" [My job, firing air to surface missiles] is a joy for me, because I'm one of those people who loves playing Play Station and X Box, so with my thumbs, I like to think I'm probably quite useful. If there's people trying to do bad stuff to our guys then, we'll take them out of the game, I suppose. Take a life to save a life." --Prince of Wales, Harry, who fires Apache Hellfire missiles, rockets and 30 mm guns in Afghanistan, against the Taliban.
" [Prince Harry] doesn't have the brain to know that there is a war here." -- Taliban spokesman in Afghanistan.
Oh, the lure of glowing fire from our deadly weapons. This fascination with weapons is a barely disguised desire for unbridled power.
I grew up in a war zone. It was a Silent War within my own family, marked by parental alcoholism, cruelty, abuse and neglect. This War was the only thing I ever knew. I WAS the battlefield, and I bore the scars from the endless War: bruises and black eyes from physical abuse, medical neglect, verbal abuse ( being called ugly every day, and a Failure), failure to thrive because of an uncertain supply of food, abandonment even in a life and death situation.
I hate War. I do not care about what St. Augustine said about a " Just War". If he even ever said it. I will not argue politics, or terrorism, or diplomacy here. These are not within the realm of my expertise, nor my purview. In refusing to take sides here, I do not believe that I am relinquishing any power of rhetoric: Jesus was apolitical, yet, He was the Prince of Peace.
But when someone as high-profile as Prince Harry (aka Captain of Wales) claims that War is just like a video game, I cringe in horror. And I will speak the Truth about War.
The first War that I have known, that ever held the promise of a "clean war" was Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in January, 1991. I watched television footage of the invasion (euphemistically called an "Operation"). All I saw was black and white video of a bomb strike, surgically taking out a building. No muss, no blood, no feeling of actual human beings being hurt or killed. The decimation of humans with the touch of a button, high above the scene of war, makes it all too easy to kill.
But the belief in a "clean war", an "easy war", is a Myth.
Are you aghast when I say that it does not matter who "wins" a War? Arguably, my family "won"-- yes, they succeeded in breaking me. I can heal, somewhat, but I will always be fractured. Yet, my family, my cruel abusers, did not "win" either. Who wants to know them?
No, there are no winners in War. I tell you, BOTH sides lose.
Journalist Russ Hoyle, former senior editor, who has written for the New York Daily News, Time and the New Republic Magazine and now, The Daily Beast, recently spent three weeks in Afghanistan. He reports that Afghan clerics actually expect an outbreak of civil war in Afghanistan in 2014, when the United States withdraws. So, who is the "winner" here?
Consider as well, the very real scars of War. I know these all too well: the nightmares, the flashbacks, the hyper-vigilance, where you feel like you always have to have your back against the wall and a clear exit strategy; the fundamental distrust of people because even insiders can maim you; the black hole of depression; the fear that you cannot get too close to even good people for fear that you will only lose them; the panic attacks that come, without warning, that sense of suffocation when you encounter a sound or smell or sight that takes you back to the War Zone; that awful, constant feeling of loss and guilt over things you never could have prevented anyway; a gnawing inability to forgive oneself or nuture oneself, because the feelings of worthlessness are inescapable; feelings of isolation because no one could possibly understand what you have been through or accept your deeply defective Self; feelings of dismay and betrayal when someone tells you that you are "doing great".
And, now that winning in Afghanistan is so very uncertain, the United States is allowing women into direct combat. I am all for empowering women, but I do not call this progress.
Dr. Donna Washington, a professor of medicine at UCLA, has found in a study that 53% of homeless women veterans also suffered military sexual abuse. Many female veterans who suffered M.S.T. have already escaped from years of abuse and domestic violence at home. A former female Army Reserve officer says, " It just pulls the skin off you." [New York Times, Feb. 28, 2012].
It is not just the military personnel who suffer from casualties or death. In the War on Terror, fewer than 5,000 U.S. military personel have died. But about 135,000 local citizens have died. Do we not mourn them, because they are invisible? And if we say, well, 5,000 U.S. deaths are only a bit over the total number of persons who died on 9/11-- are we seeing soldiers as pieces on a chess board? Or as human beings with souls, with families, with living, breathing dreams?
The next time that you see the violence of War, I hope that you do the human thing, and cry. And I hope that you pray with all your soul for a more peaceful world.
(c) Spiritual Devotional 2013. All Rights Reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment