War, Foe or Friend?

War has been waged between separate fronts since the very beginning. Nearly every current country has been involved in some war or war-conflict and have made an effort to have ready defenses. It is often debated whether or not war is good or bad, practical or impractical, functional or messy. It seems that history always repeats itself and therefore there are always going to be wars. But while some argue the validity of the statement "war is inevitable" and others say war is evil, I will offer an argument for why war is necessary for our society. It will become obvious that war has many societal functions which are not easily replaced in my following presentation derived from the purposely-hidden Report From Iron Mountain, a distinct unbiased assessment of war and peace and their functions, established by a counsel under Lyndon Johnson in the early 1960's.

A military is needed in order to protect our nation from the threat of attack, as does every nation. The military is an element of war by nature and thus is as inevitable as war itself. But the military has some non-war functions pertaining to society. Outcasts, prisoners, "juvenile-delinquents" and other antisocial persons in our nation are given the opportunity to enlist and therefore find an acceptable role in the society (The Report 41-43). Without a military, the ramifications of letting such antisocial persons stumble and disrupt normal society would not go unnoticed. Imagine what would happen if there was nowhere for violent men to go once the prisons became to crowded. Or the levels of suicide because those with nothing else to live for decide they are no longer needed. The military, and drafts and wars serve the purpose of giving these members of society a place to belong.

Secondly, the military helps dissipate unemployment levels. For nearly every civilization has used armed forces to provide a state-supported area for the "unemployable" (The Report 43). In effect, the military has been the earliest form of any social-welfare program for civilians deprived of the economic or cultural background suitable for employment. Since war is blind to cultural differences among one side's armies, and knowledge and schooling is not necessary to be a soldier, nearly any able-bodied person is quite well suitable for the job. Therefore, those who do not necessarily have the skills or qualifications to work to make a living may easily enlist in a military and draw wages from the State to support himself or his family. Without these military institutions, prone and ready for combat and war, some experts speculate that unemployment levels would dramatically rise by nearly 10-15% (The Report 43-45).

While appreciably morbid, and rarely thought about, another function of war is to eliminate the excess population who would, if not eliminated, contribute too much to over-population, and thus the scarcity of resources. It was been observed that man has the unique tendency toward the organized killing off some of it's own species in order to fortify the survival of the rest. Call it survival of the fittest, or murder, but it is not inhumane because it is a natural tendency (The Report 47-48). Scarcity of resources and over-population has been a plaguing problem in mankind for millenia. In fact, often times war is waged over some resource or section of land on which to expand. But, ironically, another function of war is to control the over-population rates and prosperity of resources such as food, housing, medicine, and even personal attention and individuality. Consider in a purely logical fashion what one would do if farm's soil began to be depleted in the elements necessary for plant growth in a dense field of corn. One may conclude that a logical solution would be to space the corn plants farther apart in the next harvest in order to assure each surviving plant would retrieve adequate nutrients from the soil. This is essentially the same logic placed upon war in mankind, and while it may seem wasteful and immoral, it is in fact useful.

Finally, it can be proven that war provides the "machinery" which motivates human behavior to form social allegiance. In this way, war has made sure the cohesion of social groups exists to establish independent nations. It is essentially a binding force in mankind, providing a common enemy and purpose for peoples of some specific sect, ethnicity, or way of thinking (The Report 48-50, 81). No other force, group or any kind of constructed establishment has been able to successfully achieve this other than war in history (The Report 81).

Works Cited

Lewin, Leonard C. Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace. New York: The Dial Press, 1967.