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The Reality of War As a nation, we recently celebrated another Memorial Day Holiday. Television news broadcasts, newspaper articles, each with many photos reminded us of past and present wars. Television, in particular, fed us a steady diet of war history over a weekend of backyard barbeques and picnics. War, as a romantic adventure, played out in the themes of movies about World War II, Korea and Vietnam. There are even movies that replay, in fantasy, the first Gulf War when the Iraqi Army was driven from Kuwait. In those television documentaries we saw battleships in action, planes dropping bombs and tanks and guns firing shells. Occasionally, men running across cratered fields and jumping from boats onto sandy shores. We heard explosions and saw flares light up the sky, just like the fourth of July. We saw little of blood, guts and body parts─the reality of war. Except! Except for Iraq and now Afghanistan! Daily now the roadside IEDs and suicide bombers take a bloody toll. We read, too, of kidnappings, assassinations, destruction of homes and businesses. Sunnis moving from Shiite neighborhoods, Shias leaving Sunni areas, where they’ve lived together in peace for many generation. Even places of worship are not immune from violence. Worshipers themselves have become targets. This too is the reality of war─this War- a war scene at its worst. The Iraq war has spawned destruction, fear and hate. Where is the glory to be found in this war? We now learn of possible atrocities committed by American forces last November in the town of Haditha, Northern Iraq. Why did we just hear of it now, six months later? Who covered it up? What else remains hidden from our knowledge and eyes? We can only imagine. History tells us that atrocities in war, such as Abu Graib Prison, the killing of civilians in Haditha, and the “Collateral Damage” of misguided bombs are not unique. In a sense, wars make people insane, even a good person can go mad and commit atrocities in anger or revenge. Look to our own past wars: the inhumane prison at Andersonville during the Civil War and the massacres of Native Americans by the U.S. Cavalry as our country expanded west into Indian territory. We should ask: who profits from war? Our Government spends huge sums of money to finance war: equipping and maintaining the military, the conduct of the war itself, and prolonged treatment for the casualties thereafter. A wide spectrum of businesses, a “war industry,” exists to fill the needs of war making. The resources thus expended, materials, human effort and dollars, are therefore unavailable for other needs of our society. Many social programs suffer: housing, health care, education, maintenance of infrastructure, etc. . . . All in a real sense pay for the cost of war. This consequence too, is a reality of war. So, on a future Memorial Day holiday, let’s dispense with the waving of flags of color and instead unfurl banners of black. Let’s remember past wars, and the dead and wounded, and play a dirges on the pipes, bowing our heads to weep for the places of war that are destroyed and polluted. Let us also mourn for the next generation of widows and war orphans thus born. Charles Bauerlein |