that often will cause both suffering and, trying to excuse it, contempt, hatred, lies and ignorance.
Being religious, I clearly can see that no good powers would bring such things about.
The only way around it is embracing knowledge, truth and compassion, and realizing that while we all look and behave different, we still have equal value.
Unfortunately not all of us can accept that some other of us have equal value due to ignorance, lies, hatred and contempt… *deep sigh*
Like Milton Friedman, I believe that sincerity is a much-overrated virtue. I have no reason to doubt that all concerned here have sincere beliefs about what they consider right. Maybe they’re cynics, but just assume that they aren’t. You still have a human tragedy in the making, and it begins with the belief that the other guy is a little less human than you are, and needs to be forced into shape for some reason, maybe even “for his own good.” Sincere fanatics can be extremely dangerous. Look at Cambodia and its national self-immolation under the Khmer Rouge – we may be seeing the same thing in the Middle East within a few years. And there were enlightened, progressive Westerners who thought that the Khmer Rouge was the vanguard of mankind’s future.
People forget that sincerity, exceptionalism and some such are modifiers, they don’t represent good things in themselves. One can be an exceptional arsonist too. Or a very sincere torturer. So being such doesn’t make it positive. Too many expect such words to just be positive. I recall we almost had an atomic war in Asia. But only years after the fact did I find out. Things are bad when that could be the most likely of scenarios that could touch off a general launch to end most of us. Stupid and sad we live willingly with death at our throats, the fabled sword of Damocles over nearly everyone’s head. We risk much for very little in return unless we can make sure never to use them again. And yet our president wants to produce a new level of suicide weapons. Shear idiocy.
Frankly, that sentiment is both silly and insane.
If the other side is fighting to annihilate you, man, woman, and child, what can you possibly do that is WORSE than that? STOPPING evil is not evil. Full stop.
War is always nasty, full of terrible, terrible things, but it’s not always evil. Sometimes, it’s NOT going to war that is evil.
Tolkien survived trench warfare in the Great War (later known as WWI), which was some of the nastiest fighting in the history of man, but while this gave him a true appreciation of the horrors of war (and it shows in his writing), he STILL understood that it was sometimes necessary and right. The easiest quote for that is said by Eowyn:
War to STOP the ones with swords from killing those without is not evil.
I’m sorry to differ with you, but it’s the very fact that one has to invent abstractions to justify warfare that make warfare insane. I don’t deny that wars do happen, and that once begun, winning them, in the political sense, can be necessary. But I deny that they are ever worth starting. I think you’re equating necessity with morality, and I don’t think they’re equals. When you kill another person on the battlefield, even in self-defense, you’re killing someone with a family, with friends, with loved ones, with the whole lifetime of his or her ideas and thoughts and experiences. And if that person is coming at you with a bayonet, you may not be personally or legally culpable for killing them to save yourself, but you’ve still killed another person, and that will haunt you forever. I’ve seen it first-hand and it destroys people. The Greeks called it a “miasma,” a palpable evil that clung to you, even if what you had done was justifiable. I call that a genuine evil, and I find it very unlikely that anyone will persuade me otherwise.
I absolutley agree.
Both my grandfathers and most of my elder relatives served in WWII. My paternal grandfather even in WWI. That experience changed them forever.
Maybe it is not as bad if you’re on the winning side of a war, but I doubt it’ll matter in the end.
So in your world, how should Poland have responded to the German declaration of war in 1939?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tannenberg
By defending themselves, naturally. I make no mistake about that. But that war was thrust upon them, physically: the Nazis invaded. They had no choice. But that doesn’t make it right or good or moral, it was still a war involving killing and destruction. Maybe I’m making too subtle a distinction but it makes sense to me. Just because you’re the aggrieved party in a conflict doesn’t make it morally correct if you have to kill in order to defend yourself, it just makes it understandable or justifiable, not a positive good. And we should be striving for the good, not the least bad.
How should have the Iraqi people respond to Western aggression in the early 2000s?
Or everyone else involved in any war before.
Those fighting it are both victims and perpetrators. The ones behind the lines pulling the strings are dangerous. They ask others to defend their way of life and then discard them.
Again.
And again.
And again.
If I’d have to serve again in my countries military I’d have serious moral issues with that. Back in my time it was as useless as it is today, but at least back then we’d never been asked to defend German security in places such as Afgahnistan, the Kongo or somewhere in Somalia.
We’ve no business there.
History has proven over and over again countless times – even with the best of intentions – that German interference in the global stage has caused nothing but death, grieve and pain.
I’m out of this.
This is why you dont equip your damned tanks with AI. Dont do it! Learn from the movies we make about these things!
As for the world and the times? Man has always been cruel to man. We dehumanize our enemies simply because if we didnt, we wouldnt be able to justify killing them or treating them differently. Its how we do these horrible things to one another and can call ourselves good decent human beings at the end of the day.
I always stop and shudder when people talk about how the world is crueler than it was before, or about how things are worse now than theyve ever been. The only real difference is what we use to kill each other and the tools we utilize to do so. The stakes are much higher, yeah, but if a single life (or a handful for that matter) isnt considered “too high a cost”, then why would a couple thousand, tens of thousands, millions?
You call it football, we call it soccer.
Well, maybe. That doesn’t make it right.
Anyhow you’ve all probably heard just about enough outta me anyway.
This looks like we are going to see him get dumped by his wife.
You might very well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment. 😉
Or maybe his husband?
He is a Canadian tehe!
On a different note: We’ve seen the defining moments of Haulley’s, Rucker’s and Alexei’s pasts.
As for Sarah… we still don’t have real details yet. Just something with her father and a vague hint about her being angry about someone for doing something.
Lets wait and see if this mystery will be revealed.
A thought back on the comic. how about something not as past, but driving home and bringing to the fore the realization that the outside world is full radioactive ash, including his family and home?
War is an inevitable cog in human society, an evil that may be necessary in the most extreme cases and indescribably ghastly when not.
Now I’m not exactly religious and I hope this isn’t out of place, but…
“Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression.”
–Oscar Romero, El Salvador, 1980
“It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”
–General Robert Edward Lee, CSA
There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all Hell.
–General William Tecumseh Sherman, USA
I prefer another of General Sherman’s variations on this theme:
“War is cruelty. It cannot be refined.”
I love the comic. It puts things in a slightly different perspective that many don’t seem to understand: both sides of a conflict might not necessarily be the bad guys. This seems to be a turning point.
To the comments:
1. The bible says “Thou shalt not MURDER” as proper translation. If you’re going to quote the good book, get His word right.
2. Those who turn their swords into ploughshares will plow for those that didn’t. War doesn’t require two aggressors, only one. If you really want to do it your way, you better start brushing up on your Russian and Sharia law.
I have been to these places, I have seen things that tarnish the soul. You can talk things out all you want, but, to paraphrase Clausewitz, war may represent the ultimate failure of diplomacy, but even the best diplomats operate on credit. Eventually someone who’s less reasonable than you is going to call you, and if your military can’t cover your note, you lose.
Sometimes, EVERYBODY loses. Such as in parts of this strip.
While barbaric acts are occuring in the Near East and Africa, and Soviet, er, Russian proxies and Ukrainians are pounding each other to snail snot, the world is more at peace than it has ever been. The immediacy of modern news reporting, the tendency in inflate the bad and minimize the good, makes things seem worse than they are. I’m not trying to minimize the things going on, just trying to put them into context. As bad as Boko Haram is, they’re pikers next to Pol Pot, Mao or Stalin.
The war in Ukraine may have killed several thousand by now, but it is still lower thant he death toll from the Hungarian uprsing in 1956, let alone the Balkans War.
ISIS may have kiled 20,000 people, but the Iran-Iraq war killed over half a million. ISIS is not unique in their barbarity, only in their use of social media. Againt, these are horrible things, but you have to look at them in context. The world is still more peaceful, with fewer wars, with fewer people dying every year in war. Its just that the wars being fought right now are right there, in our face, on our computers, everywhere. We have far more information than we ever did, and the media and politicians like to play up fear, for ratings, to sell ads and airtimes, or to get votes.
Despite all that, though, this is still the best time to be alive in all of recorded history. More people live better lives than ever before.
Yes, it is true that the original commandment was not to murder. However, Jewish law takes the spilling of innocent blood extremely seriously. Given the indiscriminate nature of modern weapons and the acceptance of the belief that collateral damage is acceptable, there is pretty much no way one can engage in modern warfare without spilling innocent blood.
While both sides of a conflict might not necessarily be bad guys, it is extremely rare to find a war that has clear cut “good guys” and “bad guys”. If fact, the very application of this terminology to warfare betrays an extremely stunted moral view, to my mind.
The example of a supposedly clear-cut good guy / bad guy divide is World War II, but that doesn’t really hold up to scrutiny, once we realize that the “Good Guys” only won through a) the recourse of killing millions of innocent people and b) their alliance with a “bad guy” who was easily as bad as the one they were fighting.
Worse, to my mind, was the West’s complicity in Hitler’s rise to power. The West didn’t appease him because they were scared of him or too cowardly to fight: they did it because they thought he was, basically, a force for the betterment of Central Europe. It was only four years on into Hitler’s regime that people began to belatedly realize they’d given the thumbs up to a madman.
I am old enough now to remember several American wars, beginning with Vietnam. Remember how we were told back then that if we didn’t fight Them there, we’d have to brush up on our Russian? Oh, and Ortega’s Nicaragua: there was another huge threat which justified the murder of innocents. If we didn’t do that, why we’d wake up to Sandinistas invading Denver, just like in Red Dawn.
Well, Vietnam fell and the Sandinistas continue to run Nicaragua. Millions of innocent people were killed, the U.S. wasn’t able to impose its will and I’m STILL not speaking Russian.
So no, these killings of millions of innocents were not justified. They could have been avoided. The Jewish people themselves are quite clear on this point. Letting things get to the point where the only possible solution involves total war is, indeed, “murder” in the old Jewish sense of the word.
Well said!
Dude, the thing is war has been tied to human nature. You can’t get peace without war, you can’t get war without peace, but you can’t have permanent peace as long as humanity is around. At best you get a ticking bomb that is waiting to go off and kill a lot of people.
Much agreed.
Sample this quote for instance – don’t ask me where I got it. Feel free to guess though…
“Reading about wars in books isn’t enough. It’s no longer real to them and so it becomes fiction as of they reading a fairytale. If people aren’t able to see others dying, if miseries are not on display, we will not have a way understanding peace, and therefore won’t know how to maintain it. The significance of peace would be forgotten. People need wars because it helps them to feel alive.”
“The fear of fascists in all quarters”. Yes, the extreme right is on the rise, it’s happening all over Europe and elsewhere, I see it happening even in the Netherlands, where I was born and raised and where I thought more than marginal support for the far right was unthinkable.
The reason IMHO is that people are afraid, and they see the far right parties as the only ones who will listen to their concerns. They are losing confidence in the establishment. Meanwhile, mainstream politicians think they can cure the symptom instead of the cause. The USA turns more into a police state every day. People like Angela Merkel express their deep concerns at the rising support for far right ideologies and manifestations like the anti Islam demonstrations, yet they fail to address the people’s fears.
Globalization is a scam. Free trade and open borders sound good, but while they bring corporations increased profits, all they’ve brought us is a gradual destruction of our standard of living. Instead of helping third world countries and raising them up, we are being pulled down to their level by greedy corporations.
People are afraid, not just for their standard of living; they fear unemployment and poverty, and a destruction of their cultural values. They even increasingly fear their homeland being turned into a sharia paradise with enforced islamism. If your future already looks bleak it’s easy to imagine the worst.
Meanwhile, the political mainstream does nothing to address the people’s fears, and the far right gains more support.
And the massive upswing in the far left that swept South America, Europe and Canada and is making inroads into the US is any better? Ones that have created “shadow” fascist governments with Far Left politics? Taking from the wage earners to give to those who do nothing? The Far Left is just as ignorant and implausible as the Far Right.
The idea that greedy corporations are to blame when GREEDY LEFTIST POLITICIANS are just as bad makes the argument of “Far Right” being the problem invalid. You can’t help countries that won’t help themselves, just like individuals. How do we raise up places where everything we try to do is destroyed by the inhabitants? The US government has dumped hundreds of millions of dollars into Africa, and nothing has changed. “Raising up third world countries” has caused the exportation of the majority of the US industrial complex. A company, by definition, is supposed to make money. If you purposely make it hard for them to make a profit in one area while at the same time making it easier to make it in another in the ideal of “improving the lot of those people”, you’re damn right the company is going to leave. Its not greed, its good businesss sense. If you were offered a higher paying job somewhere other than you work now, you’d go, wouldn’t you?
People ARE afraid. They have good reason to be. They are afraid because the USA turns into a police state because of mass LEFTIST ideology, which is causing a swing too far to the other direction. Supporting the Far Left is just a bleak future, one where criminals and dolists have all the power and those that work are little more than slaves. They fear losing what little jobs they have, as Leftists crack down on everything at home. They fear not being able to make ends meet as Leftists try to increase taxes and fear losing what government services are really needed as Rightists slash spending. They fear the increase in crime as welfare spending becomes more important than police spending, and disarming the population becomes more important than that populace being able to defend itself. They fear how the courts and the government erodes the Constitutional rights and makes the rights of a few more important the rights of the many, when the rights of ALL is important. They fear more terrorist attacks as people inanely blather about “getting them employed” when the extremists have the job they want: looting, raping, pillaging, and killing their way through every non-Islamic person they can get to.
Don’t believe me? Look at Venezuela, one of the great bastions of Leftist thinking. Their per capita murder rate is ten times ours. Their poverty and inflation is driving their economy into the toilet. And the solution? Their “president” blames the US, even accusing us of assassination attempts.
Should we not fear Sharia law? Should we just bow down, while our women are forced to be treated as property and livestock, just to prevent violence from Islamists? There are places all over the US that ARE trying to get Sharia law instituted in their communities, a gross violation of the Constitution and federal law.
Have you ever been to the Middle East? I have. The treatment of non-Muslims is barbaric. The treatment of women is barbaric. And the general attitude over there seems to be that if you aren’t a Muslim, you either convert, be enslaved, or get killed. The violence is spreading. They have declared that they WILL try to come here. Are we to sit here and say “no” in diplomacy? That sure worked out great for the French between World War I and World War II, didn’t it?
You’re right, the political mainstream is doing nothing to address the people’s fears. The Right gains support as the Left shows itself incapable of getting the job done. When the Right gains too much support, the swing will happen again in the other direction, as it has already done in the US once. A Constitutional Republic is best run as a happy medium, somewhere between the Left and the Right. But you can’t blame one without blaming the other.
I fear not only the rise of Fascism and the clamps of austerity drive countries further into Depression. And the phobic attitudes that could one day score all Muslims from Europe. I hope I am wrong.
Sorry to hear of your technical difficulties. As always it’s well worth the wait to see new strips. Hope things didn’t totally go south on you there.
Thanks, man. I have a number of calls in to tech support, and have a strange but so far effective workaround going here. I wish it weren’t such a pain to upgrade, especially when your software starts requiring it.
The color scheme in this page…is anyone else seeing shades of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, or is it just me? 😉