War and Blame

 

War in our time - who is to blame?

 

 

 

I have watched whilst whole countries have sunk into the welter of conflict. I have seen the communities tearing themselves into bloody shreds. I have felt war erupt. Not slowly sliding into ever greater terror, but flaring in a nova of hatred that overtakes even families -whilst a million eyes have watched, and through the lens have seen the horror of this madness.

The reasons for its appearance, the deeper understanding of the political situation, have been analysed and systemised, reported and debated whilst we nod or argue, or support a faction and denounce another. And all the while the incessant barrage of knowing drowns out the simple action of the man with the gun, or the person with the bullet.

When on that morning before they killed and they sat squat on a toilet or plucked toast from grill, did they smile over the killing machine, its polished barrel propped against the television. Did they wear it in innocence? Did the deep underplaying political situation put the gun to a brother or someone's mother? Did the colours on a cotton sheet turn husbands into killers? Leave the bedside, snatch a bite before you go, and field a rifle. Not once in some horrific school killing frenzy, nor a few times across the bare tarmac between the high-rises of an impoverished estate but a million times in every lane in the land.

The houses burn, the madness grows and it is fuelled by trucks. In their thousands they come, flooding, pulsing across the boarders of the afflicted country like poison into a wound - to rumble up streets past supermarkets and cinemas to disgorge bullets and bombs; shells and grenades. Each message of death posted on its way by greedy men eager to fan the flames of hot desire and supply the needs of the madness.

And behind the truckers sit more men with the deeper political understanding, manipulating and guiding the process. Fifty years on and the scars will still burn. Fifty years on, when the youths of that day see only madmen and shake their heads with awe. And for now where lovers once caressed across the dormant lines the weeping hospital trolleys bear the daily toll of each weapon sold, of each trembling finger suddenly tightened. A simple movement, a fraction of a movement, to come into the mind of men and women who can only see the fight. Every thump of metal against flesh sparking a tragedy that ripples outwards past the daughter standing silent by the morgue, past the Aunts, Uncles, Fathers and Mothers. It echoes in the collective and knocks loudly on the future - in the name of a higher cause. Without such a cause who could deliver such cruel deaths?

In the name of righteousness, for who has killed in a cause that is wrong? In the name of a flag, in the name of a god? Show me a battle that is fought for any reason worth fighting for. Show me the God, show me a righteousness that can countenance the crippling gait of war. We fight but a ghost, put our faith in a chimera, put our faith in before our lives. In the face of burnt shell holes of homes and chaos of crushed concrete, in the teeth of the screaming child, amid the bloody carnage - this faith, this insanity reigns like a demented beast. And is just a suddenly gone. The murderer back to the streets, back to a nine-to-five and cowering kids. Back to cope with a lifetime of trauma. A litany of inhumanity: Afganistan, the Balklans, Cyprus, Iraq, Tamil, Palestine, Argentina, Beruit, Defur. Not one country, not one nation has ever escaped the psychosis. It's stronger than life. A person can die in Its name and be happy, can kill in Its name and be free. And still not know why.

 

 

 

And still we watch, the flickering screen in high resolution detail and do nothing, save count our blessings that it is in some other land. Who is to blame? The man with the gun, the trucker? The arms salesman? The authorities who let the containers of weapons sail? The factory worker? The multinational arms company? The politicians? The bank worker? The tax payers of the countries who supplied the guns? The watchers who did nothing? Complicit all.