Every animal will defend its den, family, territory—and the human animal is no exception. Our instincts insist that we stand between our families and those who would slaughter us.
Yet instead of intensifying our quest for international compromises that serve all the world’s citizens, too often we allow our leaders to enflame our nationalist fears, and continue to deploy our brave soldiers halfway around the globe where they are pushed to act out their own deepest terrors, create the very tragedies they most despise, and become the maniacal monsters of their worst nightmares.
American forces have been pushed by misguided leadership to become the very enemy they would themselves kill and die to resist, the very terrorists who come from far away to kill families, to deny human rights, to invade, occupy, torture, oppress, exploit ….
Up is down now, and black is white, as long as we continue to send our grandchildren away to distant nations to fight in insane wars so morally ambiguous that even our own citizenry, even world opinion, even our own brilliant Supreme Court justices and political and military leaders cannot agree upon them.
Then we pound these same innocent, selfless young soldiers with so much political, psychological, and military paranoia and machismo that they’re half-crazed with vengeance, anger, and desperation….
And put them into untenable situations where they’re goaded to drop bombs on civilian populations, break down doors, and kill unarmed strangers—husbands, wives, teenagers, children, babies alike….
And yet…
When the only family you have are your military brothers whom you’ve sworn to protect—and now they’re dead…
When the wife and children you love as much as life have been murdered…
Then nothing means anything anymore anyway except hatred. Unless we end now together, forever, war’s spiraling cycle of fear … hatred … violence … which always leads only to ever more … fear … hatred … violence….
The tragic voices of Haditha—including the voices of soldiers everywhere—implore each of us to find in our own hearts, and with organizations such as the Peace Alliance, FCNL,* the United Nations, and Amnesty International, better, non-violent ways “to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”** Blessed are the peacemakers.
* Friends Committee for National Legislation
** Abraham Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address.
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