“We do not wish to be deceitful…It is simply a friendly match. We can fix the stakes so that no one is injured.”[1] So began many wars, going all the way back to Śakuni’s deceitful words in the ancient Hindu story, the Mahabharata. In it, the Pāṇḍavas are the good guys who rightfully rule the land with justice and equity.[2] Their fortune is boundless.[3]

But the Kurus, the jealous antagonists, repeatedly challenge them.[4] The Pāṇḍavas’ leader, thinking it morally right to defend their honor, accepts the Kuru challenge of an unrighteous and risky game of dice, continuing to gamble after repeated losses. The Kurus possess Śakuni’s skill at dice; the Pāṇḍavas do not see a choice.[5] Together, they destroy the world.[6]

Whether the United States behaves more like the Kurus or more like the Pāṇḍavas is a worthy question, but the problem of America behaving like either of them can be solved by reviving a few words famously used, and now mostly forgotten, by Google: “Don’t be Evil.”[7]

America and its conflicts are not so different from those in the Mahabharata. America has been called a shining city upon a hill, borrowing from the Christian Bible.[8] Like the Pāṇḍavas in their moral miscalculation, however, America has forgotten the importance of virtue. Does America rise to fight simply because challenged, with little to gain but much to lose? Does it honestly assess the continuing costs of war?

In 2016, I attempted and failed to become a Marine. I understood I might be questioned on my willingness to kill. I knew I may, one day, have to kill the enemy before they killed me.

In 2019, having rolled the dice in my own personal quest for adventure, I faced the possibility of flying MQ-9 Reapers.

A U.S. Air Force MQ-9 Reaper from the Arizona Air National Guard 214th Attack Group parked on the flightline at the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, Mich. as its crew prepares to participate in the Northern Strike exercise on August 5, 2021. (Staff Sgt. Jay Grabiec/U.S. Air National Guard)

In 2019, having rolled the dice in my own personal quest for adventure, I faced the possibility of flying MQ-9 Reapers. In my mind, the duties would certainly destroy my own identity. I tried to make peace with what this mission would entail. I recalled an old story my old yoga teacher told me as a child. I began searching for it in the 45-hour Mahabharata “Retold” audiobook by Krishna Dharma. Restarting my friendship with my old sage and mentor, he directed my attention to the Bhagavad-gītā, the popular Mahabharata chapter, in which the main hero Arjuna suffers similar doubts about killing others in battle.[9] I listened earnestly. Even this abridged version of an ancient and unfamiliar story (to me) contained supremely poetic truths.

I feared I would slowly convince myself that “they’re all bad guys,” which I heard an instructor joke once. I feared becoming, and creating, yet more victims of these ill-begotten wars.

Waiting to hear my fate of whether I would fly remotely piloted aircraft equipped with weapons or without, I stared into my soul. I wondered if I would ever see it the same. I feared pulling a trigger based upon someone else’s legal and moral, or amoral, calculations. I feared I would slowly convince myself that “they’re all bad guys,” which I heard an instructor joke once. I feared becoming, and creating, yet more victims of these ill-begotten wars.

I also now faced the possibility of killing an enemy and associated “collateral damage” despite no threat towards myself. This type of killing stood in stark contrast to that which I had contemplated for the Marine Corps. It seems reasonable to require troops to kill simply as a cost of doing business: facing your enemy on the battlefield. This other kind, however, this cold, calculated killing, seems better-suited to those who specifically accept it. There are many warriors who bravely and tirelessly perform this mission. They have come to terms with how it is done, and they want to be there. I found I desperately did not want to join them.

Like the Pāṇḍava leader who kept falling for a dice game, I then rolled the dice in 2019 so that I could earn wings.[10] I cheated myself into believing I could do the mission. I left a perfectly good, peaceful existence. In my previous role as a military lawyer, leaders loved to encourage us about how we enabled the mission.[11] I had no romantic notions of this mission. I believed it did not, perhaps, differ so much from that of the Roman soldiers that I read about as a teenager in Hemingway’s “Today is Friday.”[12] These were not just any old Roman soldiers. These were the executioners of Christ. But Hemingway depicted them so elegantly, not as troops for an evil empire, but like regular Joes who happened to be in an American bar. Their unseen wounds came to life in just three pages. There was reluctance, guilt, sickness with their duties. There was even racism.[13] The story stuck with me. “Is being a soldier wrong?” I wondered. “Of all that Christ calls us to do, why this?”[14]

In his final lecture to my law school class in 2015, my esteemed civil rights law professor encouraged us to read poetry, offering us a diverse reading list. Soon after, he passed. This favorite professor of mine spent his life fighting for justice and paying it forward. Now that, I thought, was a life worth living. “Turn if you may from battles never done, I call, as they go by me one by one, Danger no refuge holds, and war no peace, For him who hears love sing and never cease.”[15] I found this poem and cherished it. Yet I would join the military twice more.[16] Now, in 2020, I fell into the story and become one of the characters, one of “their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.”[17]

My classmates and I received our assignments almost a year later, and I went first. I was spared Arjuna’s fate. I would not fly the Reaper. There would be no celestial weapons thrown by my hand.

My hubris felt ironic. Now in flight school, I wrote a verse on my “dolla ride” dollar, a customary gift instructors receive for a student’s first flight. My classmates and I received our assignments almost a year later, and I went first. I was spared Arjuna’s fate. I would not fly the Reaper. There would be no celestial weapons thrown by my hand.

I rolled the dice despite knowing better. Like Śakuni with the Kuru king, I tricked myself into thinking I could control the game.[18] I accepted a fundamentally unknowable, and therefore unacceptable, risk. My decision amounted to an inherently evil, immoral, and unwise gamble. This is my lesson-learned to you, decision-makers. Don’t be evil.[19] May Google’s old catchphrase become shorthand for wise decisions in the future. In the wake of America’s departure from Afghanistan, leaders cannot afford to commit another misadventure, the kind in which the righteous Pāṇḍavas lost everything for what began as a simple and foolish challenge; the kind that almost began after striking a hero of Iran’s tribe in early 2020.[20][21]

It is easy to discard old stories as lessons for children, and to become caught up in self-importance in the waging of war. Sometimes, if we aim to be successful, it helps to remember the old stories, or even to learn new ones. In my exploration of the Mahabharata, I found words that would be right at home in the Christian books of wisdom. As in the Bible, the poetic truths speak for themselves. They possess instructions on moral, ethical, and just behavior for both individuals as well as for warrior kings.

One Mahabharata hero, Bhīṣma, was steeped in his own sin and that of his Kuru clan.[22] He was the most powerful bystander to a great injustice.[23] In that moment of immense personal failure he shared, “Sometimes what a great and powerful man calls religion is accepted as such, even though it may not normally be so. What a weak man says, no matter how moral it may seem, is generally disregarded.”[24] Like the Kurus, Americans became susceptible to powerful actors and persuasive charlatans. Moral leaders lost their strength.

When did America stop practicing virtue and morality? How, for example, did Air Force leaders allow hundreds of admitted cheaters at the Air Force Academy to continue on to become the leaders of tomorrow?[25] Whether one follows ancient biblical kingdoms or those of the Mahabharata, those who compromise their integrity will fall. In his guilt, Bhīṣma correctly predicted, “it is certain that as the Kurus have become slaves of greed and folly, our race will soon be destroyed.” [26] As the deceitful Śakuni fixed games of dice, leading a great many heroes to their end, we continue to lie ourselves into war. We lie ourselves into continuing war.

Christian thinker and monk Thomas Merton wrote a wake-up call in the early 1960s during the Vietnam War, stating “the world in its madness is guided by military men, who are the blindest of the blind.” His words could have been written today:[27] “The real threat, as he saw it, was far more serious. It lay precisely in the ‘sane’ men, the ‘well-adapted’ men, who will have ‘perfectly good reasons, logical well-adapted reasons’ for ringing down the curtain on the history of man when the time comes.”[28] Merton was speaking of Adolf Eichmann’s sanity as studied by Hannah Arendt, but he may as well have been talking about the Pāṇḍavas of the Mahabharata, who waltzed directly into their world’s destruction despite their best intentions.[29]

*Thomas Merton (Ralph Eugene Meatyard/Meatyard Estate)*

As asked in the Thin Red Line, “Are you righteous,” America? Is this nation more like the pious and moral Pāṇḍavas or more like the Kurus, who were not all bad? Jesus said, “No one is good but God alone.”[30] But what makes one nation “the good guys” they presume themselves to be? Is it simply that we must be good? Does our behavior matter? The question must be asked critically, lest we serve simply the religion of America and nothing else. Defending democracy, or defending freedom are often the feel-good answers for why we serve. Part of the bargain in those assertions, however, is that America remains a liberal democracy; that it uses its troops for appropriate defense purposes, and not as an imperial power simply competing with other imperial powers. There should remain some reasonable expectation that wars be entered into and fought justly. Without those higher principles, war is no different than the rigged dice competition that cost the Pāṇḍavas everything. Without them, military service is no different than service in the Roman army.

The sage grandfather to the Pandavas, Vyāsadeva, wisely said, “What is the value of a kingdom gained through sin and earning only sin, O King?”[31] More profoundly, Arjuna advised, “Listen, O King, as I tell you how only a few men can overpower a vast army . . . Those who desire victory do not conquer by prowess but by truth, compassion, piety and virtue. Fight with assurance, dear brother, for victory is always where righteousness is found.”[32]

Reading the Mahabharata, it became clear to me that this nation has lost sight of virtue and righteousness at the strategic level dealing with other nation-states. In recent memory, America wrought unexpected destruction by toppling Saddam, and it may have lost Afghanistan. But the world is not yet destroyed. There is no time like the present to start behaving as current circumstances require. The nation need not follow the deceitful ways of the Kuru trickster Śakuni, who destroyed his entire world through good but flawed men who enabled him.[33]

Remember history’s lessons and its wisdom. Be better than me. Don’t roll the dice on foolish adventurism. Don’t fuel deception. Don’t fall for greed, anger, or foolish revenge masked as defending honor. Don’t enable the tricksters who bring you down. Most importantly: Don’t be evil.

Dan Rust is an aviator and former military lawyer. He now focuses on crew resource management, inclusion, and organizational culture as studied by Dianne Vaughan. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

The Strategy Bridge is read, respected, and referenced across the worldwide national security community—in conversation, education, and professional and academic discourse.

Thank you for being a part of the The Strategy Bridge community. Together, we can #BuildTheBridge.

Header Image: Krishna Counsels the Pandava Leaders, Brooklyn Museum, ~1830 (Unknown).

Notes:

[1] Dharma, Krishna. “The Dice Game.” Part I, Chapter 19. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 185. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.

[2] Dharma, Krishna. “Duryodhana’s Envy.” Part I, Chapter 18. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/18/.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Dharma, Krishna. “The Dice Game.” Part I, Chapter 19. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 187. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.

[5] Dharma, Krishna. “Duryodhana’s Envy.” Part I, Chapter 18. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/18/.

[6] Dharma, Krishna. “Bhīma Fights Duryodhana.” Part II, Chapter 27. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/27/.

[7] Cuthbertson, Anthony. “Google Just Quietly Removed References to ‘Don’t Be Evil’ from Its Code of Conduct.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, May 21, 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-dont-be-evil-code-conduct-removed-alphabet-a8361276.html.

[8] Frum, David. “Is America Still the ‘Shining City on a Hill’?” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, January 1, 2021. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/01/is-america-still-the-shining-city-on-a-hill/617474/; Matt. 5:14 Revised Standard Version.

[9] Dharma, Krishna. Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. Krishna Dharma, 2015. https://www.amazon.com/Mahabharata-Greatest-Spiritual-Epic-Time/dp/B013GV02DY/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=.; Dharma, Krishna. “The Bhagavad-gītā.” Part II, Chapter 4. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/4/.

[10] Dharma, Krishna. “The Dice Game.” Part I, Chapter 19. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 187. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.

[11] I enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2007, attempted Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in 2016 (washed-out after 29 days), and finally commissioned as an officer in the active duty Air Force in 2017.

[12] Hemingway, Ernest. “Today Is Friday.” Short Story. In The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. New York, NY: Scribner, 2003.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Yeats, W. B. “The Rose - 1893.” Essay. In The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats, 29. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 2008.

[16] I enlisted in the Air National Guard in 2007, the Marine Corps OCS in 2016 (washed-out after 29 days), and finally commissioned as an officer in the active duty Air Force in 2017.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Dharma, Krishna. “Duryodhana’s Envy.” Part I, Chapter 18. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/1/18/.

[19] Cuthbertson, Anthony. “Google Just Quietly Removed References to ‘Don’t Be Evil’ from Its Code of Conduct.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, May 21, 2018. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-dont-be-evil-code-conduct-removed-alphabet-a8361276.html.

[20] Dharma, Krishna. “Aśvatthāmā Punished.” Chapter. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/29/.

[21] Baker, Peter, and Thomas Gibbons-neff. “Esper Says He Saw No Evidence Iran Targeted 4 Embassies, as Story Shifts Again.” The New York Times. The New York Times, January 12, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/12/us/politics/esper-iran-trump-embassies.html.

[22] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 198. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.

[23] Dharma, Krishna. “Śikhaṇḍī’s Destiny.” Part II, Chapter 2. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/2/.

[24] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 201. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.

[25] Cohen, Rachel. “USAFA Cracking down on Students for Widespread Cheating Last Spring.” Air Force Magazine, February 1, 2021. https://www.airforcemag.com/usafa-cracking-down-on-students-for-widespread-cheating-last-spring/.

[26] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 201. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.

[27] Merton, Thomas, and Gordon C. Zahn. “Original Child Monk: An Appreciation.” Foreword. In The Nonviolent Alternative, 25–27. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2010.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Mark 10:18 Revised Standard Version.

[31] Dharma, Krishna. “Into Position.” Part II, Chapter 3. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 542. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.

[32] Dharma, Krishna. “Into Position.” Part II, Chapter 3. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time. San Raphael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020. https://vedabase.io/en/library/mbk/2/3/.

[33] Dharma, Krishna. “Draupadī Dragged to the Assembly.” Part I, Chapter 20. In Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time, 195. San Rafael, CA: Insight Editions, 2020.