The Way of the Warrior

A couple of weeks ago, the war historian Max Hastings, whom I would call excellent if not eminent, had an interesting piece in the Daily Mail* on the thirtieth anniversary of the Falklands “War,” that near-comic opera dispute—near-comic opera if you can get past the thousands of casualties, and 900 dead—between Great Britain and Argentina over the possession of a few rocks in the South Atlantic. Hastings accompanied the British forces to the Falklands as a war correspondent, and found it “the foremost adventure of my life.” Looking back on that great adventure, Hastings has this to say:

What follows is a fascinating mish-mash of fantasy and reality, the knowledge that the Falklands are absolutely worthless to Great Britain, which has wasted billions of pounds “defending” 3,000 people who live 8,000 miles away, competing with a helpless and hopeless infatuation with Britain’s “warrior heritage,” bemoaning cuts in “defense” spending, as if wars like the Falklands have anything to do with defense, as if Britain needs to defend herself against anyone these days.

Even while Hastings reviles those good-for-nothing Falklanders, who have gotten fat off of the British taxpayer, he is amazed at those crazy Argentineans, and their “sometimes hysterical president, Cristina Kirchner”† (who indeed sometimes comes across as a Latino Margaret Thatcher), who actually think that the islands belong to them. Britannia rules the waves, motherfucker! Britannia rules the waves!

I’ve read a number of Hastings books on World War II, and I’m amazed at his even-handedness. Over and over again, he tells us that the real battles in Europe were fought, and won, by the Soviets, not the British, who were defeated over and over again by Hitler’s armies, until massive aid from the U.S. gave the Brits the massive advantage in matériel they required to have even a hope of defeating the Germans.‡ Yet he can’t get it out of his head that war is “glory,” and glory is essential to any “great” nation. For Hastings, Britain isn’t Britain if it isn’t killing people in faraway nations for no good reason. If only it wasn’t so damned expensive these days!

There’s a moral here, of course, because we have our own “warrior President.” Barack may not be quite as obnoxious as Maggie (to some, at least), but he has a lot more money. The appeal of “glory” seems unfortunately rooted deep in the viscera of humanity, which means that the U.S. will likely be killing people in faraway countries for no good reason for a long time to come. Because it seems we humans can endure anything but boredom.

Afterwords
The ironies of the Falklands war are beyond counting. Thatcher invited the war by cutting defense massively, withdrawing ships from the Falklands and leaving them undefended, despite being warned repeatedly that the right-wing, “patriotic” Argentine government would only be too happy to grab a little glory at Britain’s expense. When the Argentineans invaded, the Reagan Administration, obsequious as always to right-wing Latin American governments, begged Maggie to “compromise.” But the once penny-pinching Maggie refused, and, while slashing social spending (much of which deserved to be slashed), she somehow found spare billions to engage in useless, long-distance slaughter, winning the “right” to spend billions more to justify the billions she had already spent. But, as Hastings points out, success is everything in war. Everyone sees the glory, no one sees the costs. Even he can’t, because the “point” of his article is that Britain isn’t wasting enough money on “defense.” Not nearly enough!

The Argentineans proved to be as stupid as the British. The entire country rallied to the cause of the fascist thugs who ruled the country, and still today the nation worships at the sacred idol erected by the murderous colonels. My own first choice would be to abandon the islands to the sea gulls and land crabs, but if they have to be “ruled,” let the nearer knave do the job.