Pseudo-Pacifist Propaganda Parables

The Warrior's Pacifist Parable

One day, when Sarkon the Prophet was once more holding a speech in which he preached for peace, thus for a reduction of the military forces and against enlistment in the army, General Kwar decided he had heard enough of this kind of silly idealistic babble. He said to Sarkon, "If the number of volunteers who enter the army becomes too low, we'll be forced to use high-tech weapons which require fewer people to operate and which are able to do much more damage to compensate our numeric inferiority..."

"What do you mean with high-tech weapons?" asked Sarkon the Prophet, puzzled.

"Atomic and nuclear are the keywords," General Kwar answered in a tight-mouthed way.

"Don't!" shrieked Sarkon, and he hurried through the land to preach for enlistment in the army in order to prevent much more horrible wars.

The Pacifist's War Parable

One day, when General Kwar was once more holding a speech in which he praised the dissuasive power of the military forces and made propaganda for enlistment in the army, Sarkon the Prophet decided he had heard enough of this stupid military gabble. He said to Kwar, "I can't understand why you promote the cause of war. What do you want to fight for?"

"You again?" said General Kwar with a look of disdain. "I thought I had explained you that we need a strong army to fight for - sorry, to maintain - peace, to dissuade other nations from attacking us, and because if we don't have enough men, we'll be forced to counterattack with massive destruction weapons whenever someone tries to invade us, be it a mere fly! I thought you had understood all that..."

"I only understand that I've been fooled by these short-sighted arguments you must have forced into my mind with the most brutal intellectual strength, for since our last meeting I have journeyed through the vaporous mists of the spiritual paths, and there I discovered the answers to the fundamental questions we ask ourselves about how we could minimize the chances of an outbreak of wars!..." declaimed Sarkon the Prophet, clutching the ankh he wore around his neck.

"I don't ask myself such meaningless questions!" General Kwar interrupted contemptuously, stroking the bizarre twisted cross he had sewn on his left breastside.

"You'll have to hear the answers to them anyway!" ordered - much to General Kwar's astonishment - Sarkon the Prophet. "If we have nuclear weapons and a huge army, bellicose nations may think we'll defend ourselves with our conventional army rather than with our atomic bombs if ever they attack us, so that they won't fear our massive destruction weapons much.

"On the other hand, if we have a small or even no army at all, these nations will know that we have no other means of defending ourselves than dropping atomic bombs on their heads; in consequence, they'll fear us the more and think it much more thoroughly over before trying to attack us. Atomic weapons are dissuasive weapons, but they are the more dissuasive if they are the only weapons a nation has!"

General Kwar had to admit Sarkon could well be right, this time - surprisingly.

"Thus, I was right to preach against enlistment in the army; and now, you will help me to shape the army to its right scale!" thundered Sarkon the Prophet.

Alas, it was so much against his nature that General Kwar couldn't force himself to make propaganda against military enlistment.

Nevertheless, from then on, he militated in favor of a raise of the massive destruction weapons stocks and promoted research in this field.

The Scientist's Economilitary Calculus

One day, when Sarkon the Prophet was once more holding a speech in which he preached against enlistment in the army, while General Kwar was militating once more in favor of a raise of the atomic weapons stocks, Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist decided he had heard enough of this inane propagandistic prattle. He said to them, "Your dubious ideas about what the army should be made of will lead us nowhere! They aren't even based on a scientific analysis of the situation and of the consequences of their application..."

"Got some better ones?" interrupted both Sarkon and Kwar, upset that one dared to doubt the rightness of their opinions.

"Well, it is not that they are fundamentally wrong," admitted Dr. Qworm as the two powerful beings towered menacingly above him (especially General Kwar), but the conclusions you draw from them are not utterly acute, I would say... Let me explain myself. You, General Kwar, say that the army needs a great number of men, so that it - you, in fact - won't have to use atomic weapons to defend this side of the world, thus preventing much more horrible wars."

General Kwar agreed, "That was my first point of view, before Sarkon hammered his own logic into my head..."

"And you, Sarkon the Prophet, say that the army should be very feeble, so that other nations know we'll have to use atomic weapons against them if they aggress us - thus making their attack less probable."

Sarkon the Prophet agreed, "Exactly. Even General seems to have understood that..."

Dr. Qworm went on, "Neither of you is wrong, of course, but... Perhaps you chose the second solution a little too quickly!"

"What?!" exclaimed Sarkon. "How can you be against a rise in the stock of atomic weapons? You are the one who builds them and who leads the research in this field, after all!"

"Let him speak!" ordered Kwar. "I bet my solution was the right one, and that I've only been fooled by your convincing power!"

"In brief," resumed Dr. Qworm, "one of you wants a strong conventional army with no or only a small atomic force to avoid massive civilian deaths and long-lasting material consequences, while the other recommends a huge atomic force with no or only a small army to make other nations aware that we'll have to use those atomic weapons against someone who would attack us - and since this would signify total annihilation for the aggressor's cities, logically, no one should attack us, or it should, at least, be much less likely."

"Exactly," admitted both listeners.

"Therefore, the dilemma is the following: is it better to have more chance of getting involved in a 'conventional' war, or to have less chance of getting involved in a much more destructive war?"

General Kwar and Sarkon the Prophet looked interrogatively at each other. Each of them expected - and feared - the other would find the irrefutable answer to this question and, with that, gain the right to shape the army according to his cause.

But it didn't happen. Neither of them had such an answer.

"It depends, of course," Dr. Qworm finally answered himself. "It depends on how much more destructive an atomic war would be, and on how much the probability of the outbreak of a war would be reduced if a nation had only atomic weapons for its defense. Since we cannot evaluate accurately enough both of these values, let's imagine that the mathematical result of [the chances of an outbreak of war multiplied by the cost of destruction] is equal in both cases. Therefore, the criterion of choice shall have to be found elsewhere. And... I did find a determining criterion to solve this problem, of course - I wouldn't have meddled in your military strategies if I hadn't. This criterion is..."

Sarkon and Kwar were hanging on his lips.

"...the cost. What is cheaper, then: to enlist, nourish, and pay enough men to form a large army, or to promote atomic research and build up a huge stock of such weapons? Cheaper is, of course, the atomic way," finished Dr. Qworm hastily, although he took care not to explain how he had come to such a conclusion - he probably wouldn't have been able to, anyway: money as well as effort didn't exist in the Welgon Age, so how could one thing have been cheaper than another thing?

General Kwar and Sarkon the Prophet first looked at each other again with puzzled faces, and then the latter said, "But both of us were already preaching for the atomic way! Why did you argue all this time for something that was already taken for granted?!"

"I only felt I had to justify my position at the head of the atomic research industry with sensible arguments!" answered the Mad Scientist with an air of hurt pride.

Dreitos Qworm couldn't enjoy this position for a very long time, alas: the closeness of the material he worked with was dangerous indeed, and a radioactive particle that had escaped from one of the many nuclear reactors he was overseeing was fatal to him.

The Moron's Incomprehension Of All This Military Stuff

One day, when General Kwar and Sarkon the Prophet were once more bickering about what the army should be made of, cookie, the kind harlequin with stupendous mental powers, dropped by, and although he found it funny, he didn't understand at all the reason for their excitement. He asked, "Why are you arguing about how the army should be? We have no enemies here in the Welgon Age - I don't grasp this concept of 'nation' you are talking about, by the way - and there is nothing here we could fight against. What's more, we never had any army here in the Welgon Age - unless we consider General Kwar as an entire army..."

Sarkon the Prophet and General Kwar stopped bickering, sighed, and complained in choir, "Oh cookie, you can be such a spoilsport, sometimes..."