The war begins and we begin to count
The dead and wounded: such and such and much.
We scrutinize the numbers as they mount
We dare not feel the shattered dreams they touch.
We analyze and matricize results.
Declare a victory when none exists.
The thought that someone wins a war insults.
This myth through every fog of war persists.
The would-be poet, teacher, engineer.
The father, mother, uncle, nephew, son.
The old, the young, the crooked, straight & queer.
The war hurts you and me and everyone.
Division and subtraction do not build.
No souls are filled with joy; no gardens tilled.
In each armed conflict both sides lose. Such waste!
Humanity needs everyone! Make haste!
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Turning to prose:
One of the things that the “winning side” of a war loses is the opportunity to spend those resources spent on war instead spent on making life better for its citizens. Even if the “winners” have a very quick and lopsided victory, they will have contributed to world-wide pollution and global climate change that will negatively impact nearly everyone on the planet including most of the people on the “winning” side and their descendants. Many of the soldiers will have died, but in almost every single case, many more innocent people will have died. In some cases, those will be minimal for the “winning” side, but not always. Meanwhile, soldiers who returned to society, even if they are not physically impacted permanently are surely impacted psychologically. Among other things, if they were successful, they killed other human beings. Some of those human beings were almost certainly innocents, but even the other soldiers were mainly people forced into fighting.
In a way, they will be carrying seeds of some very bad experiences and some of those seeds will undoubtedly leak out into that person’s environment impacting, his friends and family, as well as random strangers. But the war mentality is not limited to serious effects on fighting soldiers. To some small extent, everyone is damaged. There is more stress for everyone. There is always the threat of reprisal or that someone you care deeply about will be maimed or killed. Not only are people’s sense of fear heightened; typically, so is their hatred and anger. For many, this will be directed far beyond those actually most responsible for starting a war.
During a war, people will be asked, or ask themselves, to view the killing of a whole bunch of their fellow humans as the best course of action. Some will embrace that with relish and a side order of over-generalization. Others will embrace the killing with reluctance. Few will object outright. So, after your victory, you will be living in a society that rationalizes killing others more often and more easily than they did before. Of course, it’s generally even worse for the “losing” society. Both sides lose. The “losing side” loses more and that keeps the war fueled as long as possible. But make no mistake. Both sides lose.
Democracies have often gone to war against each other. But far more often in modern times, war has been instigated by dictators. They rule by hate and fear. Having an enemy is an entry fee and a talking point. If there’s no-one else around, they’ll simply pick on the vulnerable within their own society. Through constant repetition about extremely rare cases or even just outright lies, people can actually be made to hate people who have, in reality, done them zero harm.
Time to wake up.
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petersironwood 