Fighting for Life or Fighting for Ashes?

“An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground in order to be king over the ashes…” 

It’s been about three years since October 7th. As I sit here reflecting over all that has transpired, and the reasons for the horrors of war, I’m reminded of a story that takes place during the American Civil War…

The year is 1865, and the forces under Confederate General Robert E. Lee have found themselves overly outmatched, outgunned, and outsupplied by the American forces led by Gen. Ulyses S. Grant. Strategic points throughout the southern states by this time have been either occupied or destroyed by American troops, including the burning of Atlanta by Gen. Sherman, the ravaging of the agricultural breadbasket of Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, the taking of multiple railroad and river supply routes, and the loss of the port city of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River that leads to the Gulf of Mexico.

During this time, an artillery officer approached Gen. Lee and made a suggestion to him: to disband the army and fight a non-conventional war against the US Army, while entrenching artillery in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia–a nearly impregnable position in the high ground. Indeed, this may have been a great temptation for Lee. However, his reply to the officer was simple:

“Suppose I should take your suggestion and order the army to disperse and make their way to their homes. The men would have no rations and they would be under no discipline. They are already demoralized by four years of war. They would have to plunder and rob to procure subsistence. The country would be full of lawless bands in every part, and a state of society would ensue from which it would take the country years to recover. Then the enemy’s cavalry would pursue in the hopes of catching the principle officers, and wherever they went there would be fresh rapine and destruction.”

As per one analysis,

“Lee believed in the the restraints of conventional warfare. The horrors of war, he thought, were already bad enough; there was no need to make them worse. And for him, guerilla war offered only anarchy and an even more terrible spilling of violence into the lives of civilians…It meant more destruction of farms and cities, more suffering for innocent noncombatants, more weeping women, more suffering children. By all civilized standards, Lee believed a true leader would swallow his pride and say no to a partisan campaign. Surrender is hateful, but a leader must count the cost not just to himself but to his people.” (Robert E Lee on Leadership: Executive Lessons in Character, Courage and Vision. H.W. Crocker III.)

Not long after this, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, essentially ending the American Civil War. Afterwards, though there were hard times and terribly difficult issues to overcome with the Reconstruction era, Jim Crow laws, segregation between black and white and the ingrained racism of the country, nevertheless Lee’s surrender at Appomattox turned a new page in America towards healing and repairing the wounds of war, slavery, and racism, and bringing about a stronger unity to the country.

Why do I bring this up?

Because I want to mention something it seems that the much of the world has forgotten in our recent modern history:

The strategic value of surrender at the right time. 

I would like to ask, what if Lee had not surrendered? What if he decided to indulge in the idea of guerilla warfare that one of his own officers was so ready to embrace? What would the southern states–as sell as even the rest of America–look like today? It’s not to hard envision a country broken by a long guerilla war, more terrible bloodshed, the horrific abuse of racism and slavery multiplied under the pressure of a southern society broken by years of chaos and war. Even for the northern states, there would be the draining of economic resources, a never-ending draft perhaps, and a country that not only doesn’t make an impact internationally with respectable standing, but perhaps to the rest of the world, a dirty pariah region, broken down by it’s own internal fighting and hatred, with a broken infrastructure, if there could be even any infrastructure left. In other words, we’d see a country broken by a fight “for the ashes.”

For sure, it is humiliating for any leader of country or army to come to terms with the idea of surrender after so much effort to the fight… yet… by most moral schools of thought, justifiable war happens for the sake of protecting one’s country, it’s rights, it’s citizens, it’s sovereignty as a nation in the world. In a word, a fight for it’s “life.” Yet, when “the solution (of war) becomes worse than the problem,” this is when surrender becomes a strategic imperative.

Again, as I come back to October 7th, and I look at the carnage of Gaza, for sure we could say that surrender was never an imperative for Hamas. And as we look upon so much of Gaza being reduced to ash, it would only be far to say now that Hamas is nothing more than a group fighting for ashes, sadly enough. As Golda Meir said it once, “We will have peace when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” Despite what some may say, this is not a call for the killing of Arab children in Gaza, but to say that there comes a time when for the preservation of life, when the enemy doesn’t surrender, it will continue down a path that makes things for themselves and their people much much worse. This is what I believe we are seeing in Gaza today.

The hypothetical scenario of a lawless, economically broken country, with a sad loss of life to the civilian population and an embittered life to those who survive, which I applied to the scenario of a general of a failed, slave-based Confederate country who preferred a guerilla war over surrender fits perfectly to what we see in Gaza today.

The very fact that Hamas does not instantly surrender shows how evil they truly are–to the point of stealing the food that we have tried to give as aid to civilians, and forcing civilians to stay put when we air drop warnings to them that we are coming to fight, and that hence they must evacuate.

Another quote from Golda Meir is potent: “When peace comes, we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.” As they continue to fight, we must continue to defend ourselves and maintain our own security, even in such a chaotic situation as what we see in Gaza.

Israel has never been a country of genocide, if we were, the people of Gaza and the cities under the jurisdiction of the PLO would be long gone by now. Yet when our enemies rise against us, even while using civilians, women, children, mosques and hospitals as human shields, we must defend ourselves.

As I think back about the wars of the twentieth century, it is wild to me to come to an epiphany: In World War II, after the alleged death of Hitler and the surrounding of American, British, and Russian forces, Nazi Germany surrendered to the allied forces–for the sake of rebuilding their country and the preservation of the lives of its civilian population.

Under this premise, and if we were to draw a comparison, one might come to the conclusion that Nazi Germany valued life more than Hamas does.

That’s a dark, scary thought. Nevertheless, for my part I believe it to be true.