The stupidity of war
The stupidity of war
A reflection on the inhumanity of humanity
I am the daughter and granddaughter of ordinary farming folk on Jersey in the Channel Islands, who were subjected to occupation by the Nazi's in World War II from 1940 to 1945. My Mum was 1 years old when they arrived and 6 when they left. Although my family survived the experience, they were forever marked by it.
I later grew up in England during the Cold War, which lasted from 1947 to 1991. My formative years as a young adolescent were spent watching hard-hitting post-nuclear apocolyptic drama's like the 1984 version of Z for Zachariah based in a Welsh valley and Threads based in Sheffield, just over the hills from where I lived. And soaking up documentaries from Panorama on how we are all doomed if the bomb ever drops.
Alongside the Cold War when I was young were ‘The Troubles', from 1968 to 1998. A typically understated moniker for a ‘quiet’ war within the British Isles that went on for 30 years. With IRA bombings of civillians and random bomb threats a frequent fact of life in many parts of England as well as in Northern Ireland.
I didn't sleep much as a child.
Since then, it's hard to think of a time when there hasn't been a war ongoing somewhere in the world. ‘Highlights’ that the UK were involved in alone include the Falklands War (1982), Lebanon 1982-84), the Gulf War (1990-91), Bosnia (1992-95), Desert Fox in Iraq (1998), Kosovo (1998-99), Afghanistan (2001-21), Iraq again (2003-09), Lybia (2011), Iraq/Syria (2014 onwards). And history lessons at school were all about the wars that came before.
Throughout my life I have borne witness to a never-ending vista of pointless destruction and loss of life because someone in power in one country wants something in another country. Or dislikes how another country is run and thinks that they or their puppet could do it better. Or thinks that the people in another country are worshiping the wrong god. Or worshiping the right god in the wrong way. All excuses for destruction, murder, kidnap, rape, terrorism, torture on a mind-numbing, soul-crushing scale when we actually stop a moment to think about it. Millions of people at any one time with their homes destroyed, their lives in tatters, family members lost, roaming the world in search of a safe place to start over. Non-bombed-to-shit countries murmering sympathetic words while playing ping-pong with refugees that they fear will cost money to house and clothe and feed.
Don't get me wrong. I am 100% supportive of the incredibly brave men and women that sign up for any armed forces to defend their country. They are not the problem. In fact they, and the equally brave armed service people they face off with are often the biggest collatoral damage in this ever popular human endeavour called war. Or a special operation. Armed forces have always been seen by those in charge as tools to attack or defend with and all too often they are wielded by power-hungry, greedy, mad, or incompetent politicians or dictators. But, unlike the actors in the films, the platoons of toy soldiers on a table-top battlefield, or the NPCs (non player characters) in a videogame of strategy or marksmanship, the real armed forces are made up of human beings. Whatever side they are on. Human beings who sign up knowing that there is a very good chance that they will be killed, or suffer life-changing injuries, or PTSD. But they do it anyway because they want to protect their country. Their home. The people that they love. Their freedom. From other human beings who also signed up to protect their own home and freedom but who are, for whatever reason, sent to take or destroy that of another. Or sometimes from other human beings who signed up because they were not given a choice.
I am no doubt over simplifying. Humanity is always good at coming up with plausible-sounding excuses for waging war. But I do find the whole thing utterly depressing, particularly given that we are still at it in the 21st century. That's more than 2000 years of pretty much constant war. Somewhere. When will it ever stop?
When the latest phase of the war in Ukraine started in February 2022, my first thought, given my childhood and background, was what do we do if the bomb drops? Nuclear or other. Putin is living in his own version of reality, which makes him doubly dangerous in charge of a nuclear button, but we can at least hope he isn't quite mad enough to press it. So I made plans about the safest place in the house to huddle amidst a blast, got in a supply of gaffa tape and plastic sheeting, iodine sachets, torches, a radio, batteries, gas cannisters for the camping stove. I still have a couple of weeks of food stashed under the bed after Brexit and Covid. I made plans to try to survive any initial chaos and the potential nuclear fallout should things escalate beyond Ukraine. Though frankly if a nuclear attack ever happens I've always prefered the idea of dying in the blast than surviving to suffer the aftermath. And then, like most people in Europe, I started to count the pennies more closely as the impact of war and sanctions kicked in on the cost of living and food and fuel prices and inflation in general shot up.
I am, therefore, no stranger to the theory or occurence of war, though so far I have been lucky enough not to be directly impacted by one. But, yesterday I was floored by a completely different horror of war.
There have been allegations of Ukranian children being stolen and taken to Russia for some time. It is yet another war crime, something else to make me feel sick at the thought of what humans will do to each other in the name of their ideologies. But reading these interviews with some of the mothers and children involved really brought home what that means and had me physically in tears. It gave me something to fear more than nuclear holocaust if war ever reaches these shores again. Like it did not so long ago when my grandparents were quietly running their farm and raising my mother.
As a parent, and like my grandparents, I'm pretty confident that I could at least attempt to face quite a few horrors in the name of trying to protect and care for my son if I had to. If you've read some of my other essays on abuse and the school system, you will know that I already have, albeit home grown horrors wielding words rather than foreign ones with guns. Having a child doesn't make parents more capable, but it sure makes us a lot more determined. But what utterly floored me was the thought of how I would feel, and how my son would feel, if my son was kidnapped by ‘the enemy’. Taken to another country and led to believe that I am dead. Adopted by another family and brainwashed into thinking that these people have done him a favour. Along with the knowledge of how powerless I would be to find him and to get him back unless the very enemy that stole him chose to co-operate. That is a horror that really hit me in the gut, even just thinking about it. And that is a horror that many Ukranian families are facing, right now. And quite probably families elsewhere in the world. Putin is not the only warmongerer who likes to totally ignore the rules laid down for this most high staked of games. Somehow it just never occurred to me that an aggressor could cause so much pain and suffering to civillians without death and destruction being involved.
Hitler either gassed or starved and brutalised the family members he stole, often flogging them to build his concrete towers and bunkers and roads wherever he occupied. The relics of such brutalisation are scattered across Jersey to this day, a stark reminder of how badly humans can go wrong. I only ever managed to stomach visiting the German Underground Hospital once in my youth - the oppressive feel of all the death that went into its creation too much to encourage a repeat visit. Putin, it seems, wants to steal them young, raise and indoctrinate them, and presumably send them back to Ukraine to fight as Russians. I suppose we can't fault his logic given how many troops he's lost. But inflicting separation and the fear of not knowing where your child is or if you will ever see them again is terrorism in its own right.
Human beings rate themselves as the most intelligent species on the planet. Human is the origin for words like humane and humanity. Personally I rate us as the most stupid and least humane species on the planet, but I had hoped that we would grow up one day. My favourite ever film is the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still from 1951. That idea that if we are too pigheaded to manage growing up on our own, some benevolent stranger will see our potential and give us the kick up the arse that we need to get our act together. Perhaps it’s also why I've always loved reading exploratory science fiction about humans on strange new worlds - it inherently assumes that we don't blow ourselves to kingdom come or starve to death on a homeworld that we have utterly destroyed.
At 54 years old I am beginning to lose hope that we will grow up and start to live up to the name and the potential of our species within my lifetime. I can still hope that my son's generation will manage it. His is perhaps the first generation ever to have full access to information about all the wars that we have ever fought. Are fighting. From a young and idealistic age. We desperately need to squash those wanting to censor and white-wash our history just in case it upsets someone. We damn well should be upset. Perhaps if my son's generation get upset enough about the horrors and cruelty that humans have routinely inflicted on each other for hundreds, no, thousands of years, they will learn from our mistakes and humanity will finally live up to its name.
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