Is War a male phenomenon? by Joseph Racioppi

Any student of history is forced to study war. It appears war is part of the human condition. It must be, since mankind partakes in it so often. I say mankind because I always thought it was obvious that war was a male phenomenon.

Of course, there were exceptions to the rule; just look at this website titled: Woman as Warriors in History. And I am aware there are several examples of woman leaders who sent troops into battle. Queen Boadicea led the Iceni against the Romans and inflicted serious damage before she was defeated; Catherine the Great is another example, as is Margaret Thatcher in more modern times.

Still, most of the combatants in the wars throughout history were men. I think there is a good argument to make that testosterone is the cause of much of the conflict in the world. Boys are more aggressive and competitive and physically stronger than woman. Please don't give me examples of how some women can do the same things as men. (Forget football, women can't even play professional baseball.) But that's not the issue here.

Freud said civilization is controlling man's aggressiveness. I agree, but are we really civilized? Look at the 20th century. Over nine million (mostly men) were killed in World War I, also known as the "Great War" (now there's an oxymoron). Nine million is just the number of dead. Millions more were wounded and maimed.

And what did WWI accomplish? Does any serious historian really believe the US entered WWI to: "make the world safe for democracy"? Considering that England, France and Belgium were colonial powers, this was an absurd claim. World War I certainly wasn't the "War to end all wars" since they did it all over again twenty one years later. Only this time, the death toll was about fifty million.

Bertrand Russell, the great British mathematician/philosopher, wrote about the subject of war in his "Principles of Social Reconstruction" (1916). He said: "The ultimate fact from which war results is the fact that a large proportion of mankind have an impulse to conflict rather than harmony". He also admitted that perhaps there was no adequate solution the problem. Russell was vilified and briefly jailed for his anti-war views.

Can war be summarized as boys playing with toys, i.e. guns, tanks, ships and airplanes? Niall Ferguson, in his book "The Pity of War" theorizes that the soldiers rather enjoyed the experience (he was writing about WWI). Would there be less war if the heads of state were mostly women? Gerry Spence, the great trial lawyer, said in his book "From Freedom to Slavery":

..."the world, suffering through its tragic history of war, genocide, starvation, ignorance, and misery, has been under the nearly exclusive domination of men from the onset of civilization. It would be a risk-free experiment were women to take over the sole leadership of the world for the next ten thousand years, considering the miserable record men have established as leaders throughout our dismal history."

The Iraq war claimed another two New Jerseyans this week. Here is a list of New Jersey war dead with pictures. Ironically, right near the top is a photo of a woman killed in action.

After September 11th, most of the country wanted to kick some ass. It didn't even matter whose ass (as evidenced by the near unanimous support of the Iraq invasion). We had to do something, right?

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark
And whistled early with the lark

In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumps and lice and lack of rum
He put a bullet through his brain
No one spoke of him again

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go

Suicide in the Trenches, by S. Sassoon