This post is inspired by the Nov 17 posting on Glassmaze regarding an incident in the Iraq war in which a young soldier kills a wounded, unarmed enemy combatant. It started as a direct response but became too long.
The post agonizes over to what extent morality should be applied to individual soldiers during wartime.
My quick answer is that, in a war whose basis has slipped from very practical (find WMD) to entirely moral (remake Middle East for democracy), morality cannot be separated from it.
The dirtier truth, of course, is that war makes a mockery of morality. Even within the context of a "good war" (one with an airtight rationale), the actions required of the participants are at odds with the standards of decent, moral behavior required during every other facet of life.
War is a beast. It wrecks beauty and optimism just as surely as it ruins lives. It turns innocence into hypocrisy.
Is that boy-killer guilty? Yes. Did someone fill his head full of shit, put him in a combat zone, and then tell him to have restraint? Yes. Who did that?
We did. We let the animal out of the sack. We tried to harness it for our purposes -- honor, oil, capitalism.
We lied through our teeth to do so, although many of us probably didn't know it. We told him before he went that he would be a hero for fighting. We equated his killing with defending 'freedom', we put it on him that 'democracy' depended upon him. We trained him to say 'yes sir' when his instincts screamed 'no freakin way'. We trained him to cherish vague, nonsensical notions like 'flag'. We promise him that he would 'never be forgotten'. And should he have the misfortune to be killed, garlands would rain upon his grave for all of eternity. Young women would recite poems about his smashed youth, and give him all that loving, bittersweet attention that young men crave.
But these lies are always balanced on a painfully thin ledge because war is about none of these things.
War destroys freedom. It corrupts us all. It makes a mockery out of our pretenses to be 'civilized'.
I deal with war every day. Its not the hot, new cause de celebes. Its not the Darfurs or the Kashmirs or the Kosovos or the Iraqs. I deal with old wars whose justifications are no longer current, or even known much of the time. Mythology replaces fact. Every kid becomes a forgotten hero. The only people who pause to care about the wars I deal with are usually the ones with a vesting interest in maintaining the facade that war is worth its price. Generally these are people most broken by war -- soldiers who fought, family's left behind by the dead.
But after the headline events are over, the wreckage of war goes on and on and on. We act as if the jingoists -- the flag-wavers and memorializers, the myth-makers who guild our stinkiest turds, the immortalizers -- do us a favor by telling us these sweet lies. But they aren't. They are just prepping another generation.
So what price, war? No one really knows. But before you believe anyone who tells you they know, or that whatever the cost it is worth it, ask the dead soldiers if the price was worth it. Go ahead: just ask them. Read all the bestsellers they would have written. Make love to them under the moonlight. Laugh and cry with them. Pat their grandchildren. Oh yeah: you can't.
Ask the silent veterans, the ones who still have thoughts to shield you from.
Ask all the ones who discovered (in their foxholes) that God was just another complicated myth invented by man to justify terrible things.
Ask the mothers and sisters and brothers and fathers and friends who have only the thanks (sometimes tepid, sometimes fervent) of a grateful nation to keep them company where once they had a whole human being.
Ask the silent avenues, and the windy ruins, and the relentless scavengers picking through the rot.
Ask the flapping flags and eternal flames standing sentinal over wormy, cross-capped lawns.
The post agonizes over to what extent morality should be applied to individual soldiers during wartime.
My quick answer is that, in a war whose basis has slipped from very practical (find WMD) to entirely moral (remake Middle East for democracy), morality cannot be separated from it.
The dirtier truth, of course, is that war makes a mockery of morality. Even within the context of a "good war" (one with an airtight rationale), the actions required of the participants are at odds with the standards of decent, moral behavior required during every other facet of life.
War is a beast. It wrecks beauty and optimism just as surely as it ruins lives. It turns innocence into hypocrisy.
Is that boy-killer guilty? Yes. Did someone fill his head full of shit, put him in a combat zone, and then tell him to have restraint? Yes. Who did that?
We did. We let the animal out of the sack. We tried to harness it for our purposes -- honor, oil, capitalism.
We lied through our teeth to do so, although many of us probably didn't know it. We told him before he went that he would be a hero for fighting. We equated his killing with defending 'freedom', we put it on him that 'democracy' depended upon him. We trained him to say 'yes sir' when his instincts screamed 'no freakin way'. We trained him to cherish vague, nonsensical notions like 'flag'. We promise him that he would 'never be forgotten'. And should he have the misfortune to be killed, garlands would rain upon his grave for all of eternity. Young women would recite poems about his smashed youth, and give him all that loving, bittersweet attention that young men crave.
But these lies are always balanced on a painfully thin ledge because war is about none of these things.
War destroys freedom. It corrupts us all. It makes a mockery out of our pretenses to be 'civilized'.
I deal with war every day. Its not the hot, new cause de celebes. Its not the Darfurs or the Kashmirs or the Kosovos or the Iraqs. I deal with old wars whose justifications are no longer current, or even known much of the time. Mythology replaces fact. Every kid becomes a forgotten hero. The only people who pause to care about the wars I deal with are usually the ones with a vesting interest in maintaining the facade that war is worth its price. Generally these are people most broken by war -- soldiers who fought, family's left behind by the dead.
But after the headline events are over, the wreckage of war goes on and on and on. We act as if the jingoists -- the flag-wavers and memorializers, the myth-makers who guild our stinkiest turds, the immortalizers -- do us a favor by telling us these sweet lies. But they aren't. They are just prepping another generation.
So what price, war? No one really knows. But before you believe anyone who tells you they know, or that whatever the cost it is worth it, ask the dead soldiers if the price was worth it. Go ahead: just ask them. Read all the bestsellers they would have written. Make love to them under the moonlight. Laugh and cry with them. Pat their grandchildren. Oh yeah: you can't.
Ask the silent veterans, the ones who still have thoughts to shield you from.
Ask all the ones who discovered (in their foxholes) that God was just another complicated myth invented by man to justify terrible things.
Ask the mothers and sisters and brothers and fathers and friends who have only the thanks (sometimes tepid, sometimes fervent) of a grateful nation to keep them company where once they had a whole human being.
Ask the silent avenues, and the windy ruins, and the relentless scavengers picking through the rot.
Ask the flapping flags and eternal flames standing sentinal over wormy, cross-capped lawns.
