‘Nation’ and ‘freedom’ are little big words known to all and understood by few. This is what makes them the perfect stalking horse for warmongers.
Isn’t it ironic that one has to fight for peace? Wars endow certain people with a sense of purpose. Those whose lives depend on war thrive whenever there is chaos. People who fight wars are simultaneously the bravest and the most foolish.
What do we kill for? What do we die for? Some would say freedom, others would say nation. But if you ask a handful of people what ‘freedom’ and ‘nation’ mean to them, you’ll end up with a sample of nonidentical, even opposing, answers. Whose definition of these slippery, intangible entities and concepts do we spill blood for? ‘Nation’ and ‘freedom’ are little big words known to all and understood by few. This is what makes them the perfect stalking horse for warmongers.
More appalling than wars fought for nation and freedom are wars fought in the name of God. It takes a special kind of cowardice and crookedness to shroud ignoble intentions in religious rhetoric. In the 1989 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Henry V, after the Battle of Agincourt that claimed around 6,600 lives, the victors carry the corpses of their comrades off the battlefield, ‘Non Nobis Domine’ bursting triumphantly from their lips: “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but to thy name give the glory!” How can God who is most compassionate and merciful, who condemns eye-for-eye retribution, who can only be conquered through love, accept victory won at the tip of a sword?
During the ultimate phase of the Hundred Years’ War, Joan of Arc, the legendary saint and warrior installed Charles the Dauphin on the throne of France. While his coronation boosted French morale and solidified national identity, it was also problematic because Charles had breached the codes of chivalry by assassinating his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, during what was supposed to be a meeting. It does leave one wondering: were Joan and her soldiers fighting for Charles the man, a disgraced, bankrupt person of disputed legitimacy, or Charles the king, the figurehead of the nation?
Life becomes a plaything and a weapon in the hands of rulers and political ideologues who steep impressionable youth in extremism characterized by despisal and fear of an unknown, unseen ‘other’. They groom martyrs who are convinced they are dying for something bigger than themselves when they are really cogs in a killing machine who are dying over personal issues and petty quarrels of powerful people that expanded into wars. The groomers are opportunists who wouldn’t hesitate to jump parties. Unlike them, the trainees’ fates are sealed because they are the pawns destined to die first in the battle unless smart enough to save themselves. As Erich Hartmann neatly framed it, “War is a place where young people who don’t know each other and don’t hate each other kill each other by the decision of old people who know each other and hate each other but don’t kill each other.”
If youth are not groomed, they are conscripted; service becomes a duty, not a choice, regardless of whether or not they believe in the cause. It is unfair to make service compulsory for people who might not want to participate in military activities. Reluctant draftees have to rationalize their involvement somehow to mitigate the cognitive dissonance; some seek and find shallow justifications for their participation, some yield to brainwashing, others come face to face with morality and mortality—their own and others’—and suffer relentlessly.
Consider Liam O’Flaherty’s short story, ‘The Sniper’, set in Dublin during the Irish Civil War. The adrenaline of battle charges up the rooftop sniper, but when it wears away, he is consumed by despair, doubt, and remorse. The young man is forced to dehumanize his enemy, but ultimately succumbs to the urge to look into his face and acknowledge his humanity after he shoots him dead. The story ends with him realizing he killed his own brother. This is the moment that Green Day sang about in their anti-war song, ‘21 Guns’: “the pain weigh[ing] out the pride”.
Let’s also take a moment to contemplate words like ‘casualties’ or ‘collateral damage’? During wartime, lives ultimately boil down to data or statistics. War itself is an inhumane act, so it's no surprise that efforts are made to sanitize the wreckage they cause. That a war is happening itself means that humanity is lost. So does it matter that such words are used after people are wiped out? Still, let’s not forget that ‘casualties’ and ‘collateral damage’ are actually human beings just like us: someone’s child, someone’s spouse, someone’s parent, someone’s sibling, someone’s friend.
Each side believes (or convinces itself) of the rightness and righteousness of its actions and purposes, but one side’s hero is the other side’s criminal. Surrender, forgiveness, and friendship are unthinkable because war mentality privileges retaliation over emotional intelligence and diplomacy. Instead of reparations, the belligerents become embroiled in an internecine cycle of revenge. Instead of seeking a cause to die for, why not seek one to live for?
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