Usually boys and men, that’s who is required to make war, to kill, maim, kidnap, torture and destroy. And in turn they can be killed, maimed, kidnapped, tortured, and destroyed even after they return, though they never really do. They are required to make the wars happen and to keep them going on. One million needed now, and a million more later on. Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed, maimed, kidnapped, tortured and destroyed. Then afterwards society will cry, “Lest we Forget.” But it seems we always forget all of that, each and every time.
The government needs them all, from Audie Murphy to William Calley. Just more boots on the ground, sailors in navy ships, pilots flying fighter jets, and drones operating high above. Lies make it all possible, myths invented to rob the truth of any pain. The next war will be righteous until it’s not. Then peace must come with honor, so claim those who know no honor. An honorable end, but the 1812 overture is triumph for some, retreat for others. There never was honor, just survive, kill or die.
They measure the war dollars in billions and trillions now. Some who don’t fight tend to profit from it all too well. Those who go seldom do. Those who live over there suffer as foreigners visit their homes with carnage and death. It’s called “foreign policy.” The soldiers may find valor or glory by kicking in a door and tearing a man from his family only to wake up every night in the years after worried it will happen in their own home. Checkpoints, outposts, hurry up and wait, call in air support, the Warthogs may kill you just as it does them.
Which leads us to friend and foe, blue on green; unreliable, not-motivated, corrupt and underpaid. They won’t even fight their war for themselves. Michael Caine and Sean Connery tried to do it, but for them it was just a movie. “Hard to trust those who all look the same. It goes both ways. Are they traitors by betraying their allied occupier or is it betrayal in serving with them? How do they know? How do you?
Back home homeless men all wear army jackets, unit insignia stains their skin, and somewhere beneath the rags are ribbons of valor. Motto’s that once sounded cool now mumble with drool from their lips. Vagrants like John Rambo, not welcome in any town. Trained to fight and die but not much else. Movies will be made, hero’s stories told never as it was. The closer Hollywood thinks they get the more they applaud themselves for making art. Human lives are not art. Was that the point? To be a plot? Or to lose the plot when you realize it had no point at all?
The sickness is not just in the mind; it kills the body in the form of Agent Orange, depleted uranium, burn pits, and Gulf War Syndrome. The battlefield is an agar jar where humans and nature are prodded and die. Bombs that were dropped years before are still blowing to pieces children born long after the fighting stops. Those hidden mines are a buried Easter Egg from Uncle Sam. Compensation is thrown around or ignored, but it’s just money. To them it’s numbers on a screen, just as lives are as well. For the suffering it’s all that remains, pain to stain from grandparent to newly born.
War has been called organized murder. It’s where serial killers become legends and crime allowed or prosecuted depending on by who, when, and where. Cover ups are like dirt over the corpses. They say national security at stake but really they mean government reputation. It’s an election year, and all the president’s men must be heroes (not baby killers). A war crime is a bad thing we are told, though what exactly is that? Some things are called legitimate, collateral, and “clean.” It was the context to the murder. A million bombs dropped on jungles or cities, to kill one thousand babies? Acceptable. But a bayonet into a child? That’s going that bit too far.
A stranger may become a brother. You may know him better than your lover who you abandoned to go fight the government’s war. Then he may die, or disappear. When you return to the normality that will never be normal again, that brother meanders back to being a stranger. It’s a bond of fear, isolation, pain, and maybe shame. War does that too. It ruins families but finds new ones. The common spilling of blood can be more binding than the blood in your own veins.
A Red Badge of Courage can just as easily be a yellow stripe down your spine. Heroes die, but the good ones lie. They even write books. Others shy away, afraid of what they did. Brave in the moment when they were needed but the courage is not quite there when a wife needs them to put the bottle down. They may become a loner driving a cab like Taxi Driver, angry and lost or maybe to shoot up ones home town of Chatahoochee. Valor can be stolen, usually by those who want more wars.
Explosions and what one did or witnessed will re-wire the brain. Trauma makes a killer the victim. Though oftentimes one is not quite a victim, only among them. PTSD, shell shock and moral injury are all wounds that stab deep inside, unseen, hidden by those who can’t see the eyes lost as they stare for one thousand yards. Sleep is elusive and when it comes, Gene Hackman’s Colonel Rhodes says you learn to make peace with the ghosts.
You’re always a veteran. “Thank you for your service,” strangers say as they stand, applaud, and shake their hands. Even when shame may wrap their hearts in barbed wire, each beat a stab of remorse. Not even the pistol’s kiss can be enough. No lovers embrace, or child’s touch can set the wrong, right. It was never right to fight and kill. Yet, they were told it was the right thing to do.
Magical dates are worshipped to celebrate the pain; November 11, April 25, or August 6. They’re symbolic ceremonial days that were born from war, September 11 included. Necrotic reminders each year of what humans are capable of doing. Whether a folly or triumph, many died. That moment was never enough to insure against the next one, or the one after that. More wars, more enemies, endless killing. The infinite loop of policies and death.
Over there it’s felt too. Not just by their killers, but those who survived. Once the invaders return home, the war isn’t over but lingers on with the poisoned land, mangled bodies, and broken minds. The unmarked graves that bloom flowers of sorrow get no honor guards or folded flags. They are history’s props, statistics to be thrown around casually above intimate life and miserable death by those who were not there. But that’s just war.
They will need more boots on the ground. Just like before, this war is different. It may really end them all. End us all.
