March 19th, 2008 is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by a coalition of military forces led by the United States. Today is the fifth anniversary of an odyssey for people around the world into the nature of politics, religion, war, patriotism, and the role of powerful nations in the ever-merging global community everyone calls home.
The conflict in Iraq has brought home the nature of war and its consequences in a way that has never been experienced before. The ubiquity of the 24-hour news cycle and the internet have allowed war to be brought to televisions and computers, even cell phones and car navigation systems.
What this exposure has revealed is a truth that has been known to soldiers since the beginning of time: War is hell. Whatever the reasoning and justifications, war is immoral, irrational, and inhumane. War causes people to do unspeakable things to other people. War causes people to dehumanize, brutalize, maim, and kill other people. War is hell.
There has been a lot of visceral reaction to the war in Iraq. Citizens of the United States and the world have been forced to see things most of them never wanted to see. Everyone has learned of war’s depravity, and most have come to realize just how thoroughly they hate war. Quite a few have decided that they will invest a great deal of themselves in stopping this war before it can harm anyone else.
Yet, war is hell. It does not go away just because someone wishes it to. War has causes and effects that reach far deeper and further than the lens can see or the pen can pierce. Wars sometimes are easily started, but few are finished easily or cleanly. More often than not, one war begets another, then another.
Perhaps it is fair to say that war is the final expression of all that is wrong with humanity. Humans are ignorant, selfish, twisted creatures who want everything they want but are unwilling to accept the consequences. Perhaps war represents the last way to avoid those consequences before self-destruction. War reveals humanity to itself, and the view is always horrifying.
War is hell, and what remains is to find the path back from its depraved depths. That path is neither clear nor easy, anymore that the path to it proved to be. In Iraq, as in every other war that has ever been fought, these realities prove to be true, even if they are ignored.
Therefore, the only way is forward. The past is done; the depravity of war has already been unleashed. What is done in the present is what sets the course for the future. However the war in Iraq is finished, there will be consequences. The only question that remains is what those consequences will be.
And those consequences carry their own threat. The war in Iraq did not happen in a vacuum, whatever the truth of its causes may have been. It will not end in a vacuum either, but how it ends will determine whether the threat of war remains.
War is hell. Will that fact be a guide or a promise? What is done in Iraq from this day forward will be the judge.
Cross-posted on Dennis L Hitzeman’s Worldview Weblog
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1 comment:
Yes. It is...
And you are right. This will change us, and it already has. The question before us - as I see it - is are we stepping into the light, or deeper into a darkness from which we have no exit strategy? For the better or the worse, only time will tell. And the only way to honor what so many of our countrymen have fought and died for dating back to 1776 is to continue the struggle in our hearts and minds, to question our leaders, hold up our ideals, defend our honor and challenge the citizenry to live up to their potential, the standard set by those who bravely go where angels and demons fear to tread.
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