Blood & Light in the War Zone

2022-03-26

"The dirt-encrusted tanks rumbled in single file, the first driver, fatigued, suddenly braked, as he saw a man kneeling, his hands out to stop the tank, the driver looked down and wept, so did the man." Chesterton said “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” What do we gain from war? The answers are all to do with geopolitics, belief, commerce or fear. What do we lose from war? The a...

"The dirt-encrusted tanks rumbled in single file,

the first driver, fatigued, suddenly braked,

as he saw a man kneeling, his hands out to stop the tank,

the driver looked down and wept, so did the man."

Chesterton said “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

What do we gain from war? The answers are all to do with geopolitics, belief, commerce or fear. What do we lose from war? The answers are so many that they are lost in the multitude of count.

In these lands, which were bequeathed to us as borderless and boundless stretches, men first came and claimed ownership. They then built barriers to differentiate and dissuade encroachment. And in one stroke, all kinds of barriers got established. And everybody was ready to defend or expand.

And war was enacted on the foundation of fear, of losing hegemony, of showing a perverse machismo, for power, for commerce. Man was ready to die in the firepit of battle, than be seen as weak for trying to save the earth from its scorching end. Man's massive ego rises and dies on the edge of its limitless foolishness.

As Eisenhower once said “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”

And the stories of heroism and tragedy never end. May it be Syria, Palestine, Iran, or Ukraine.

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