Alfred and the complexity of war

A fellow took me to task the other day for referring to "Europe" as if it is a monolithic entity. We were discussing Islamic ghettoization in Europe, and he made the point that the situation is far too complex to paint with a broad brush and that one must look at each country in Europe individually in order to discuss the subject. He is right of course, unless the point of the conversation is Islamic ghettoization in Europe.

It is true that parts of Europe are ghettoized and other parts are not. It is also true that Texas was not involved in the American revolution and that Saskatchewan was not involved in the war of 1812 (since neither existed at the time). Yet that does not make it untrue that the American revolution took place in America or that Canada was a protagonist in the War of 1812. Nor is it false or misleading to say that Europe faces Islamic ghettoization; the fact that parts of Europe are not yet ghettoized is hardly an assurance that they won't follow the parts that are if ethnic immigration floodgates are left open across Europe.

Heuristics, meaning in this case the use of shortcuts or rules of thumb, is a useful tool without which we would not be in a position to communicate anything to anyone. Taken to its logical conclusion, without the use of heuristics we would be reduced to a state of the egocentric particular and only be able to think, but not talk, about our individual selves. It is the very complexity of life which makes it necessary to reduce it to understandable categories.

I would dismiss this entire exercise as a latterday version of the debate on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, except that the "complexity" critique is becoming an overused meme these days. It represents one of the more glaring flaws in modern academia: a tendency to inflate a subject with endless facets and in the process preclude any hope of arriving at a conclusion. Beyond that and far more annoying is the fact that neo-liberals seem to have fallen in love with "complexity".

What was spawned in academia has become in the hands of neo-liberalism a rhetorical tool; one with the twofold value of allowing the user to appear to seize the intellectual high ground and sidestep all arguments into the bargain. But how valid is it really?

Its fine to reject simplicity in favour of complexity, but somehow users of the complexity mechanism never seem to get around to talking about the myriad perspectives they have cleverly introduced to the subject. In fact, the implied suggestion is that the given subject is too complicated to deal with at all. Thus any argument this mechanism is used against has not been addressed...it has merely been devalued and sidestepped.

The rhetorical complexity meme is often used to devalue arguments for the use of force against Islam. Whenever someone calls for war against Syria, Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas, some pseudo-intellectual on the left is quick to leap up and assure us that the issue is far too complex to address through the use of brute force, and that the "warmonger" is brutish for even entertaining such simplistic thinking.

If pressed to expand upon this alleged complexity, the leftist looks stunned for a moment and then invariably trots out the usual mantras of "poverty", "ignorance" or "imperialism" as if nothing more need be said. If pressed harder, the leftist will retreat to the position that war ought to be a last resort; a tautology that has no end, since there will always be other resorts, including perpetual diplomacy, capitulation and abject rout. Ultimately the complexity argument usually means that the leftist has no real understanding of the issue, but knows that calling something "complex" elevates his non-understanding to an appearance of wisdom.

Alfred, King of Wessex, was both a scholar and a warrior. He could have taken the role of either when he faced the Danish Great Army at Edington in the year 878. He could have examined the enemy minutely, observing the myriad complexities of the opposing shieldwall and how this or that Dane or camp follower didn't really look like his heart was in it and that perhaps a bit of wergeld might calm their nerves. He could have reasoned that if his Saxons insisted upon attacking or even stubbornly standing their ground it would only make the Danes angrier and more alienated, and he would have been right. He might have reflected that Nordic Paganism was probably a religion of peace, despite its worship of warrior gods, violent battle death, and supernatural transport to Valhalla. He might even have deduced that it was only the Dane Guthrum and his henchmen who were the instigators, and that the great mass of Danes were moderates. Had he done all of the those things he might have been known to history as "The Clever".

Fortunately for the survival of Anglo-Saxon England, Alfred instead took the simplistic and artless route of seeing the Danish shieldwall for what it was: a horde of barbarians clamouring for blood, loot and rapine. And so he thrashed them and then he thrashed them again and after the slaughter he forced a truce on them, forcibly converting Guthrum to Christianity in the process. Then he built the borders of Wessex into a fortress and made a point of thrashing the Danes each time they encroached. For his brutish simplicity in time of need, and for laying the groundwork for a true and lasting peace with the Danelaw, Alfred is the only King in the long history of Britain to be honored with the title "The Great".

Rarely in history have we seen anything so farcical as the situation we have now between the West and Islam. On one side the enemy beats its shields and howls for our heads, while on the other side we look for any possible excuse...not just to avoid war...but to avoid acknowledging that the enemy even exists.

I deeply sympathize with the idea that war ought to be a last resort. War is a horrible thing to behold, and the war that is coming will be nasty, brutish and long. But the barbarians are here whether we like it or not, and they want war, and there is nothing very complicated about that.