There’s something I’m seeing here, sporadically, that disturbs me. I’ve been seeing it for a while, and passing it by, but it’s reaching a point where I just can’t help saying something. I don’t want to point the finger at anyone, so I’ll address this to you and let those on the thread sort out where they stand.
I’m not naïve about these things, and I understand that war is sometimes necessary. I may not agree that this coming war, at this time, is necessary, but I understand that some could feel that way, and I’m willing to discuss the question with full respect to those with whom I disagree. What I find incomprehensible is the growing sense that people are looking at this not as a nasty job that perhaps we must reluctantly do, but as something to be regarded with pleasure, delight, and anticipation. It comes out in the words: “let’s roll”, “let’s do it”, “let’s take ‘em out”. There are people around who seem to be looking at this war like a child waiting for Christmas morning. It’s bad enough to see this attitude coming from bloggers on the lower edge of sentience. Seeing it here, coming from people that I’ve debated with as friends, is really and truly disquieting, and it makes me wonder what kind of people, really, we are.
So a question, for those who feel alluded to….
How many of you have ever been up to your elbows in human blood? Not the nice blood you get when you cut yourself around the edges, the stringy lumpy stuff you get when a human body comes up against a flying chunk of metal? How many have held a young man in their lap and felt the hiss and gurgle as his lungs filled up with blood? How many have tried to treat a multiple shrapnel case with a first aid kit? Smelled human bodies decomposing? Seen the dead stare in the eyes of children forced to see what no human should ever see?
In short, how many of you actually have any idea what happens in a war, when you get behind all that bland technotalk and cable TV coverage?
If you don't know, it doesn’t make you anything less. It just makes you lucky. It also behooves you, though, to admit that there are things a few of us know that you don’t. Don’t think you’ll understand it from anything I write, or from all the news footage you’ve ever seen, squared and cubed. You won’t. Accept that. Just read the next couple of paragraphs, and think for a moment.
War may at times be necessary. There are times when horrible things must be done to prevent more horrible things from happening. Whether or not this is one of those times is not something I will address here. There is only one point to this: war may be necessary at times, but it is never, EVER, a thing to approach with pleasure, with glee, with anything but horror. If I believed to the deepest core of my being that this war was absolutely and beyond question necessary, it would still make me sick to know what is about to happen. I wouldn’t back away from it, but I sure as hell wouldn’t be prancing and dancing about it, and when I see others behaving that way it flat out disgusts me.
We intend to go out and kill people; maybe a lot of people. Some of those people may be evil. Some may just be patriotic young men who feel it is their duty to fight against a foreign aggressor. Some may just be in the way. If we absolutely must do these things, then we must. There are sometimes reasons why such things must be done; there is never a reason to feel good about it.
The troops in the field may need to have that gung-ho spirit, though I get the impression that they have less of it than some folks on the home front do. When that spirit starts appearing here, though, I get the feeling that it might be hastening the arrival of the day when we start treating these decisions with a lightness they do not deserve. Sometimes I think that day is already here.
It’s not a happy thought. |
