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Eight Years Later, Still No Name For This War
By JAMES G. WILES, For The Bulletin
Book 13, Verse 3 of the Analects of Confucius, written before 221 B.C., relates that one day, a disciple came to Confucius and said, “The ruler of Wei is waiting for you, in order with you to administer the government. What will you consider the first thing to be done?”
Master K’ung, as his disciples called him, replied, “(W)hat is necessary is to rectify names.” The disciple expressed astonishment. Confucius explained.
“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties … do not flourish. When proprieties … do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.”
After the Jesuit missionaries in China, including the fabulous Fr. Matteo Ricci, translated the Confucian classics into Latin in the 16th century, the Analects had a considerable vogue. It can be seen, however, that they are out of favor now. We would do well to pick them up again.
Our own public discourse shows a grave need for Confucius’ rectification of names.
To take only one example: what to call this war? Our inability to settle on a name for this low-intensity struggle in which we’ve been engaged for eight years reflects our inability to agree on causes and effects. The Bushes christened it the War on Terror. The Obama administration has disavowed that.
This has now created a glaring problem for the Archangel Barack now that an American jihadi has struck and killed 13 Americans, the first successful attack on our soil since 9/11. Instead of clarity, confusion reigns.
At the moment, progressives, liberals and their media allies are asking, in effect, “Who ya’ gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”
Such emotionally charged confusion over the name of a war is not something new in our politics. Americans have argued for over a century about what to call the conflict of 1861-65 in which 600,000 American soldiers died.
Calling it the Civil War is highly inaccurate. The South was not trying to take over the federal government. They were trying to form a new nation out of part of the national territory of the United States. Northerners, including the official U.S. Army history, called it the War of the Rebellion. Today, Confederate descendants like to call it the War for Southern Independence.
Perhaps Confucius would say that calling it the War Between the States perhaps best captures the truth of things.
I never liked the name War on Terror because it was inexact. Terror, after all, is a tactic in an armed struggle – such as both sides’ terror bombing of cities in World War II – but directed against civilian rather than military targets. The latter is properly characterized as guerrilla warfare. But this has been both a “little war” against irregulars such as al Qaeda and the Talibs and a conventional war against a nation-state (Saddam’s Iraq).
The fighting along the borders of Islam across Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia is irregular; but Iran would be a conventional war.
Of course, in some struggles, such as the IRA’s with Great Britain, both tactics are present. But the Troubles were a war of national liberation or, if you prefer, an insurgency. “Brits Out!” says it all.
Can we coin a name for the current struggle which ties it all together?
In these columns, I’ve suggested the names War with Jihad or, on another occasion, the War of September 11. I suspect that the enemy would be content with the former and proud of the latter because it commemorates their greatest victory. We, of course, view 9/11 as the casus belli.
Today’s jihadis want to drive the infidels out of the Muslim lands, including lands which used to be Muslim but which have been retaken by Hindus or Christians, and create a unified, world caliphate. Thus, it is an armed struggle by unlawful combatants to liberate Muslim territory and, in some places, to expand it.
This objective is in direct contrast to, say, that of anarchism, which employed similar tactics, including suicide attacks.
From the late 19th century into the early 1900’s, anarchists around the world engaged in a campaign of bombing and assassination intended to bring down the then-current world order of monarchies, unregulated capitalism and colonial empires. Along the way, they bombed J.P. Morgan’s headquarters on Wall Street and killed several heads of state, including U.S. President William McKinley. A Serbian anarchist created the incident which sparked the First World War – a conflagration which itself has several names.
To me, War of September 11 savored some of the highly descriptive, or deliberately non-descriptive, names for some of England’s wars: the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession and, my favorite, the War of Jenkins’ Ear. It states the cause of the war.
The 100 Years War tells only its duration and not what it was about. Ditto for the 30 Years War, a religious conflict so terrible (at least one third of the population of Germany died) that, beginning with Grotius, it birthed our modern corpus of the law of war, including the severe condemnations of mercenaries and unlawful combatants. The names for World War I and II state the scope of the conflict.
Yet, the jihadis could object – correctly – that my preferred name is inaccurate because Osama bin Laden declared war on and launched successful attacks against the United States years before 2001. The Democratic Administration of the time chose, unwisely, to ignore the reality of things. And, just as Confucius predicted, affairs before 9/11 were not carried on to success.
Question for America’s president: if we’re not at war with something, such as an ideology like anarchism or pre-1917 Communism, rather than a nation-state, what the hell happened last week at Fort Hood? Why did the killer view his actions as an extension of what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Phillipines, Thailand, Yemen, Somalia, Chechnya and elsewhere? How about: an act of sabotage and Major Hassan is a saboteur or, since he’s an American and a soldier, a traitor.
See how everything falls into place, Sir, once the names of things are rectified?
And so, as the argument rages over what to call the attack at Ft. Hood and how to characterize its perpetrator, the wisdom of Master K’ung endures. Until our language for this struggle is in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success nor proper punishments awarded.
Confucius, still right on after all these years.
James Wiles is a Philadelphia lawyer. He can be reached at jwiles@thebulletin.us.
Master K’ung, as his disciples called him, replied, “(W)hat is necessary is to rectify names.” The disciple expressed astonishment. Confucius explained.
“If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. When affairs cannot be carried on to success, proprieties … do not flourish. When proprieties … do not flourish, punishments will not be properly awarded. When punishments are not properly awarded, the people do not know how to move hand or foot.”
After the Jesuit missionaries in China, including the fabulous Fr. Matteo Ricci, translated the Confucian classics into Latin in the 16th century, the Analects had a considerable vogue. It can be seen, however, that they are out of favor now. We would do well to pick them up again.
Our own public discourse shows a grave need for Confucius’ rectification of names.
To take only one example: what to call this war? Our inability to settle on a name for this low-intensity struggle in which we’ve been engaged for eight years reflects our inability to agree on causes and effects. The Bushes christened it the War on Terror. The Obama administration has disavowed that.
This has now created a glaring problem for the Archangel Barack now that an American jihadi has struck and killed 13 Americans, the first successful attack on our soil since 9/11. Instead of clarity, confusion reigns.
At the moment, progressives, liberals and their media allies are asking, in effect, “Who ya’ gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?”
Such emotionally charged confusion over the name of a war is not something new in our politics. Americans have argued for over a century about what to call the conflict of 1861-65 in which 600,000 American soldiers died.
Calling it the Civil War is highly inaccurate. The South was not trying to take over the federal government. They were trying to form a new nation out of part of the national territory of the United States. Northerners, including the official U.S. Army history, called it the War of the Rebellion. Today, Confederate descendants like to call it the War for Southern Independence.
Perhaps Confucius would say that calling it the War Between the States perhaps best captures the truth of things.
I never liked the name War on Terror because it was inexact. Terror, after all, is a tactic in an armed struggle – such as both sides’ terror bombing of cities in World War II – but directed against civilian rather than military targets. The latter is properly characterized as guerrilla warfare. But this has been both a “little war” against irregulars such as al Qaeda and the Talibs and a conventional war against a nation-state (Saddam’s Iraq).
The fighting along the borders of Islam across Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia is irregular; but Iran would be a conventional war.
Of course, in some struggles, such as the IRA’s with Great Britain, both tactics are present. But the Troubles were a war of national liberation or, if you prefer, an insurgency. “Brits Out!” says it all.
Can we coin a name for the current struggle which ties it all together?
In these columns, I’ve suggested the names War with Jihad or, on another occasion, the War of September 11. I suspect that the enemy would be content with the former and proud of the latter because it commemorates their greatest victory. We, of course, view 9/11 as the casus belli.
Today’s jihadis want to drive the infidels out of the Muslim lands, including lands which used to be Muslim but which have been retaken by Hindus or Christians, and create a unified, world caliphate. Thus, it is an armed struggle by unlawful combatants to liberate Muslim territory and, in some places, to expand it.
This objective is in direct contrast to, say, that of anarchism, which employed similar tactics, including suicide attacks.
From the late 19th century into the early 1900’s, anarchists around the world engaged in a campaign of bombing and assassination intended to bring down the then-current world order of monarchies, unregulated capitalism and colonial empires. Along the way, they bombed J.P. Morgan’s headquarters on Wall Street and killed several heads of state, including U.S. President William McKinley. A Serbian anarchist created the incident which sparked the First World War – a conflagration which itself has several names.
To me, War of September 11 savored some of the highly descriptive, or deliberately non-descriptive, names for some of England’s wars: the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession and, my favorite, the War of Jenkins’ Ear. It states the cause of the war.
The 100 Years War tells only its duration and not what it was about. Ditto for the 30 Years War, a religious conflict so terrible (at least one third of the population of Germany died) that, beginning with Grotius, it birthed our modern corpus of the law of war, including the severe condemnations of mercenaries and unlawful combatants. The names for World War I and II state the scope of the conflict.
Yet, the jihadis could object – correctly – that my preferred name is inaccurate because Osama bin Laden declared war on and launched successful attacks against the United States years before 2001. The Democratic Administration of the time chose, unwisely, to ignore the reality of things. And, just as Confucius predicted, affairs before 9/11 were not carried on to success.
Question for America’s president: if we’re not at war with something, such as an ideology like anarchism or pre-1917 Communism, rather than a nation-state, what the hell happened last week at Fort Hood? Why did the killer view his actions as an extension of what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Phillipines, Thailand, Yemen, Somalia, Chechnya and elsewhere? How about: an act of sabotage and Major Hassan is a saboteur or, since he’s an American and a soldier, a traitor.
See how everything falls into place, Sir, once the names of things are rectified?
And so, as the argument rages over what to call the attack at Ft. Hood and how to characterize its perpetrator, the wisdom of Master K’ung endures. Until our language for this struggle is in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success nor proper punishments awarded.
Confucius, still right on after all these years.
James Wiles is a Philadelphia lawyer. He can be reached at jwiles@thebulletin.us.
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