Wars reveal the most savage, brutal and uncivilised form of human behaviour. The sanction of war and its proliferation impacts on every form of human life, triggering extensive destruction of society, culture and the environment.
War manifests itself as the systematic actions of violence intended to inflict as much suffering as possible upon people and their habitat until one side or the other admits defeat and submits to the victor.
The bloodshed reveals an obscene relationship by those who kill upon those they kill – between the murderers and the murdered. This infliction of death and suffering through military action occurs through domestic and foreign political policy with a singularity of view of the right to take away the lives of people for ideological purposes.
Human beings are the only species that willingly murders and engages in mass slaughter of each other. We delude ourselves if we make claims about our evolution. Regular outbursts of collective barbarism explode the myth of evolution of our species when our evolution mistakenly becomes synonymous with progress. Greed and violence point us in the direction of destruction not an evolved way of life.
Theatre of War
Governments, military and the media refer to the Theatre of War to sanitise its evil. They describe army generals, officers and soldiers as actors.
Language constantly gets employed to marginalise the reality and abuse of life. The politicians, the military and the managers of public opinion never refer to the armed forces or their commanders as murderers and the perceived enemy as the murdered. They justify invasions as a noble cause, as a protection of our way of life. Such views treat the army as a righteous force. The enemy also thinks they engage in a noble cause to protect their way of life.
The religious and the secular persuade the public of the ideology of the just war neglecting wilful murder, grievous bodily harm and endless grief.
Modern weapons increase the numbers in the killing fields and the destruction of human habitats.
The notion of a theatre of war reduces its obscene reality to a Hollywood movie with the pornography of graphic film and pictures. We talk about armed conflict in the language of:
“It’s it terrible what they are doing.”
“We had no choice but to send in the army .”
“We can’t let them get away with it.”
The mindless repetition of such bland statements ensures the public have no intention in demanding change from the senseless slaughter of people sanctioned by political leaders who lust for power and control.
The belief and identification in the ideology of war, an abstraction from the field of existence, makes the lives of men, women and children expendable, as well as their social environments.
Various nations states perpetuate national and international crimes to show their superiority and desire to ensure their interests take priority over all else.
Governments pay lip service to the UN Charter of Human Rights. These conflicts have no regard for human rights – such as the right to:
- Life
- Safety
- Security
- A home
- Food
- Travel
- Peace of Mind
- Sleep and more.
Criminal Acts
There is no separation of war from war crimes. The politicians, the military, the weapons industry, and the entertainment industry promotes power, profit and a legacy – regardless of the suffering.
The mass destruction of life obliterates communities, places of worship, hospitals, schools, museums, culture, the arts and much more. Governments and organisations, such as NATO, provide the military with access to a full range of lethal weapons designed by theoretical/applied science and built by engineers to employ weapons launched from the sky, ground and sea.
The primary aim in conflict? To kill people in unform and knowingly bring death and suffering to men, women and children. Rich and powerful will force leaders and populations of smaller countries to submit to their demands.
The traumatisation of soldiers and civilians alike can continue for decades. The horrendous emotional and physical suffering continue from one generation to another – nightmares, guilt and blame.
Ask the Germans. Ask the Muslims. Ask the Jews. Ask the Cambodians. Ask the Ukrainians. Ask the countries who have endured genocide, bombing, assassinations, torture, occupation and much more.
The Leaders, the Led and the Media
The public elevate the nation, the ideology and the leader into a state of transcendency thereby sanctioning of criminal acts.
Citizens rally around their leaders to support their leaders. Presidents, Prime Ministers and Generals perpetuate the massive self-deception of being on the right side, on the side of the good. The word evil applies to such mass killing with all its consequences.
In the 1930s, the elected Fascist government told German citizens of the threats to the Fatherland on either side of their country. The Fascist government claimed that to the west of Germany, Britain had imperial rule of 25% of the world with its subjugation and occupation of numerous countries. Britain and France engaged in war with Germany between 1914-1918 and then humiliated Germany with the Versailles Treaty demanding Germany paid for the cost of the war.
The German government said the imperialist UK and American capitalism wanted to destroy the German way of life. To the east of Germany, they claimed Russia wanted to impose the ideology of Communism on the Fatherland to destroy Germany’s National Socialism.
The output of such sustain propaganda left the German public in fear of two powerful blocks of ideological powers threatening their national socialism. The German secret services, the police and the judiciary ensured the silencing of alternative views on the domestic front.
The deluded Hitler said Germany would strike first rather than let their perceived enemies attack Germany first. He sent the army into Czechoslovakia and Poland to ‘liberate’ the German speaking territories. Consequence? This initial invasion led to more than 50 million deaths in the space of six years. The Allies won and Germany lost when Germany generals raised the white flag with the death of more than five million Germans, soldiers and civilians.
The ideology of national self-interest reveals itself in liberal democracy as much as in totalitarianism or religious dogma. Science and secularism must also bear the weight of perpetuation of the killing fields, as much as other citizens who form a collective blindness of the dark aims of their representatives. Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and more have skeletons in the cupboard of fusing faith with political ideology. Publicly and privately, far too many people of religious faith have aided and abetted the racist, discriminatory and murderous policies of the nation state.
So-called victors, who achieved the goal of inflicting more suffering than the losers, remain detached from accountability.
Respect for Life or Murderous Intent?
In the absence of a genuine evolution in our species, we submit to ideology, which matters far more than respect for life. We fail to uphold values mirroring a deep empathy for others. There is submission to the murderous intent of our political masters.
We witness unresolved savage instincts, lack of progress in human development and an increasing despair about human behaviour, past, present and future.
With no knowledge of freedom, the boxed in mind indulges in spectacles of slaughter in a world of gain and loss, victory and defeat. Such a mindset requires social/economic/political institutions with the media to cooperate to ensure the identification of the public with nationalistic beliefs of the political left, right and centre. The media cooperates with the government to ensure the marginalisation of those who refuse to subscribe to the barbarism of armed conflict, sometime perpetuated year after year.
In the glorification of ideology, the nation state, democratic or non-democratic, transfers authority onto its leaders desiring to impose catastrophes on the lives of perceived threats. Those who reveal the criminality of state violence find themselves dismissed as naïve, idealist and out of touch with reality The proponents of invasions and acts of terror reveal the depth of being out of touch with the reality of the consequences of inflicting suffering of huge numbers of people by land, air or sea.
Anti-war protest gives priority to taking steps to find a resolution from day one. Such organisations and individuals show deep values, respect for life and critiques of the corrupt mind. Resolute voices to end the violence may be a tiny minority, but they offer a moral backbone as an alternative to the collective mass submission that identifies with one side and seeks to destroy the other.
Without exception, every battle entails the wilful and intended slaughter of innocent civilians, the flight of refugees and the loss of basic requisites such as food, hunger, shelter and medicine. Conflict between armies and armies and organisations include assassinations, rape, torture, starvation and sustained terror.
Officers, soldiers and military personnel sacrifice dignity – killing replaces kindness cruelty replaces compassion bringing out the worst in people through negating existence of their fellow humans and their habitats.
Us and Them
The separation into us and them dismisses all sense of intimacy between people. We are on the side of the good and they are on the side of the evil. Both sides hold to the same view. The division of who is good and who is evil perpetuates the suffering. The military murder the enemy, namely their perceived identity. Governments and generals regard it is legitimate to bomb cities and ensure systematic destruction through various other means, too. They regard compassion and steps for conflict resolution as a weakness.
Soldiers obey orders. They do what their officers tell them to do or face punishment. Like the enemy and citizens, they sometimes pay the ultimate price for their obedience – a terrible death, physical disfiguration, immensity of pain, suicidal thoughts, guilt and years of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Family, friends and fellow soldiers suffer immense mental torment witnessing the suffering of the men and women who cam home from the battlefield.
Victory reflects the triumph of evil over evil. The renunciation of violence requires a systematic exploration throughout society of the conditions supporting violence. Conflict and suffering take place in society. Domestic/social violence have parallels with international conflicts.
Glorification of violence has become a form of entertainment. You can watch explicit acts of killing in war films, as well as murder/rape/torture/terror/ horror movies, on TV/cinema and play violent computer games and war films. Film producers, directors and the paying public feed each other’s addiction to violence in the craving for sensations of excitement. Young men and women might join the army to get relief from the boredom and mundanity of daily life.
Murderous intent influences the mind of the military on the road to final domination.
The Armaments Industry
The manufacturers of weapons and the sellers of weapons require battles to assess their products to ensure arms deals with every country on Earth.
The industry provides tools to maximise suffering. The terror the state inflicts on another state reveals the depths of alienation from the real world of vulnerable people.
Such men, who clubbed or crawled their way to the top, gain their sense of self-worth through the humiliation and destruction of entire communities, suburbs and regions in the craving to expand their sphere of domination.
The armaments industry sits at the right hand of the heads of nation states.
Five Questions
- Do you support any unresolved violence, lust for power and narcissism of your President or Prime Minister?
- Do you consider yourself a national patriot, an accessory to state murder or neither?
- Do you consider the enemy as national patriots for their homeland, accessories to state murder or neither?
- What is your response to knowing that your President or Prime Minister sends the army/organisation to inflict death and suffering on others?
- What is your response to knowing that the President, Prime Minister or Head of the enemy orders the army/armed faction to inflict death and suffering upon others?