Warrior Mythology II

For we must consider that we shall be
as a city upon a hill
--John Winthrop sermon (1630)

When a good time turns around
You must whip it
You will never live it down
Unless you whip it
--Whip It, Devo
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The ever-febrile mind of Kathleen Parker attempts its own mythologizing in today's WaPo:

"A new American archetype, Obama is the anti-macho man, a new-age intellectual who defeated the old-guard warrior [Bush]" (The World Is a Fire Hydrant).

Forgive us while we stand stupefied before the AWOL National Guard warrior king in all his majesty.

So where does warrior idolatry leave us as a peace-loving nation? Our Generals and political leaders have adopted the trappings and mythic evocations of the warrior, and many have interpreted their work as implementing the will of God (Winthrop's City on the Hill). The service publications are now rife with references to the Soldier as a whole man, whose spiritual being is ranked equally as important as his training preparation.

But the same concept of the will of God can be said to animate the Islamic jihadists, Allāhu Akbar. Both sides feel they possess truth, love and divine guidance. This hard-wired conviction of propriety and righteousness all 'round is a formula for nothing but continual death and destruction.

Are we, a scientifically-advanced superpower, so oblivious that we cannot see the implications of our beliefs? In the realm of religion, the march of modernity seems to have has bypassed us. Warriors destroy and kill for the benefit of their society. They die for us, in killing them. However, in our PWOT © the formula has been corrupted.

We are supposedly fighting terrorism, a tool which is being wielded by crazed radical Islamists. Our warriors fight, kill, and sacrifice for us, against the adversary. In reality, however, our warriors have helped establish states that are firmly ensconced as being "Other". This is an inversion of the classic reason to war.

Our military actions and foreign policy have enabled the creation of religious Islamic nations states firmly embedded in the mindset which gave rise to the terrorist threat. Our warriors have rewarded them for their fight. Our fight takes the form of a concession.

The Post-WW II reality was that the Germans and Japanese were democratized and demilitarized because we forced a constitution that strictly dictated the allowable activities of those states. In contrast, the constitutions of Iraq and Afghanistan are not similarly constructed documents. This is a perversion of the utility of the warrior who now simply fights to fight, without gaining benefit for his nation. The benefits of the PWOT © have accrued to the Other.

We are not fighting for our own liberties, but rather for those of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our liberties are secure and separate from the PWOT ©, and only stand to be eroded in this fight.

Why does the U.S. not see the futility of its current warring actions? As Aristotle said in his Metaphysics,

"Perhaps, too, as difficulties are of two kinds, the cause of the present difficulty is not in the facts but in us. For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all."

We do not want to know the truth, for if we did, we would be compelled to alter our course. Being the somewhat scientifically advanced culture we are, we can use our knowledge in the service of warping the facts to justify a non-functional path. We invent theories which allow us to deny or refashion the truths to buoy up nonsensical choices. With the truth obscured, we need not change our behaviors.

Where did we take such a wrong turn, while hiding behind the warrior's shield?

Warrior Mythology

--Jianping Fan (China)

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fighting - till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions - of the world!
--We Are the Champions, Queen
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Warrior Mythology, Pt I:


While "warriorhood" is all the rage among the services, the Congress and the public in general, War is conspicuously absent in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) environment.

Surely a definition of warrior is, "One experienced in war," yet our campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq (after the initial invasion) have been Low Intensity Conflict [LIC] characterized by Counterinsurgency [COIN] operations. LIC and COIN are not warfare, and inconvenient is the fact that there has been no declaration of war. Dahr Jamail points out that we cannot even legally declare war (Afghanistan: Where Empires Go to Die.) We can no longer recognize what war looks like, let alone what constitutes a warrior.

Why the appeal of the warrior image, especially among Christians who claim to be peace loving? That peaceful countries breed warrior societies should discomfort us.

In the 19th century we forced the Native American tribes to abandon their warrior lifestyles. In WW II we fought the consummate warrior castes of the Bushido and Samurai, and the ultimate 20th century warrior, the Nazi SS. Our national policy destroyed three warrior nations by being Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen. We had might and right, and words like warrior were unnecessary.

The warrior is actually a religious construct, rather than a political or military one. He is one of philosopher Mircea Eliade's hierophanies -- an emergence of the sacred (God-hero) into the profane. Often segregated, the warrior was beyond the average citizen in terms of his stoicism, for which he was later rewarded. All warrior people disavowed death, and the warrior would receive a reward in the afterlife for his defense of us against them.

The animation behind the warrior was whipped up by a potent brew of ethnocentrism, xenophobia and afterlife rewards. Joseph Campbell (Myths to Live By) writes, "It is a basic idea of practically every war mythology that the enemy is a monster and that in killing him one is protecting the only truly valuable order of human life on earth, which is that, of course, of one's own people."

In 2009, things aren't that different. We are caught fighting long wars against those deemed "evil," a role previously filled by Communists or any legion of Others.

The Structuralists would see the warrior as a cultural myth signifying the fitness or robustness of a people. For the religionists, the genesis of monotheism is the progenitor of the warrior ethos. God favored the Jews or the Christians, and survival became tied to cooperation between this God and his people.

Forgetting the biblical proscriptions to not kill and turn the other cheek, since the Jews, Christians and Islamists differ little in their core beliefs it is the gravest futility for them to fight behind the banner of religion. Today's warriors are living a prehistoric myth translated through our major religions.

While Christianity is based upon the teachings of Jesus, after Constantine the entire history of the church is one of the sword and the warrior. Christianity, like Islam, was firmly established by warriors favored by God. This is a problem, as a single God cannot favor both sides in a struggle for cultural hegemony.


Tomorrow: Onward Christian Warriors