The nature of war

Last week I concluded my column with the words, "Death is blind." After Tuesday's devastating terrorist attack on the United States I am inclined to add, "Hatred is blind."

A Nineteenth-Century French physiologist, Claud Bernard, saw it differently, saying, "Hatred is the most clear-sighted, next to genius."

The calculated precision of four separate plane hijackings and of the deadly destruction they wrought certainly supports his point. Someone must be awfully clever to plan such a horrific act, and by now many of us have probably heard the names of some primary suspects. It was devised by a supreme intelligence, which hate has turned callous and irreverent toward life itself. The agents of this massacre, the hijackers, put no value even in their own lives compared with the glory and immortality they expected to gain from some imagined higher calling.

Hatred is blind to itself, the thing which motivates its energy and ingenuity.

What does this have to do with the two dragonflies I saw battling over the quiet bay one August day, and their descent and unexpected fate, inspiring me to write that death is blind? Probably more than most of us would imagine.

We humans like to see ourselves as clearly separated from all other creatures. A friend petting my cat this morning remembered his mother saying animals won't be in heaven because they don't have souls. This is a common religious hubris, an effort to dignify ourselves above the world around us.

If war erupts as a consequence of this week's events, many in North America and abroad will justify it as an assertion of our societal values, like freedom and democracy. President George Bush has already called for revenge, and to do otherwise would be highly controversial. Human nature demands it. Most of America demands it.

But revenge, as an act of supreme intelligence, is little removed from an act of terrorism which brings suffering and grief upon so many people. Both are motivated by the same natural drive to protect that which is ours, the same instinct that drives two dragonflies to battle over a patch of water. This very drive against perceived threats, when pushed to extremity, is what motivates the despot, or a mother wolf who kills her cub, or a deranged spouse who commits murder and suicide.

The nations will cry out that a swift, brutal counterattack is justified. But any act of hatred is justifiable to the perpetrator. This is natural. There is nothing unusual or alien about self-justification. Our ancestors have been doing it since they had minds of enough consequence to gather a force of will.

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