[lit-ideas] Re: Problem solving and war

Quoting Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> Maybe one of the reasons I appreciate JL more than most of the others on
> Lit-Ideas is that he values the meanings of words.  If we use a word we
> ought to intend something by it and our intention ought to grow out of its
> meaning, its tradition, how it has been used in the past.    If we don?t
> choose to rely upon common or at least previous usage, then we must define
> our terms.    A philosopher may say "whenever I use the term dasein I mean X
> by it."  Or if one is Martin Heidegger, he may leave the term poorly defined
> so that all you know about it is that whatever it means to Heidegger that
> meaning isn?t to be found in a dictionary.

--------------> In fairness to philsophers, conceptual/transcendental analysis
is not a matter of looking things up in a dictionary, or any other text deemed
by some individual or community to have such revelatory powers of truth and
definition. 

Walter O
MUN





> 
> Let?s return to the circumstances that set me off, the end of the movie
> _Anzio_.  Edward Dmytryk has Robert Mitchum, his war correspondent utter
> this saw to a Major General:  ?Wars never solve anything.  History tells us
> that.?   He uses the word ?solve? not in a philosophical sense but in a
> common sense ? at least I saw no hint that he was intending this word to be
> taken in some new and unusual fashion.  So what does ?solve? mean?
> 
> The following is from the on-line American Heritage dictionary:
> 
> solve  (slv, sôlv)
> v. solved, solv·ing, solves 
> v.tr.
> 1. To find a solution to.
> 2. To work out a correct solution to (a problem).
> v.intr.
> To solve an equation: Insert the values of the constants and solve for x.
> ________________________________________
> [Middle English solven, to loosen, from Latin solvere; see leu- in
> Indo-European roots.]
> ________________________________________
> solver n.
> Synonyms: solve, decipher, resolve, unravel
> These verbs mean to clear up or explain something puzzling or
> unintelligible: solve a riddle; can't decipher your handwriting; resolve a
> problem; unravel a mystery.
> 
> So if these are the things ?solve? might mean, let us look for the ?problem?
> that some war-starters expect to ?solve.?   Eric, it seems to me goes off in
> the wrong direction.  He looks for a hidden quibble held or entertained by
> ?the losers of a war.?    Losers and winners don?t seem to evolve from the
> need to solve something.  The nation with the problem, the problem requiring
> solution, the ?war-starter? is where we must look, it seems to me.  Who but
> the war-starter would have the ?problem? that requires a ?solution??  I
> suppose both nations could have a ?problem? and start a given war
> simultaneously, but I doubt it would help to explore that possibility.
> Let?s just take Germany.  The movie was about a war the German?s started and
> Eric seems happy to consider that but he doesn?t stay with the right words.
> He moves off to ?position.?    How he gets from ?war never solves anything?
> to a ?position? mystifies me.  It is a veritable problem requiring a
> solution, but Eric?s note doesn?t provide it ? although he seems to think
> that it does.  
> 
> [If it does, Eric, I missed it.  Move more slowly from the definition of the
> key terms ?solve? and ?problem? to your word ?position? so I can follow the
> bouncing ball.]  
> 
> I have been reading the _On the Origins of War, and the Preservation of
> Peace_ by Donald Kagan.  On page 8 he quotes Thucydides to say that people
> go to war out of ?honor, fear, and interest.?   Kagan, an expert in such
> matters, thinks Thucydides is right ? well he doesn?t exactly say ?right.?
> He says, ?I have found that trio of motives most illuminating in
> understanding the origins of wars throughout history and will refer to them
> frequently in this work.?   Fair enough, and he does refer to these terms.
> In World War One for example, he says all the nations feared something.
> Germany feared a two front war.  It feared that France and Russia might get
> together; so if they could just wipe out one front before the other got
> started they would have just a one-front war.  Otherwise, they thought,
> Germany was doomed.  I can understand ?fear? quite well as a motive for the
> various participants in WWI.  I?ve read several books and almost all the
> participants were afraid of something.  The only possible exception was the
> U.S.  They entered late because their parent nation England asked for help.
> But even the U.S. could be said to ?fear? something when they formulated the
> sentence, ?unless we enter the war, Britain may lose.?  
> 
> So there we have a very brief discussion of the motives for a major war and
> all of them fit more or less well under the heading ?fear.?  None of them
> fit under a "problem" requiring a "solution."
> 
> If we move down the line from the "origins" of wars to the tactical
> ?problems? related to defeating the enemy in battle, then yes, we can say
> the enemies approach represents a ?problem? requiring a tactical ?solution.?
> More than that it requires engaging the enemy and defeated him.  If the
> leadership selected the right ?solution? then the ?problem? presented by the
> enemy would have been solved.  More importantly he would have been defeated,
> but I won?t quibble.  ?Problem? and ?solution? do mean something in regard
> to tactics.    But they don?t mean anything that I can see in regard to the
> origins of wars.
> 
> Let?s take another war discussed here recently: The Falklands War.   The
> Falklands was claimed by the British during their empire days.    The people
> who live there are British and they don?t want to be free of the British
> Empire.  They don't want to belong to Argentina.  The Falklands are also
> claimed by Argentina and one day Argentina occupied the Falklands.  What was
> their motive?  Was it a problem they wanted solved?  No, it rankled that the
> British claimed this Island when they thought by virtue of proximity or
> something else (Perhaps JL can provide a better definition).  It ought to
> belong to Argentina.  
> 
> The British didn?t really need the Falklands but could it afford to abandon
> the 1800 people living there?   British honour was at stake and so they set
> sail.  Once they got there then tactics became important.  The land, the
> disposition of the Argentines, the forces at the disposal of the British,
> the three groups made of by the Martial Races the Scots, Welsh and Gurkhas
> were set into motion in accordance with the tactical solution developed by
> the British leadership.  The Battle (War) was fought.  The British won.  The
> Argentines lost.  The 1800 Falkland Islanders were happy. 
> 
> Eric moves on to the matter of handling conflict, and I strained to relate
> this back to ?problems? and ?solutions? and couldn?t manage to arrive there.
> So while I couldn?t arrive there, I can go back to the end of Anzio and
> listen once again to  ?wars never solve anything.  History teaches us that.?
> No, no, no, Dmytryk!  That?s utter nonsense.  
> 
> Lawrence Helm
> San Jacinto
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> On Behalf Of Eric Dean
> Sent: Saturday, January 26, 2008 7:13 AM
> To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [lit-ideas] The things war never solves
> 
> Lawrence Helm defies anyone to say that wars never *decide* anything, by
> contrast with the mulishly repeated nonsense that "war never solves
> anything", as he characterizes the phrase.
> 
> I don't understand why Lawrence finds that phrase so nonsensical.  The
> phrase, it seems to me, means that the losers in a war generally do not take
> the loss as the reason to give up the position they had previously taken.
> 
> I think that there's a hidden quibble about the meaning of 'taking a
> position' at play here.  Generally the losers of a war can no longer occupy
> the position they previously occupied in the sense of having political
> control over a geographic space -- Germany no longer occupied France at the
> end of World War II, for example.  
> 
> But die-hard Nazis did not give up the 'position' (i.e. the idea) that
> Germany *should* occupy France.  
> 
> That's the sense in which war never solves anything, as I understand the
> phrase.  The disputes that lead to war do not go away just because someone
> wins the war and someone loses.  All that happens is that the winner has a
> greater chance of forcing the loser to act like he or she has accepted the
> winner's views than he or she had before.  Of course the loser might come to
> resent the domination...
> 
> And if one understands 'decide' in the same sense as I'm suggesting one
> might understand 'solves', then I would be happy to say that wars never
> decide anything, other than who happens to have won that war that time.
> 
> One of the things we parents try to teach our children is how to handle
> their conflicts without physical fighting, because the physical fight
> doesn't really settle what's at issue in a conflict -- unless all that's at
> issue is whether Mike or Sue gets to eat the last piece of pie...  And while
> Mike might get the piece of pie away from Sue by pushing her aside, Sue
> might also look for a way to get her own back later, so even that physical
> conflict that might be said to decide the question of who gets a particular
> physical thing at a particular time does not decide the issue between Mike
> and Sue for all time.
> 
> Parents don't succeed in eradicating physical conflict between their kids. 
> No more should we expect that arguments against war are going to eradicate
> violent conflict between large groups of adults.  But neither of those
> points means we should abandon the effort to reduce the frequency of violent
> conflict.  One of the techniques in reducing such conflict is to remind
> conscious adult human beings that physical conflict does not resolve
> non-physical sources of conflict.  That's every bit as true and practical a
> bit of insight as is the notion that the aggressors in our midst aren't
> going to stop because we wish they would.
> 
> Conflict will always be with us.  It can actually be constructive and
> healthy -- otherwise there wouldn't even be the phrase 'healthy debate'. 
> The real question is how we handle conflict, what we do with it, not whether
> it exists.  Physical conflict is destructive -- things get destroyed, people
> get wounded, maimed and killed.  Is it really such a naive and foolish thing
> to look for alternatives for handling conflict that do not result in
> physical destruction?  Doing so needn't mean we abandon the capacity to
> defend ourselves, nor that we inherently reject any argument for war.  It
> only means that we really do try to find alternatives before firing the
> first shot.
> 
> Regards to all,
> Eric Dean
> Washington DC
> 
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