The first man

Giving war a chance

January 11, 2010  2 comments

Happy new decade, readers! (Or, for those of you who insist that 1990 was in the eighties and 1980 in the seventies, etc, happy new year!) I note that I was remiss last month in failing to be sarcastic about Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which came a week after he sent 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan. The speech has, of course, already attracted some bracing contumely elsewhere (cf WIIIAI on the world as it is), but what caught my eye in particular was Obama’s bizarre thesis on the antiquity of warlike action:

War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man.

Um, surely if he was the first man, there was no one else to have a war with? Or maybe Obama’s paleohistorical argument is that the first man unilaterally declared war on the sabre-toothed tiger? (That must have been a courageous decision, for a lone individual to fight a war against an entire species. “You and whose army?” growled the tigers.) Or maybe when the first man came into the world there was already a first lady, and he declared war on her? Or maybe he just winked into existence, took a disgusted look around, and immediately declared war on himself?

Whatever the hell it means, it is an impressive argument: if the first human being who ever lived was driven to start a war all by himself, what hope for peace can there possibly be from a modern President with so many tempting targets?