Restoring Dignity After War

Many bad things happen in war - it's just the destructive nature of war. For civilians it's not the nature of war that is important, it's the nature of the human beings caught up in war.

There's a science to waging war that civilians know very little about. There are schools with professors, venerable war colleges, well-educated alumni and elite thinkers on how to wage better wars.

It seems strange to say better wars. Better is a funny word to use when describing wars. Better wars are less expensive, kill less civilians, cause less physical damage, but by nature war is still destructive and chaotic - a combination of the controlled and uncontrolled circumstances. And we hear about the mistakes that happen in war, but as we say, that's war.

The affects of war on civilians begins in the time well before; in the time leading up to war. Preparing a nation for war is a systematic process in which we're introduced to the opponent; in which we're taught to marginalize and dehumanize them. This process is necessary because at the deepest level we feel empathy for others and find it difficult to inflict suffering, but we're trained with an onslaught of press releases and media coverage about the evil nature of the opponent. All of this effort leading up to war is designed to desensitize us and override our natural tendencies not to fight.

In the mental preparation leading up to war material is circulated to educate us about who is good and who is evil. We're taught that the opponent is not good, that their policies are not good, that their lifestyle, their manner of speaking, dress, color of skin, culture, religion and just about anything else that is different - is not good. This process leads us down a path to dismiss our opponent's humanity, something we need to do as humans in order to accept killing other humans.

After the battle, or war, this mindset is not easily altered back. We continue to view the opponent as less human. We may engage in systematically stripping our opponent of their cultural identity in an attempt to replace what was theirs with what is ours - an attempt to replace the old with the new.

It's not clear whether the recent incident in Bagram Afghanistan where American troop burned the Muslim holy book was an act of aggression, but it is quite likely that this was a result of a great deal of disregard for the old. Although the burning may not have been carried out with malicious intent and it was probably the result of carelessness, it was nevertheless likely related to a decade of disregard toward the opposing culture.

The trouble we face now is that there's no effective means to change such long term ingrained attitudes within ourselves. After waging war for a decade it's become natural to disregard the enemy. In this incident, yet another in a string of embarrassing incidents, America may finally realize it's been engaged in war for too long and that the resultant disregard for others is not and should not be characteristically American. Simply put, the wars have gone on for too long, put too many American troop at risk and presented too many opportunities for mistakes. Now more than ever it seems right to say, "America, it's time to put wars behind and put to work to restoring dignity."

A Sad Story Plays Again, Again, Again,...

A story breaks across the news boards. In a California Federal officers; agents trained and duly authorized to carry weapons and then something goes tragically wrong.

It's a sad story and these were Federal employees required, authorized and trained to carry weapons , but here we will go again with another round of discussion about guns and how wonderful it is to carry one. The bottom-line is that guns are deadly weapons and humans, whether professionals, average citizens or criminals, are fallible - that part of human nature is very well documented.

Put a gun in the hands of a human being and you've got a bigger risk - a much bigger risk, of a deadly outcome than if there was no gun. This is really simple stuff, but we keep going back to our right to bear arms as if that makes any difference to those who've suffered at the wrong end of the trigger. Guns have purpose, but most people shouldn't have one because their purpose is not compelling enough to outweigh the risk that they'll suffer a momentary bout of depression, anger or miscalculation.

A bullet travels with purpose to its target and it can't be taken back - it is the final solution - it can't be taken back. And that's really a critical point, because so much of our human interaction is flawed and we so often find ourselves apologizing for something we'd said or done at a weaker moment, but with the bullet there's no going back unless you believe in a second chance in the life hereafter.

For Constitutionalists a better effort would be to defend life.