Civilian Death
In the latest episode of punish the civilians for the deeds of the maniacs, one must ask; “where are the leaders?” This isn’t a right or left wing binary issue. It is a human issue. Now before you point to my moralizing condescension, let me be very clear about my own conduct in destroying civilians. I volunteered again, and again, and again, to go to combat. I went on “capture/kill” missions over 150 times in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and several other parts of the globe. When I went on those missions, especially when I was in a mid-level leadership position, my primary goal was to bring everyone in my crew home to their families. I was very aggressive. That aggression ended up causing the deaths of civilians on a couple of occasions. So know that I am not on any kind of soap-box; I am writing with bloody hands.
Because of my part in the destruction of civilians, I need to be one of the people to address the present situation being plastered all over every news source in the world. There is no need for me to point out who is right or wrong here. We are all wrong. People who willingly commit atrocities are wrong and people who willingly respond to those atrocities with atrocity are the same.
The solution? It is not an easy one, and it will take serious leaders who can exercise patience in the surge of emotions created by acts of random terminal violence.
That solution is to “pump-the-brakes.” It will not be a popular solution and it will take a strong team of leaders who have skin in the game to explain why it is important to slow down and approach the issues of civilian deaths from a humanist perspective.
What does that look like? Instead of unleashing airstrikes and rockets into largely civilian areas, waiting patiently to let those responsible for the latest round of atrocities to relax, to become lazy (they always do) and then to hunt those specific people down and kill them. I am not a pacifist. I believe there are humans who behave in ways that make them eligible for early death, so that they cannot commit more atrocities. It also means looking in the mirror and examining how we arrived at this point in time — rampage, up close killings of civilians, skies filled with rockets, and aircraft raining death down on the heads of normal, sane people who are merely trying to live life. How does one group of humans so despise another group? Why? Yes….these are difficult questions that the easy button of violence will not answer — only exacerbate.
In 1995 I was in Sarajevo and I was chatting with a local who held a video camera, and who showed me on the tiny screen the mass murder of 700 men in a place called “Srebrenica.” I asked him why he kept this footage? What was the purpose? He replied: “I will show my sons so that they know what their neighbors want to do to all of us.”
And the cycle continues.
“Good leaders build bridges” is a mantra I learned from Professor David Charles.
Where are the bridge-builders right now?
We should all ask ourselves this question.
Hashtags and demonstrations are cool, but they don’t really solve much. Performance activism on social media is a sad replacement for rolling up ones sleeves and contacting ones leaders to express ones concerns and to demand sanity in the middle of the blender of violence, atrocity, dehumanization and depravity.
Moralizing finger pointing is worse than useless. It is a sewer of base human arrogance.
Once the gates of war are opened it is very difficult to close them. See the US/NATO failure in Afghanistan. See the US debacle in Iraq.
I participated in those affairs and from experience, they were ruled by emotion like fear as opposed to wisdom and vision.
Please, if you do nothing else after reading this, please just take a breath and imagine what this present (there will be more) situation will look like in 5-10-20 years. Ask yourself if “vengeance” is the solution.
I have my own idea, and I remind you, I have blood on my hands. I promise, you don’t want to have it on yours and if you think that because you didn’t pick up a gun and fight, you are free from blame, you are living in a lie. Everyone is to blame.
If you are not actively working to slow the death roll of the war machine, you are an accessory to the crime.
Be an asset to humanity. We need you.
