Thomas Wictor

On my home page today, I saw a banner ad for Axe deodorant. It had a slogan I hadn’t seen in over forty years: “Make love, not war.” This is silly on so many different levels it’s hard to know where to start, but the most glaringly obvious flaw in this mindless catchphrase from the past is that war requires love.

The Axe banner ad said, “Supporting Peace For One Day,” the sort of sentiment that always offended me. What will you accomplish by supporting peace for one day? What does it even mean? How will your “likes” or clicks or views stop war? But I clicked the ad to see what would happen. It led me to a commercial.

Now, I know it’s just an ad. The bigwigs at Unilever want to sell their deodorant, so they came up with an idea that will appeal to the youngsters who buy their products.

The problem is that I hear old people claiming to oppose all war under all circumstances. Never mind that in reality they oppose only war waged by the United States and Israel. But let’s take them at their word, that all war should be opposed. It’s a sentiment that was expressed in Marvin Gaye’s song “What’s Going On.”

It has a very famous lyric.

War is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate

Most wars aren’t about hate. They’re about accumulating power. Ethnic and racial hatreds are exploited to make the troops want to fight, but the wars themselves have nothing to do with hate. I know Tom Hanks thinks we wanted to annihilate the Japanese in World War II just because they were different, but even in the midst of savage combat, Americans took Japanese prisoners and cared for them.

This was after the Japanese routinely faked surrender and killed the men trying to capture them. During the Battle of Okinawa—when that footage was taken—the Japanese deployed kamikaze, suicide submarines, suicide manned torpedoes, and suicide frogmen. Over 12,000 American service members were killed. Civilians attacked American troops with sharpened bamboo poles. Children were used as suicide bombers. Yet the Americans did everything possible to take prisoners instead of killing.

To protect Japanese pride, surrender leaflets were carefully worded, “I cease resistance.”

The Japanese were dropped these leaflets and instructed to walk to the American lines. Despite the absolute barbarity that Japanese soldiers had displayed since 1937, the Americans still tried to save their lives. Does that sound like hate to you?

What we face as a culture is a kind of brain rot. People simply pull statements out of their butts. Tom Hanks has no factual knowledge about World War II, despite having acted in and produced movies and miniseries covering the topic. I find that horrifying.

The comments section of the Axe Peace deodorant has this absolute gem of a Hankism.

This ad is insulting to the intelligence of everyone who has half a brain. It clearly is showing Iran and North Korea as military aggressors who should make love not war. In the last 50 years both North Korea and Iran have been involved in one war…..ONE WAR….while America has been involved or has instigated 125 wars in the last 50 years.

Well, he was close. The US hasn’t been involved in or instigated one hundred twenty-five wars in the past fifty years. The real number is…ten. So he exaggerated a little. By 1150 percent. And his avatar shows the fascist dictator of Spain Francisco Franco, an ally of Nazi Germany.

Iran sponsors the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which holds the entire nation of Lebanon hostage. Since Iran also supports Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda, it’s not possible to count the number of terrorist attacks Iran has directly or indirectly carried out. In 2011 Iran tried to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US. Did you know that? The plan was to blow up a restaurant frequented by members of the US Congress.

As for North Korea, it’s one of the biggest criminal enterprises on earth. Run by Bureau 39, North Korean racketeering includes counterfeiting, money laundering, drug trafficking, arms sales, and smuggling of all kinds. North Korea is also a main player in nuclear proliferation. On September 6, 2007, the Israelis bombed a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear reactor in the Deir ex-Zor region of Syria.

Not a peep was heard from the Arab world. Why? Because nobody wants Bashar al-Assad to have nuclear weapons. A military operation prevented him from creating so much instability that regional war would become much more likely.

North Korea and Iran are destabilizing influences in the world. The US was a stabilizing influence until recently. How many world wars have we had since the last one? The Axe ad says, “In a world filled with war, the greatest weapon is love.”

In fact the world isn’t filled with war. I’ve written about this before. Major conflicts are on the decline. Dramatically so. And in a world filled with war, the greatest weapon is the hydrogen bomb.

The Axe ad is silly because love won’t stop well-armed, power-mad sociopaths. Also, those people don’t deserve love. The North Koreans have death camps in which they inter entire families. One method of killing is to fill a person’s mouth with rocks, tape it shut, and then break the face with a rifle butt so that the prisoner bleeds to death or drowns in his or her own blood.

How can love stop someone who does that sort of thing as a matter of course? That’s his job. He no longer belongs to my species. The entire North Korean government is complicit in this inexcusable bestiality.

The only people who can stop the mass murderers, the terrorists, and the destabilizing lunatics are those with more powerful weapons. And the motivation is generally love. Though most wars aren’t fought because of hate, most of the men and women who stop evil do so out of love.

Love of freedom, love of country, love of human dignity, love of your fellow soldier, love of family, and love of principles that are bigger than yourself.

Those who “abjure” violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.

—George Orwell