PEACE can only come through WAR

WAR. To some people the word conjures images of men blown to bits dragging their intestines behind them along a trench full of piss, shit, blood and mud, clawing their way toward a half dead medic, rotting flesh stuffed beneath their fingernails, desperately searching for a needle full of morphine and a fun size bag of M&M’s. To others, WAR is more than a word; it is a reality, a feeling, an existence, a being. Some are constantly at WAR with some unidentifiable lifelong enemy, who they have been bred to hate without any understandable presently relevant reason. Some are at WAR with essentially themselves, perhaps battling terrifying inner demons with terrifying substances that result in terrifyingly bitter ends. Many who know WAR have never known PEACE, and if you try to introduce them to PEACE they are altogether too frightened to make its acquaintance. WAR does things to men that those who have never experienced WAR cannot even begin to imagine, and even if they could, their psyches would shatter at the mere prospect of such infinite impropriety that sucks the soul from the iris of any eye that dares glance in its fearsome direction. No matter how you say it, WAR is not in any way a pleasant prospect for anyone who might find themselves suffocated by the rigor mortis grip of its cold, decaying, dead hands.

Yet, in spite of all this madness—maybe even because of it—we continue to fight. We are overwhelmingly addicted to the glory of endless destruction. Unlike cigarettes, there is no patch, or gum. No, the only way you can kick this habit is to bite the bullet. Falling on your own sword is for “fairies.” It’s a one way road into town, the bridge out has been blown to smithereens, and the river is raging and too deep to ford. Whatever corner of the globe you call home the story is the same: a population in shellshock, a culture of desensitization, men too cowardly to challenge political superiors despite their own good conscience. The only things that change are the battlefields and the tactics used. All men live simply to die.

Which is why there is nothing more honorable than a Hero’s Death. And there is no death more heroic than dying trying to save a friend. So, if one of my friends enlists, then I must enlist, too. If I enlist, then you’ll enlist, and that means your younger brother will enlist as well. His best friend and his older brother will enlist because they can’t stand to see him stand alone. Before you know it we all know each other, and from now on it’s Us versus Them. Who wins is anybody’s guess.

The worst part is, nobody knows which side is which. There are those who might claim to know but it’s a good bet they’re out of their minds. Nowadays, we’re all paranoid schizophrenic. Everybody takes something to go to sleep, something to wake up, to take off the edge, to clear our head, to get up, to blow off some steam, if not kill, at least numb the pain. You’d be a damned fool not to. In this environment there is no hope of salvation or survival other than a good buzz. Real combat requires a zest for peeking out over the edge, and few men have balls enough to do it stone sober. One slip and the consequences would be dire. It’s doubtful that you’ll grab a branch that won’t immediately give out and snap as you plummet the whole way down, like Wile E. Coyote, without the cartoon sound effects.

Your physician may tell you it’s suicide. Your pastor might call it self sacrifice. Whatever it is, it’s definitely in the name of the Greater Good, so in essence there is no reason to worry. The Universe is a big place that works itself out in mysterious ways. God is unlikely to share His Grand Design; we must just have faith He knows where we’re going. We mustn’t question why a white kid from rural Kansas is yelling obscenities at a brown mother cradling her infant son, with an automatic rifle pointed at her unarmed husband, in a language nobody on the block understands, in the middle of the poorest ghetto in Baghdad. We mustn’t question that the blood runs red from the wound near her husband’s shoulder blade as he slumps against the concrete wall, and his wife begins to scream and wail and cry. We must not question when the blood runs red from the fresh wound in the gut of the kid from Kansas, and he slumps against the opposite wall as the woman’s oldest son appears in the doorway heavily armed and pissed off. And we must not question the kid from Kansas grabbing the standard nine from his waist and laying waste to a clip in the mother’s oldest son’s chest before he loads another clip and sticks the gun in his own mouth and pulls the trigger, and the gun falls smoking to the floor.

May the widow finally have her PEACE.


1/13/09