Our more recent wars
You can begin an exploration of our wars on History With RCS. Use one or more of the various search apps there and begin searching: war, wars, or our wars. The apps Labels or Archives are useful tools and may be good places to begin your search.
In this piece I will remark on the nature of some of our more recent wars. They were often call wars on ''terror.'' That, to me, seems a misnomer. In my experience wars are made on people by people. They are made on men and usually include women and children, not to mention youths.These days they usually result in the death and maiming of more noncombatants than combatants. The purpose of most wars is killing men and so crushing their power. Other purposes have included vengeance and taking over resources. Less often, it is for protection from actual invaders. The results of most war are ugly and include: rage, hatred, and death, of puppies, grandmothers, babies, garden plants, plus the usual men, women, ect.
I have heard it suggested that by becoming better at avoiding war and other killing we give ourselves a chance for a better life. Wise men have said that by trying to do no harm we make more room for health and happiness in our lives. This sounds right but people do experience anger, rage, fear, and an urge to vengeance. All feelings which can lead to unpleasant actions. But these days we often kill in rather cold blood when someone of authority tells to do so. Luckily we can sometimes do so by pushing a button or pulling a lever and never having to see the results.
Many of our recent wars do not seem to be resulting in lasting goodness. They have led to the deaths of many including wives and mothers, which resulted in the considerable rancor among survivors. In those wars social organizations were disassembled, infrastructure and other physical resources destroyed. unmeasured damage to our environment resulted as well as partially measured damage to our economies resulted. Another result was the wounding, deadening,
and mangling of hearts, minds, and souls of survivors. Doings and happenings which may be worth considerable effort to avoid.
Still, peace at any cost is not very peaceful and too often of little good. If peace and war extremes, there is likely a mean between them which could be a golden mean. Diplomacy, negotiation, and dialogue toward mutual understanding could be ways to better ways then killing one another.
Just the better use of language could prove useful. Instead of war on Syria or on Ukraine, it may be more realistic, and true, to say war on Syrians and war on Ukrainians. We can be reminded that human persons feel more pain and loss than does a country and thus act more carefully, but maybe not.
I understand terror as being a strong fear. I may be pleased to scare the hell out of an invader of my home and be pleased if he were terrified. However, it is usually best to alleviate fear. Reactions to fear can be unpleasant. Killing people is not a good way to alleviate fear except from the dead. The dead are no longer terrorized, but the friends, family, and countrymen may have lasting anger to express. It seems good policy to consider alternatives to killing and terrorizing. Dialogue for understanding can be an effective alternative.
Those who have been called terrorists have been considered patriotic heroes. They have often been those struggle against a much stronger foe. Some French men and women did a fair job of terrorizing German occupiers. American Colonists did a bit of a job on English military and others before and during the American Revolution. The Irish used some terror tactics to become a nation once again after perhaps a 1,000 years of troubles.
War is often not always the best way of dealing with strong fear or the greater discomfort which is terror.
From the perspective of an American citizen I note that the ability to choose to make war or not was once directly up to American citizens. War was usually honorably declared and in most cases it was up to the citizens to decide to declare war. So, it was up to them to be very clear as why we should systematically kill other humans. Many found that distasteful and so gave up their right and responsibility of making war or not. Humans can be a peculiar lot.
I am am an American, a citizen of the United States so I hope you can excuse me for using us as examples. We have neglect many of our own rules and laws dealing with war. We gave up much of our rule over our armed forces and so let them be move toward being more like a mercenary organization. Not everyone is of this opinion and I can understand why. We, the citizens, gave up much of our power over the financing of American wars. No war was to be finance for over two years unless we voted for that financing. It seems many felt that unreasonably aukward. Taking time each two years to reconsider our reason for killing of humans seemed unreasonable to some so the process was simplified. At one time we were are armed forces, each man of age served at very little pay with a lot of patriotism. So, it was not so easy to kill when we had to do it ourselves. But that did not seem fair. As we had given up much of our war making powers why should we have to serve for little more than patriotism. So, we gave up the idea of a citizen armed forces and paid others a more mercenary like amount to do the fighting. Now we have we have better paid professional soldiers who war to make a living, and for the country. Now it is easier, for us as a nation, to kill people we do not know and have never attacked us. Are armed forces do the killing with do deliberation or decision to do so on their part! At times we have not even heard that a certain people were being killed in our name with our resources! Sad happenings when a people give up governing themselves. Democracy can seem very far away.
Now we let our resources be used to kill strangers in their own land and perhaps their home while making no decision to do so! This now seems a continual activity. Now the killing from high in the sky without witnessing the happening. Or, we can arm others to do so for us. Killing is paid for with resources which were once ours without thought or feeling on our part. We can easily make believe that it is not happening because we have abdicated our responsibility as citizens of a republic. With hazy eyes we do not see that we are residents of what seems very much like an empire. Still we have certain memories buried deep within, of honorable responsibilities and freedoms.
How beautiful were are doings. How clearly we envisioned our republic moving toward democracy.
Have we really let our republic slip through our fingers without a thought or care? It seems so. Are we giving a thought about the kind of people we want to be? It seems not. Are we willing to, at least, talk about it? Are we, we. or strangers whose thoughts are strange?
I believe that we can still an us, a we. I believe we have the courage to reclaim our freedom to govern ourselves. We can practice taking care of ourselves together and give ourselves a chance to revive our early purpose.
We can learn again by doing again. We do not have to give up.
You have read this. That is something. Thank you.
I did not mean to write this much about ourselves, but it feels right to have done so.
richard sheehan