Is the first victim of war the truth, as a roman proverb says? What do you think?

Question

Lots of good answers so far, thank you guys & gals!

Severed consciousness- I see your point.. But perhaps the roman citizen who said this had wisdom from experience, of being in a society so driven by war.

Answer 1

I think the only people who can really answer are those who've seen war. Still, I can speculate. I work with veterans, and I've heard it said that the military & war is exactly like Catch 22, and another say that war is organized insanity. So I'd say reason (logic, sense & ability to understand or make sense out of that which defies logic, understanding, etc), and innocence. The loss of innocence that is meant is hard to grasp-- I think that means knowing man so thoroughly in ways that are impossible to come to terms with & that people really wouldn't want to know. I believe that's why soldiers have such a connection to children, there's a purity in innocence. Ignorance, I think, really is bliss. Knowledge is paid for, and the more you have, the greater the price. you must pay for it.

Answer 2

Good question. If a war is truly justified (it's rare but possible - I'm Catholic and there IS a just war theory) then truth is actually served by the war and the first victim would be the first to suffer on the "right" side.

However, most wars do not fall under the just category and as Ashleys says in Gone with the Wind "when the wars were over no one knew what they were about."

Here in the South people are STILL arguing over the "real" reason for the Civil War and that was just 150 years ago. You'd think it would be pretty clear by now but war is frequently a complicated and dirty business.

Answer 3

I don't think turth is the victim of war. I think war is the CHAMPION of truth.

What is it, after all, that is the cause of EVERY war? Some would cite hunger, or overpopulation, or weather, or any number of other things. But do any of these things CAUSE a war? Or are they just aggravating factors?

Consider war in miniature. One man is starving and his neighbor has a sack full of bread. There is really only one thing that will cause that starving man to kill his neighbor:

The idea that he can and should.

Thus we can see that all wars are caused by IDEAS. Even if everything was distributed equally, if a people get the idea that they can and should kill their neighbors they'll probably do it anyway.

The only question at that point is whether their idea is correct. Whether it is the truth. If they can and they should do what they are doing, then the war can only be the best of all possible wars. Truth will reign supreme over a usurping falsehood, and it will be placed there by war.

So it goes. And then there's peace.

Answer 4

Yes. War is always accompanied by movement of masses and requires mass hysteria to even exist. It can be argued that only one of the parties involved need fall prey to this ad that the other simply has no choice but to react (just war from the second party's point of view). But it can not be denied that the mass killing of humans has to happen because of some form of mass delusion. Also, in order to want to wage war on a group of humans, it becomes necessary to demonize them, to portray them, perhaps, as less than human. Otherwise, no moral person in time of peace would agree to this.

Answer 5

Truth is always a victim in the current world. Yes, truth is a victim of war, but no more than it is a victim of peace, of creation, of destruction, of mere concious existence. The first victim of war is peace, for war cannot exist with it and peace cannot exist with war.

Answer 6

I think truth becomes the victim long before the war actually starts. Would you have war if you had compromise? Maybe the first victim is that: compromise or more broadly, communication.

Answer 7

with war being the last resort it will never have to be resorted to because there is always another avenue. always.
bearing that in mind impatience, greed, and selfishness will find a way to spread the lies necessary to open doors to war

Answer 8

Weapons of mass destruction.

Love and blessings Don

Answer 9

Right or wrong, how ironic that it's a ROMAN proverb!