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In Honor of Memorial Day and In Hopes of Peace

Anyone know where this war started? I'm not talking about the date Bush declared war, not why he chose to go to war, not even 9/11. What I want to know is why they feel so threatened by us? (remember: pre-invasion) Why they felt 9/11 had to be caried out. What happened?

I've heard war begets war. If you think about it, it's true. It's a spiral, a bottemless pit we've dropped ourselves into countless times. Lets say there are two groups. They know little about each other and generally don't care about the other's existance (like how hardly any of us knew Iraq existed before the war). Then, one day, a couple people from those groups get mixed up in a tussle and one of them dies. The people from the deadman's group are of course upset and want for this person to go to trial. This is where it get's tricky. He may or may not go to trial. He may or may not recieve a severe penalty. But the whole thing comes down to is is the victem's group satisfied or not? If they are then the trial is the last significant event in the matter. If not. . . . I'm not saying the whole group would be unsatisfied. Each group is made up of individuals that relate to each other in a way they feel that binds them together, but they are still individuals with separate thoughts and feelings and all it would take is just one malcontent idiot. Maybe the idiot goes and does something drastic like what Anakin did with the sandpeople. Maybe all the idiot/s do/es is be inhospitable to the guy with the anger management problems and ends up dead himself. Maybe the idiot does nothing so nothing happens and isn't all that idiotic after all.

But let's say he does as I'm talking about war, not peace.

Then tensions would grow. People who were once satisfied would call this new development unfair. There was no need for that. We've already payed the price; you have no right to demand more!

After that, the idiotic cycle repeats itself, growing larger and larger each new repetition until it's possible to have reached the scale of war and proving that war is originally created by idiots.

Does that mean all Arabs are bloodthirsty idiots? No. Does that mean that everyone in the Bush administration (or Bush himself) is a bloodthirsty idiot? No. Does that mean our soldiers are bloodthirsty idiots? No.

There are two principle reasons to fight in a war: 1- you are a bloodthirsty idiot out to massacre the other side; 2- to end the war. There is a third type, the kind that are in for a profit of some sort, but they don't actually fight. Surprisingly, most of the actual fighters (at least in our army) are type 2. Talk to them sometime. You'll be suprised at how many refuse to pick fights with normal people.

And at how many of them will say that killing is the scariest and worst thing in the world.

One of the elementary facts everyone has ground into their brain is that it is wrong to kill, especially other humans. This isn't the "If-I-don't-clean-my-room-my-mom-will-ground-me" wrong, which many of us easily ignore (glances around own room). No, this is a deep-rooted subconscious thought beyond our conscious control. I will not go into why it is like that as it is a whole essay within itself, if not several. The only exceptions (that I know of) are psycopaths and sociopaths.

So if it's that deep in us, how do we still manage to kill? To do that there are two essential mindstates needed. (Mods, please do not get mad at me for this. This is in no way intended as a guide on how to kill, nor have I actually killed someone. This whole paragraph is based on firsthand accounts from soldiers). One is that the enemy itself is inhuman, making it okay that they are being killed. This state is the easiest to achieve and is normally feuled by propaganda during a war. The other is that you are inhuman, making it okay that you kill and, as a side effect, can be killed. That's the hardest bit. When people talk about how hard it really is to kill or the inability to pull the trigger, they're talking about that. Becoming inhuman.

After all this war begets war stuff though, how the hell will this ever end? Won't the idiocy just cotinue to escalate? Alot of the times, it does. Both World Wars had escalations of idiocy up the wazzoo. The desire for peace comes when the idiots (I suppose that's a technical term now) start feeling that their cause isn't worth the cost of the monstrosities of war. However peace can only be made if both sides feel that way. Peace is an agreement, meaning that two separate entities are required. This is why we can't pull out of Iraq yet. We all (well. . . most of us) are more than ready to make peace, to leave this war, but the other sides aren't. No agreement, no peace. Oh, well. Both sides only tend to agree after suffering humongous losses and one side is kicking the other's @$$ so bad that defeat is imminent. Just sucks for us that the opposing sides like being killed.

But when is a war really over? The shockwaves of the Civil War can still be felt in racism. The ancient war between the Palestinians and the Israelis still rages on. Is it when the treaties are signed? Resentment can last long after that. Is it when there are no more enemies left? There's no way to guarrentee that they're gone. For what it's worth, I don't think a war is truely over until the ideals that drove that war cease to be of importance to anyone and are forgotten.

Thank you for reading. Please comment.

This essay is dedicated to everyone who has died, fought, and killed in a war, but in particular to my german teacher, Sasha, who taught me a great deal more than how to sprech Deutch. Arigato gouzaimasu Sasha-sensei.

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