Sacrificed Life

In view of the discussions that followed the recent remembrance days, I would like to point out a common assumption that tends to be overlooked.

The media, school teachers, politicians and most other officials remind people that we have to honour the soldiers that “sacrificed their lives”. The common message, whether in official lessons or speeches or in angry comments on Facebook, is that being against war is wrong, because the soldiers gave their lives for our freedom.

But in those phrases lies a deception. By using it as a verb, which is an action word, there is the implicit message that these soldiers actively made this sacrifice; that they went there to do so and that there was a choice involved. But they did not choose to sacrifice or give their lives at all. Even if they knew the risk, most had no choice but to go and they lost their lives unwillingly. It is simply not the case that the soldiers of the last world wars went to war with the same mindset as the Roman soldiers or the Vikings, knowing they would not come back; instead they went believing they’d be on a great adventure or because they could not face the repercussions at home if they did not. Most didn’t think at all; they just did what they were told. The message was that they would come back as heroes.

In other words, except for the odd volunteer, most had their live sacrificed for them; somebody else took their life from them; they didn’t give it. In the first world war, countless soldiers died at the hands of their own people (for disobedience or pacifism) and not at the hands of the enemy.

Those soldiers in the trenches had a better rapport with the soldiers across from them (officially the enemy), who were no happier to be there and all of them just wanted to go home. The soldiers who died did no more sacrifice their own lives than the sacrificial victims of the Aztecs or the Jews in the concentration camps.

In short, saying “they gave their life” or “the sacrificed their life” is a deception.

Therefore, those people who take the side of peace, are speaking in name of the victims of war, whether civilians or sacrificial soldiers (cannon fodder). To accuse people of not being patriotic if they care for the victims instead of the soldiers is not only misunderstanding the psychological aspects involved, but it is misleading the public.

Wearing a White Poppy

I walked in on the wreath-laying ceremony for Anzac Day today. There were countless people wearing red poppies and many military representatives. Those are, of course expected at a ceremony that is trying to remember the soldiers who died in the world wars – in the case of Australia and New Zealand that focus is mostly on the First World War, which is now a century ago.

Wearing a white poppy (for peace) results in being frowned at, and, occasionally, verbally attacked. Being a voluntary choice, it is, of course, not quite as bad as having to wear a Star of David in WWII, but it did give me a sense of what the people there must have felt. Being different is not tolerated, no matter whether that difference is inborn or a belief, and especially if that belief contradicts the goals of those in power. Peer pressure, even today, declares the people who ask for peace or who wish to commemorate innocent civilian victims of war (including children) as outcast, because it takes away the glory of the military victims.

Such peer pressure is tangible during an event like Anzac Day, at which  not only military representatives and many civilians representing community groups were laying wreaths, but countless school children, in school uniform. Even more shocking was the introduction speech, which commended the presence of those children and their uniforms, suggesting that this is a measure of respect and remembrance.

It also is an easy way to recruit soldiers for the next war.

Of course, uniforms and badges are expressions of obedience to authority, but what these children don’t realize is that the soldiers they are remembering did not volunteer for the military or choose to risk their lives for the cause. The vast majority of them was forced by conscription and most would have preferred peace over war. They did not GIVE their lives; their lives were taken from them, which therefore does not constitute bravery or fighting for your belief; it constitutes murder.

These school children are also misled because they are told only one side of the war story; the truth about what happened to pacifists and civilians at the hands of the military, nor what is today being done by their ‘brave’ soldiers to civilians in foreign countries, is not required learning for school children in uniform.

From the day they set foot in school, kids are made to believe that soldiers fight against oppression and for peace or freedom and that they will continue to do so. What they are not told is that soldiers swear obedience to their government, no matter what its agenda, which means that if a tyrant takes over, they will obey the tyrant. Hitler’s soldiers also believed they were in the army for peace and freedom until Hitler took over. American soldiers, still priding themselves on the WWII win (even if they are way too young to have been involved), obeyed their orders under Bush and started torturing Muslims and Russian soldiers in the belief they are serving their country, today take part in torturing homosexuals. Not one of them will refuse orders; soldiers act on command; they don’t think, because they are not expected to.

In short, the indoctrination, especially at an event like this, is overwhelming and chance of peace for the next generation bleak looking if most people follow obediently without thinking.

If we truly want peace, then we must change the stories we tell our children. We must stop lying and deceiving them with one-sided historical accounts. We must stop pretending that the involvement of the military is compatible with peace. It is NOT! There is not and never has been a war fought without soldiers. There has not ever been a tyrant or oppressor without soldiers to do the dirty work for them. War and tyranny are not possible without those who sign their lives away to become tools in uniform.

Soldiers don’t exist because there are wars; wars exist because there are soldiers.

This last sentence is quoted from In the Real World by Nōnen Títi. If you agree with that phrase, please share it.

 

 

Soldiers are to War as Breathing is to Life.

Year after year, every country organizes memorial days for the wars they fought in the past. ANZAC Day is the Australian and New Zealand version of this, but for what follows, it matters not which country you live in and what wars you remember.

Of course, not every war from history is celebrated – or we’d never stop. Besides the allies from one war becoming enemies in the next, usually fighting over similar ideas, which most people have long forgotten. It benefits governments to pick the most recent wars, because they can motivate people by referring to their still known ancestors. Who, after all, knows whether their family members were involved in which Medieval wars.

Memorial days are there to keep the war alive. If they are made a big deal of, it is usually to remind people that their government was on the right (read “winning”) side and therefore that people should be grateful to live in their country and not complain too much. Usually, governments will not make a celebration out of the wars they lost; they might have a small commemorative monument, but they will not emphasize the day, and so for other historical behaviour they are ashamed of.

For example, New Zealand and Australia commemorate the First World War – which is known as “the Great War” – even if there is probably nobody alive today who remembers it. Nevertheless, they make a big event and allow the greatgrandchildren of those soldiers to dress up in military uniforms and wear the medals. But the New Zealand Land Wars – the wars the invading Europeans fought with the native Maori over ownership of the land and other rights – are not celebrated with a day off and parades with dressed up kids, because they are an embarrassment. Worse than that, the government refuses to make teaching the land wars compulsory, but insists that children learn all about the First World War – which started a mere forty years after the last Land Wars and cannot be considered outdated any more than the first world war, especially in view of the importance Maori people attach to knowing their ancestors. Some people argue that they were civil wars and therefore different, but they were not civil wars in the eyes of those who had been invaded. That would be the same as saying that the occupied European countries fought a civil war, because Hitler had decided the land was his. The American civil war, for example, was between different fractions of the white invaders.

Australia, which has an even worse track record with regard their behaviour toward the native population tends to proudly teach its convict history in schools, but conveniently forgets to mention the way they removed an entire generation of native children from their homes in the name of white supremacy.

In other words, both countries’ obsession with the European wars, with which they continue to identify, is kept alive to have something to celebrate in the face of the rest of their history being shameful.

I will not argue the political details of any of those wars. My goal is to deal with the concept of war itself. Because, if we truly want world peace, we have to change our attitude to war as a whole and not justify one war in favour of another, because, obviously, different people are going to consider different wars justified, which only continues these conflicts.

For me, there are only two parties in every war, and those parties are always the same: Soldiers against Civilians, no matter what their nationality, culture, ethnic background, religion or belief. There are those who make war and there are those who suffer from it.

As explained in my philosophy book, Homological Composition, every soldier you meet today – those who have chosen to become professional soldiers and walk around the town in military uniform, even if we are supposed to live in a time of peace – will repeat the same slogan: that without “them”, we would not have freedom and free speech. In other words, they take credit for having won a war that was fought before they were born. They equate their “soldiership” with the collective and make “being a soldier” their identity, so that they do not identify as individual human beings, but as “soldier”, which is why they wear the uniform.

In name of dead soldiers who “sacrificed their life for their country” governments use soldiers and police to silence those demonstrating for peace. If civilians are lucky enough to live in a country where the oppression is less open, they get verbal abuse for not being grateful and unpatriotic and so on; if they are unlucky, they are often violently silenced.

But the government that today makes this claim for their country, is not the same government as that which engaged in the war, no more than today’s soldiers are the same soldiers. They are claiming the right to a piece of Earth that has changed hands thousands of times during history, based on a selected historical event. That, however, can never be right in the eyes of those who do not identify with a nation (an abstract entity called a state that exists only because the soldiers they employ use weapons to control the people who live within their equally abstract borders. The population is kept within those borders with tools like passports, taxes and soldiers guarding them.

Besides, most soldiers who died during the world wars were conscripted, which means they were used as fodder; their lives taken from them, not by the enemy, but by their government, to be thrown away as bait for the enemy. By saying that those soldiers “died for our flag”, they imply they did that willingly and they call them heroes. In short, the nation reciprocates (or washes their hands of their guilt) for taking their lives by force with the label “hero.

In New Zealand, thanks to the public displays of some action groups, some schools are tentatively beginning to acknowledge that conscientious objectors were tortured by their own people during their ‘Great War’. They do so, only because they can no longer deny that this torture took place. Likewise, every child in New Zealand knows that Edmund Hillary climbed Mount Everest; that he is a national hero, but neither teachers nor government remind the people that he was also a conscientious objector. That information is deliberately kept away from the children. Worse than that, the national museum has put a big war display on, but it called in the police when the action group put up a statue of a conscientious objector outside their door to remind them that their exhibit was biased.

Without any doubt, all other countries have similar discrepancies; every reader will be able to find those in their own country. In all countries, history is selectively remembering only that which benefits the politicians in power today. One of those benefits is that they need the support of the people for their next war. Those frightened young boys the historical government didn’t give a damn about when they were alive, are now called heroes and as such used to recruit the next generation of cannon fodder.

But wars are not fought by heroes, because, to be a hero, you need to identify as a human being, not as a “soldier”. Soldiers sign away their individuality to become tools of the state.

Soldier is not a profession, because professions are done by individuals to contribute to the society (not the state). The function of a soldier is to kill (the enemy) and to control (the subjects) in name of the government, regardless of the motivations of that government and regardless of how oppressive it is.

War never benefits the people. Civilians, no matter where they are, suffer from war. The derogative term “casualties of war”, which diminishes civilians to numbers without value, are victims of mass murder, defenceless and not involved in the wars of their governments; they only accidentally lived in the wrong place. That a people wants to defend itself against invaders is no doubt justified, but to be able to invade and attack civilians, there is a nation with an army at its disposal. In other words, the rulers have long ago decided that the civilians living on the land they claim are not free individuals but subjects to the nation state. That is another way of saying that the lives of civilians are worth less than that of the rulers and those who control the civilians in their name. In many places, the rulers as well as many soldiers and police are above the law, like when they put a greater penalty on a civilian attacking a policeman than on a policeman violating a civilian.

In short, governments identify with the nation; the police often identify with justice, – although justice is an ethical concept and has nothing to do with laws – and those who have chosen the military identify with “being a soldier”. But that implies all soldiers, including those who fought for Hitler.

These soldiers, who promise to obey orders, make themselves tools of the state and, would the state change rulers, they would still exercise their duty, no matter what is asked of them. Tools, after all, have no individuality. Of course, as in the gun control debate, regardless of whether we believe it is people or guns that kill, getting rid of the weapons (the tools) will stop most of the killing.

Unless we re-evaluate what it really means to be a hero or a coward, we will keep supplying the next war with voluntary tools, so that those can force the involuntary tools when the state decides it wants some more power. In that light; the only heroic soldier is the one who is willing to stand up against their own government. If we truly want peace, we have to start with telling our children that those who control civilians while holding a weapon, those who blindly follow orders and those willing to kill on command, are cowards. We need to understand that peace is only possible if we have no tools to fight wars with. Only if we stop deceiving our children with false hero stories, will we be able to tell them that their lives are valuable; that civilian have value.

Dictators and wars cannot exist without those who obey and do the dirty work in their name.

Soldiers do not exist because there are wars; wars exist because there are soldiers.

My book, In the Real World – written to help young adults understand the emotions and politics that underlie wars, paints a realistic picture of some of the events of both world wars. It will be on sale during the month of April to help create awareness and help the peace effort.

Thank you for reading.