The text is divided into two parts, Armed Civic Virtue and Life givers/Life takers. It is greatly influenced by Elshtain's experiences growing up and the first chapter is, in its entirety, about the author's life. She presents a portrait of the eight-year-old girl who wanted a gun, and the woman whose son signed as a conscientious objector to the draft register. She uses her identity and subjectivity to explore the text.
Elshtain describes her research method as pearl fishing, as coined by Hannah Arendt. 'One dives in not knowing quite what one will come up with'. The important point is to remain open to one's subject matter, to see where it is going and follow-not to impose a prefabricated formula over diverse and paradoxical material. She does have a tendency to use examples to make a point without much theorising, thus her research method leaves something to be desired. On the other hand, it is of benefit to the moderate reader, that she does not go into some of the more modern feminist theories, that I feel are not feminist so much as postmodernist written by women.
Elshtain examines three concepts, that of Beautiful Souls, Just Warriors and Just Wars within the context of modern society and finds that although these concepts hold true even today, they are not universal. Apparently we in the West, associate ourselves with the Beautiful Soul/Just Warrior paradigm because of culturally constructed and transmitted myths and memories. In deconstructing this thesis, she relates tales of bellicose women, pacifist men and wars waged unjustly by powerful countries.
Humanity's attitudes to war are many and varied and stereotypes do not hold true. Although Elshtain demonstrates this adequately by example, I feel the text but scratches the surface. She does not delve into the reasons behind the concepts. An example of this is how the author justifies the 'ferocious few'. The story is that of Deborah Sampson, a girl who dressed up as a man to fight in the American civil war. It is an excellent example to prove that women are not exclusively devoted to peace. However it does not prove or disprove any theory.
In part I: armed civic virtue, Elshtain discusses the history of war concepts. She argues that politics gave birth to war, that politics was war. The story of politics and war in Western tradition does not unfold as a fall from grace, a tale of sordid descent from a [pastoral] age when people went peacefully about their business and let their neighbours peacefully go about theirs. She uses arguments from almost all the great philosophers, from Plato to Sartre before arriving at the Beautiful Soul/Just Warrior concept, which is prevalent in society today.
Beautiful Soul is a term borrowed from Hegel's Phenomenology of spirit. Women as a constituted group were not to what he referred, but women in the West have been long been cast as a collective Beautiful Soul, an image Elshtain feels is continually being reconstructed by women and reinforced by men. Women work and weep and sometimes protest within the frame of discursive practices that turn out, militant mother and pacifist protestor alike, as the collective 'other' to the male warrior.
In the attempt to disarm civic virtue, Elshtain examines the shift from pacifism to conditional acceptance of violence in the Church. Men fight as supporters of a nation's sanctioned violence. The fighter is reborn as the Just Warrior who takes up arms only to prevent a greater wrong or to protect the innocent. She discusses the teachings of Augustine, the middle ages, the crusades, and the protestant nation-state for their concepts of Just War.
Just War is problematic at best. St. Thomas Aquinas had seven conditions before Just War could be declared. These are that war is a last resort, that it is clearly an act of redress of rights actually violated or defence against unjust demands backed by the threat of force, that it is openly and legally declared by properly constituted governments, that there is reasonable prospect for victory, that the means are proportionate to the ends, that it is waged in such a way as to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants and that the victorious nation not require the utter humiliation of the vanquished. Current international law does not uphold these seven prerequisites and is so general as to justify war on meagre grounds.
Elshtain sees the Vietnam War, on several different grounds but primarily as an unjust war that betrayed the people who gave all they had, for ultimately what was a historical mistake. She cites examples of the alienation that soldiers and nurses felt alike, from normal society upon returning home, to a degree previously unrecorded.
Using the example of the American civil war, Elshtain compares the Spartan southern women to those from the north. The southern women were fighting to defend a way of life that incorporated exclusivities, that of limited citizenship, which defined those who were accepted and those who were marginalized from society. They had no desire to expand and were defending to maintain their patria. The slaves were not expected to fight their cause. The northern women, on the other hand, represented a more universalist, democratic way of life. The south, made war on the army of the north; the north made war on the people of the south.
She discusses World War I as being catalyst for a united United States. Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans became simply (de-hyphenated) Americans, an example of the uniting factors of war. Although this is true to a certain extent, one could argue that the Vietnam War had the opposite effect. The population was split to a degree seldom seen before, into pro-war supporters and a new generation of conscientious objectors who unlike previously during the world wars, were imprisoned for their beliefs.
In a post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima world, can Beautiful Souls and Just Warriors retain their lustre or have these notions been shattered along with a type of collective innocence that exists even in war? The modern warrior fights in a context of unclear distinctions between combatants and non-combatants and thus the rules of engagement are bent and sometimes broken, as the modern armies abandon the jus in bello rules.
Part II: Life Givers/Life Takers draws the somewhat obvious analogy of women giving life and men extinguishing life. This view is a little simplistic, to my mind. Elshtain relates tales of women abandoning their 'peaceful' nature to fight in wars, to become terrorists or to send their sons to war, ordering him to kill the enemy for her, as she cannot. These are the ferocious few. She relates tales of men as compassionate warriors and conscientious objectors. All are interesting and informative examples and yet do not inform the reader why not all men are either bloodthirsty or all women peaceful.
The second part of the text deals with feminism, women in the army and various peace movements. In two pages, Elshtain studies most of the modern feminist positions, from Goodwin to Woolf, passing by French and Daly. All take a distinct point of view and no tangible conclusions are reached.
In examining women in the army, 'poster girls for feminism', the reader discovers that in fact those women in the military define themselves as soldiers primarily. Gender is not an issue.
Peace poses considerable problems. Firstly, it is necessary to define peace. Is peace the absence of armed conflict? Perpetual world harmony in which communist lions lie down with capitalist lambs (or the other way around depending on where one situates one's animal metaphors)! Peace by definition cannot exist without war. According to Kant, a genuine peace treaty must nullify all existing causes of war. There must be no mental reservation whatever. Under that definition, it is difficult is ever envision peace. However, according to Elshtain such a situation would be undesirable in any case for that would eliminate politics-the manner humanity has devised to deal with difference. I disagree with that statement for it is a truism. Politics can lead to war as marriage can lead to divorce but war is not the end result of politics. To assume, such a view is, I believe, naïve.
Women and war is an extremely interesting book, full of thought provoking anecdotes and historical enigmas. However, to my mind it is a collection of more or less unconnected statements. Elshtain provides varying opinions and sometimes shocking declarations but does not come to any concrete resolution of the issues she raises and in the opinion of this reader, the text is wanting.
© Saorla Ó Corráin