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November 11, 2003 ~ Thoughts on Peace and War
Tuesday.
Resolution 44 Stat.1982, enacted by Congress on June 4, 1926:
WHEREAS the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and
WHEREAS it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations...
(Armistice Day). Then, World War II--even more "destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching"--took place. In 1954, November 11 was renamed "Veteran's Day," a day to honor the American Veterans of all wars.
Morgan and I watched Saving Private Ryan a little over a week ago. I've seen that movie a few times before, but the opening scene on the beach at Normandy never fails to move me every time. A heavy rain of ammunition pouring down on those soldiers, so many of them so very, very young. Nowhere to hide. Push on into that onslaught, humans falling all around you, gore and blood and broken bodies. Those soldiers, falling so quickly, most never even reaching the shore. A red, red ocean. And that never-ceasing rain of death. Dear God Almighty, how can anyone ever survive all of that?
There is an indescribably complex conflict of emotion behind the tears in my eyes when I watch that scene. What would I do, were I there? I would push on until I fell, for there is nothing else to do but die. In that situation, you just do. You have to. And I would put myself through that, yes, if I believed enough in a cause. I would offer up my life, for a cause I believed in strongly enough.
But what after, if I made it through? Ah. There's the sacrifice I know that I could never make, no matter how much I believed in a cause. Killing the enemy. Killing another human. Another human, just as complex as myself. My own life for a cause? Sure. Someone else's? I just couldn't, no matter what he stands for. I know that I couldn't. All my life, I try to see into people, past their labels, I try to understand and know them. All of that work, that struggle to have compassion, I won't put it aside for the label "enemy." I wouldn't be able to justify it enough to move that trigger finger. I may be willing to sacrifice my own life, but I'd make a lousy soldier.
War is the language that speaks in our paradigm; it is the popular and accepted method of conflict resolution. Disputes between governments are settled by soldiers from the opposing sides killing one another (and, frequently, bystanders, though unintentionally). Granted, some groups or governments do not restrain themselves to trying only for the soldiers. Regardless, the language is the same. Violence for resolution.
I understand and respect those who have sacrificed their own lives and have suffered the horror of warfare for resolution. Yes, it has bought us freedom. It has. Violence is the rule to reach resolution and freedom, and soldiers, veterans, play by that rule. And, my God, have they sacrificed. It stuns me, how much they have given. For me. For you. Think of that beach at Normandy. That rain of ammunition. Death all around. Their sacrifice is huge. Huge.
While I recognize and admire their sacrifice, and while I note that their end goal is the same as mine--resolution--we don't agree on the method of reaching that goal. I'm still a pacifist. They're still soldiers. I recognize what they have brought me, and I hope that my differences don't disgust them.
World War II, I'm torn on. Yes, Hitler had to be stopped. Had to be. But me, I always look at prevention. Had Germany been treated with more compassion after World War I, more aid, more help, could Hitler have risen to power? I doubt it. He was the savior of a desperate Germany, starving and wounded. If the rest of the world had just helped them a little more...
Those are the patterns that my mind moves in. When I look at the past, I try to see what may have prevented the atrocities, what could have made it so that the soldiers didn't have to sacrifice in the first place. When I look to the future, I wonder how we could prevent the carnage of the past from happening again. I can't shake the thought that violence only fixes problems temporarily, for it leaves scars, resentments, and, until we break out of that language, we'll still keep sinking into atrocities. A pacifist at heart. I am. Can't shake it. I could not, personally, fight those fights, because I can't speak that language. I can't call a human "enemy" and nothing more. And I can't convince that trigger finger to move.
Here we are in a war that, no matter how I look at it, I can't see as just or necessary or right, even by the language of violence. I talk about the why of that here, so I won't go over it again. Oh, what a tangled world we live in.
Four years ago, I looked at the world with clear eyes. War is wrong. Soldiers are wrong. War does nothing. Pacifism is the only way. Everything is much more complex now. My pacifism isn't so clean-cut anymore. I understand the soldiers, too, now. I understand that the world is a rather complex mess, and people aren't going to agree on a clear solution. Maybe the world needs both its soldiers and it's pacifists. We're all striving for the same goal. We just have completely contrary ways of reaching it. I'll look for ways to prevent the wars, but when they happen, soldiers are going to fight them. And I'll keep searching for a more active pacifism.
Those horrifying scenes still in my mind, I think of the soldiers who make that sacrifice, and I feel for them. But I also think of Armistice Day and all of the hope of that statement, "this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations."
Oh, I wish for that so hard; we all do.
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