Enduring Fury

I was turning ash from the fireplace into the soil of one of my raised beds when I was suddenly distracted by a ruckus.  A crow, one of the neighborhood murder, flew low and fast across the asphalt of the road, screeching with a clearly panicked harshness.  I've seen that particular crow around, an old bird with one missing tailfeather and a matching missing flight-feather on its right wing.  Gapfeather was not having a good day, because behind it, right in and tight, was a hawk.  It was fractionally larger than the crow, from size and coloration possibly a red-shouldered hawk, not that I would know that if I hadn't looked it up afterwards.

The raptor was laser-focused, with evident and violent intent.  Gapfeather was fleeing and crying out for help, diving into the denser underbrush under the tall trees on the other side of the street.  This was odd thing to see, because smaller hawks don't mess with crows, typically.  Crows are large and sharp of beak, after all.  If anything, the reverse is true, as the more-intelligent and social crows will gather in large numbers to mob, harass, and drive hawks away. 

The chase continued, the desperate crow retreating tactically, flying from branch to branch, trying to put tree trunk between itself and its pursuer, all the while shrieking out that high pitched caw for aid.  The hawk just kept coming.  Other crows began to gather, but weren't yet intervening, hopping around on the bony-finger branches of dead chestnut oaks and observing cautiously.

Finally, Old Gapfeather bolted back in the direction from which it came, the hawk right on its tail, as merciless as Javert.  I listened to the panicked corvid's screams fade into the distance.

Something must have happened between them, something that wasn't about hunter and hunted.  Perhaps, given the season, it was that the crow had attempted some high-risk egg stealing, and the hawk was enraged and had slaughter on its mind.  It would not relent or give quarter.  It had gone to war.

Which, of course, got me to musing on our own primate predilection for violent conflict.  What is the purpose of war?

If one is a pacifist, and radically committed to nonviolence, then war can have no good purpose.  There is no legitimate end that can be served by brute force and harm inflicted on another, as the means define the ends.

This is the clearest and most self-evident reading of the teachings of Jesus.  It is also wildly inconvenient for any society that is predominantly Christian, as nation-states that are morally averse to conflict have a tendency to be devoured by those with no compunctions about war.  That, in part, was why the early church in the Christianized Roman Empire struggled so mightily to justify Christian participation in martial endeavor.

Just War theory, which rose first from St. Augustine's writing, casts boundaries around war, and as refined over centuries attempts to ensure that peace is always the goal of war.  Meaning, not just but also integrated into the prosecution of war itself.  Making efforts to avoid killing noncombatants, showing mercy to those who have been rendered helpless, and...most importantly...acting from right intent.  War cannot be just if it is motivated by vengeance, greed, or hatred.

Then, of course, there is the idea that war has only one rule: victory.  The goal is nothing more and nothing less than the destruction of an opponent and/or the seizing of their lands and property, by any means necessary.   From this perspective, concepts like honor, decency, or mercy only weaken martial endeavor, as they place undue bounds around the capacity to project power.  The rules of engagement are that there are no rules.  Do whatever you must to win, period.

Across this moral continuum, humankind has struggled to find a way, still bound to primal subsentient conflicts over territory and resource, to mobbing intruders with black wing and beak, to turning sharp talon and blind rage against those who trespass against us.