Skepticism, Cynicism, and Just Wars

     Our Near East wars raise in me an old, persistent thought; it  gnaws at me anew. Those of us born immediately after the Second War–“Baby Boomers”–never knew a war that would have shown us with immediacy and conviction that there are wars both moral and necessary. This is so even given the rightness of having gone after Osama bin Laden and getting him.  And yet we’ve lived in an America at war, if we consider Vietnam a starting point, about half the time we’ve been alive. 

     Until the Towers went down, arguably, we did not participate in what we could call a Just War. Even the rightness of the efforts to stop Al Qaeda and ISIS seem for many a shadow only and sullied by our overtly ill-conceived war in Iraq and in endless-Afghanistan. And yet I’m convinced the war to stop these groups is just.
    
     The Southeast Asian War, the consensus about it that so profoundly helped to shape my generation’s thinking, is for many a deeply cynical one. I deeply appreciate and admire thoughtful, healthy skepticism, and yet I wonder if many in my generation readily enough distinguish between skepticism and cynicism. I hope most of us do. It would be understandable, though, as I think, if many don’t. A skeptic, because she believes everything is possible on the continuum between good and evil, questions hard and works hard to get policy right. A cynic, however, believes the fix is in and so rarely believes acting matters. Cynics tend to conclude that sustained good isn’t possible.  Too many adopt cynicism to cover their lazy, pecksniffian bums.
    
     I think that for many in my generation the line between skepticism and cynicism has been blurred by our experience, and it makes it tougher to recognise what a necessary and moral war looks like. The effort to end Al Quaeda and ISIS is, for me, a clear moral necessity and I say that acknowledging the mixed and sullied political motives.
    
     Yet I have wondered if many in my generation have been rendered, to varying degrees, ambivalent by our nation’s moral and strategic failures in Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Iraq, and Afghanistan, Libya. We’ve seen our militarily engage so often so harmfully, I am concerned if cynicism and not skepticism has won over too many. 
    
     Whatever else Vietnam did, whatever else the murdering of young, civilian protesters at Jackson State and at Kent State did, they  tended to undermine many in my generation’s willingness to gauge and engage foreign policy issues, particularly military ones, with enough subtlety, nuance, and healthy skepticism.