Our Country, Right or Wrong

Our country, right or wrong
November 13, 2002

Mark Twain (1835-1910), the US author and humorist, once described war as “a wanton waste of projectiles,” and he nurtured a strong disdain for anyone who suggested that patriotism was best displayed through enthusiastic support for military adventures abroad.
He argued that the phrase “our country, right or wrong, was an insult to the nation.”

As the author of many books, like The Innocents Abroad, Tom sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (his real name) also described how Americans were frequently goaded into war by their leaders, recalling that statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and thus he will convince himself that the war is just and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

The following article was published after his death in 1910 and it succinctly depicts almost a century later how the impending US attack on Iraq in the new millenium is promoted and justified by a party of God (the GOP) in the name of a just war, as many Christian churchmen historically sought to lessen the horrors of war by means of Just War theory for centuries.

Given the assumption of a right to win, the destruction of the property and the lives of innocent enemy civilians become to weigh nothing more than the collateral damage, that is, the US never intends to harm civilians: therefore, any actual harming of civilians is unintentional, accidental, and morally forgivable.
As long as one’s heart is pure and one’s goal is democratic, one may do literally anything to defeat a proclaimed enemy society, such as Iraq.

Glory, glory, hallelujah, untruths go marching on……

The Mysterious Stranger (1910)
Author: Mark Twain

Victory of the Loud Little Handful

The loud little handful—as usual—will shout for the war.
The pulpit will—warily and cautiously—object…at first.
The great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, “It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.”

Then the handful will shout louder.
A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded, but it will not last long; those others will out-shout them, and presently the antiwar audiences will thin out and lose popularity.

Before long, you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men.

Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them, and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.