Proud mother come and see what your soldier sons are doing, see them search crying children who no longer can walk the streets to go from home to school. They kidnap little boys, to torture or imprison. Maybe they shatter their arms and send them on their way. Cry for your soldier boys when they come home to you, ironed uniforms, medals and ribbons but gone are their child like eyes replaced by the killers gaze. Your soldier sons chose government over his own mum.

Proud father can you see your sons courage, as they fight civilians who throw stones and pick up the gun. They blow to pieces buildings in search of terrorists, only to find them under each body crushed by debris. The warrior serves his master, killing whoever he is asked to. This is called honour. Paid to serve, obediently violent. For many it’s a religion to conquer and kill, to be done with a smile on their face. For others its just his time to do what you, yourself did. You remember when you did this too Dad? You had a war or two, too. The calling for each generation, death, war and taxes.

Sisters and daughters look away from their screaming girls and women. The soldiers leave them bleeding, bayonet or bullet. Or the blood runs down their legs as warriors climb out from between them. Snipers spy from far away, watching mother and child. Pull of a trigger. One life over. Then another. Proud, brave and courageous the sniper, another terrorist stopped in the crib of youth. Or ten more made. The war must go on, policy is more sacred than life.

The occupiers ensure that they are imprisoned and controlled inside their homeland. Home is a ghetto, a camp for those who can not flee. So they must live with the fleas, like them and even fight as they would. Tall city blocks or suburban flats, jungles filled with trees or oceans of sandy dunes, the occupiers come as they please. The loyal soldiers believing they are right, bold with the dignity of might. God and Country are their drugs, it keeps them high enough to fight. The occupied are heathens, non-humans, the enemy. Even when it’s for their own good they must die and suffer.

Those cosy back at home, watching through news papers and screens, scrolling and fascinated while gorged on indifference or strong with a chickenhawks courage, is this in your name? Aroused by wars exciting colours, the blood and bruises and pretty explosions all so that the degenerate can orgasm by proxy. Or those who pretend to hate it, to oppose it while putting the hand out dependent on the warmachines welfare or to feed it’s mechanism with labour and bureaucratic senselessness. This is your religion, the sacrifice of innocents so that the god of state may see another day. Each death birth, the new life of policy came from a painful rape. Own it, be proud, this is the state.

Fast moving jets and hypersonic missiles, drones that can see from far away, satellite images and artificial intelligent machines doing what the gladius and musket once did. Hail Caesar, for the glory of Rome, Sieg Heil! for the Fatherland, Manifest destiny and Uncle Same, for the Emperor, Banzai!, It’s the Promised land! And God save the King or Queen or Non-binary other. To make heaven on earth, comrade! The reasons always there, conquer, kill, occupy, colonise, genocide.

The unmarked graves beneath the cement dust or muddy fields, bits of meat rotting in the jungle heat, sand washes over the dried bones or thousands through chimneys, up in smoke. Body bags to be flown home, wrapped in flags, heroes return, necrophilic ceremonies for unknown soldiers, the forgotten fallen uncounted and unknown, was the war won? And who for? You, them, us or they? Did the dead feel better knowing it was a victory?

The living remain, broken bodies and minds. Innocents bludgeoned away. Mother and father see your son, as he stumbles home, no longer your boy, but a man? Limping or his mind in a fog, dependent on medicines. The drill sergeant to a therapist, he went for some cause, now he’s a lost cause. Is this glory? All the dying, all that killing, so politicians can continue to run? To make the nation great, again? To secure real estate? The hero returned. Proud? Is there enough money to be made to bury a baby in another unmarked grave? The killers always easy to bribe, the mourning mothers never could be.

Those who remain, is this the life? To live and suffer knowing that tomorrow another war, more invaders will come. The land polluted, bombs waiting to snatch life and limbs in the years after, cancer slithers through the veins, the remnants of the invaders yet to return and killers who live nearby. Neither friend or foe, just warriors fighting for an unending end. The innocent a prop, a baby wrapped in barbed wire, an innocent stripped like a tree, another crater a mothers heart and a fallen building a fathers heart, just collateral debris in the geography of war. None of which matters to the planners, the masters, the distant voyeurs who shrug, “that’s war.”

Wait until they drop the big one, all of them. Every single one. No more cities, no more countries, mutually assured victory. Life goes on, barely. That burning of the flesh, searing pain, brilliant light in the eyes, rushing winds and eternal dark is what pride feels like. All kids dead, no lives better or worse. To the planners, above all else they didn’t win. No one does. Their wisdom for victory, death and mayhem, that’s the end.