About War

I've noticed that these condensed posts coldly listing pro and con arguments and pointing out nyah-nyah inconsistencies are not getting the kind of response I want. So this post is not about the USA breaking rule number 627, or about how the press is oppressed, it's simply about how I feel about all this.

I come from a country where authority in general, and the military in particular, are regarded with criticism if not downright suspicion. It may be cynical to reason this way, but cynicism is the product of the long and bloody wars that my continent has had to face, over and over again throughout the millennia. Time and again, people thinking they were working for the good of their country, or sometimes even humanity in general, have committed the most outrageous atrocities.
In 1914, all of Europe marched into a 'frischer, fröhlicher Krieg', a fresh and cheerful war. Some ten million people died in four years. To put that number in perspective: if planes would fly into the World Trade Center every single day for four years on end, not even half as many people would die. World War II saw murder beyond number, reaching deep into the dozens of millions of dead people. I've never been witness to any of this, but the memories of it have been rubbed into me from the culture in which I live.

This is, I think, also why so many Americans are in favor of this war; 9/11 wasn't just one of the most horrifying things to happen in the nation's history, it was also the first time that American civilians died at the hands of its enemies –ever, since the Revolution, as far as I know. On that grim day, the US as a country got its first taste of what it means to be the victim of war. And now we see what war does. It produces more war. And this war will in its turn produce more war, and on and on. War is not a solution to a problem. War is like trying to ride a tiger. You can't control it, no matter how hard you try to pretend.

I've heard what kind of a man Saddam Hussein is, and what he has done. He is a monster, there's not much doubt about that. It's not easy to leave Hussein in power. Just like it's not easy not to kill the man who killed your child, but let the judge convict him instead. It's not easy, but it's the way things should be. Things are not the way they should be.

This war will not bring safety, just like executing a murderer doesn't stop murders from happening. It may bring satisfaction to those who believe that at least we're doing something against all the injustice and cruelty in the world. But it's a hollow victory. This is not a safe planet. Horrible, unspeakable things have happened to it throughout its history, and there's no reason why this will change in the future. War is, after all, part of human nature: if this war, started by the safest, richest, most powerful country in the world, proves anything, it's that.

I'm sick of this war.
I'm sick because it shows that mankind still hasn't learned shit. That it has a short memory. That its fifty years of relative peace in at least a part of the world were nothing but a short intermission in the continuing story of humanity, a story written in the blood of the innocent.