What Kids Say - When War Is Good

All of the kids I talked to have fairly pacifist parents, and probably most kids echo their parents' politics, at least until they’re old enough to hate their parents and all adults and prove they’re not them by being their opposite, which is still allowing your beliefs to be controlled, but anyway… despite having peaceniks for parents, all of the kids interviewed here came out in favor of war–as long as it’s justified. But that’s what war is. It’s people thinking there’s good reason to send other people to kill and be killed. If I call it war, can I kill my cousin who is a big bully?

I think if you got down to what adults truly think under the rhetoric, I bet they’d be saying the same as their kids: War is bad, but it’s fine when it’s good, which is when it’s necessary, when certain conditions are met. Certain conditions are always met. So there should always be war! I think Neighbor Girl (who is eight) summed up people’s attitude best when she answered that war is good “when you’re fighting the enemy.” It’s setting up certain people as Other, as not connected to us, and vice-versa… that’s what keeps it going. I wonder why human beings are like that.

Wolf is 17, autistic, and evangelical.
Sadie is 9, a cheerleader and a gymnast.
Dora is 12 and stuffs SASE junkmail with tar roof shingles and mails them back to them to cut into company profit
Max is 16 and has created a complicated business model concerning a gaming startup.
Will is 14 and already makes good money. 
Mike is 10 and sums himself up thusly: “I’m weird.”

VICE: When is war good?
Wolf: Never.
Sadie: When you’re really poor.

How so?
Sadie: Never mind. War is never good.

What if the government has commissioned its soldiers to commit genocide, meaning gathering together all the people of a certain color or religion to try to kill them all? Wipe them off the face of the earth.
Sadie: Yeah, then war is good, but you’re not starting it. You’re ending death, if you stop those people committing genocide. It’s good to have war against people who do bad things.

See, the trouble is everybody thinks they’re doing war against people who do bad things. Everybody thinks they’re justified in entering war. They never think they’re starting it.
Wolf: Like Afghanistan and us [America]. It’s good if we sent troops there to help them if they wanted, because they’re poor. It’s good if they want war because they don’t mind dying, and they don’t mind killing people.

So as long as everyone agrees to the rules of engagement – kill and be killed – war is good. As long as there’s an understanding between the players.
Wolf: If it’s their choice to be in a war. If you really want it, then it’s good. So war is never good, but it’s OK to be a soldier if the war already started and you believe in it. Because once it’s started, you can’t really control it.

Sadie: If somebody comes to your town to war and you don’t fight it, then you’re all going to die.

So war is good when you’re defending your own borders.
Wolf and Sadie: Yeah.

What about when another country is invaded, but they don’t have the weapons or the manpower to defend themselves. Should we go help them in their war?
Sadie: We should help other countries.

So war is good when you’re defending your own country or another country.
Wolf and Sadie: Yeah.

So war is always good. Because armies always feel they’re defending themselves, their interests, or another country or their interests.
Wolf and Sadie: Yeah.

In four minutes you guys went from saying “never” to “always.”
[silence]

Warmongers!
Sadie: But it’s just not good to start wars.

Wars never start. There’s always wars. They never stop, they never start… they just pause sometimes, then pick up again.
Sadie: They do start if someone comes and attacks you!

But they thought you started it a long time ago, and they just took a while to respond. They thought you started it by hogging the oil or hogging trade routes or they’re poor because of you or they’re mad that you made a colony out of them once or that your consumerist ways corrupted their youth. And you thought they forgot, but they remembered. Nobody thinks they’re starting a war. They think they’re ending war by warring.
Dora: War is never good. Never. America is always starting wars in other countries.

So if war is always bad, then it must be bad for these other countries to defend themselves, because that is engaging in war. They should just let themselves be taken, no? Then there would be no war.
Dora: It shouldn’t be a problem in the first place. America is screwing everything up, mindlessly killing. Yeah.

Max: These days, I think it’s good pretty much anytime. The concept of war used to irk me, but now I think of it as population control. It does suck that we spend so much money on killing people. I’m a fan of eugenics. I’m not a huge fan of castration, but if I could find a virus that would non-violently render people infertile, that would be awesome. In third world countries, they’re going to have a horrible life anyway, so… I don’t know… my ADD drugs haven’t kicked in yet.

Will: War is good when it’s a card game.

When is actual war, killing people, justified?
Will: Killing people is never justified, but when it’s war, it’s just a job; it’s war. It’s not good; it’s necessary. It would be better if people could work together and solve the world’s problems.

Mike: If you don’t like war, go die in a hole.

Me? 
Mike: Yeah -- killing each other does solve all the world’s problems. Well, it does solve overpopulation, and that’s the one real problem.

Previously - What Kids Say Was the Happiest Moment of Their Lives