It is easy to think about our own losses; our friends, our neighbors, our relatives and our countrymen, who have paid the ultimate price for their nation's cause. But how often do we consider that in war there is always more than one side?
It's too easy to dehumanize the other side. To lump them all into one big general category - "the enemy." We tell ourselves that it's okay to kill them because they are in the wrong. It's okay to kill them because they want to kill us. We conveniently forget that to make generalizations about any one group is completely incorrect. That each person on "their side" is a much a unique individual as our own army. We cannot possibly know the motivations they have for serving their cause. In today's war, we prefer to think that all the people we fight are cold, heartless terrorist, but is it not just as likely that there are boys who want glory just as much as the boys in our own military? Is it not just as likely that there are young people who have never stopped to consider what the implications of their belief system mean, just as there are many who have never questioned what they were always taught in this country? Is it not likely that there are some who sign up as their duty to protect their country just as many sign up here to protect America?
I read a blog post recently by writer Kameron Hurley. She says, "Language is a powerful thing, and it changes the way we view ourselves, and others, in delightful and horrifying ways. Anyone with any knowledge of the military who pays attention to how the media talks about war has likely caught on to this. We don't kill "people." We kill "targets" (or japs or gooks or ragheads). We don't kill "fifteen year old boys" but "enemy combatants" (yes, every boy 15 and over killed in drone strikes now is automatically listed as an enemy combatant. Not a boy. Not a child)."
The harsh reality comes down to that no matter ones motivation for fighting, they are still human beings. They are still someone's husband, father, son, brother, sister, daughter, wife, or mother. And in many realities, they are not merely military or al-quaeda. Do we stop to consider how many innocent civilians die in war zones? How their lives are affected because others decided that their lives and homes were no longer sacred?
Mark Twain points out in his short story "The War Prayer" that there are always two sides. "God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it. [...] You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it."
In the popular book and TV series Game of Thrones, the character Eddard Stark explains to his son why he himself executed a man who had deserted his post at "The Wall." He said, "The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword." In this story, the character firmly believes that it is easy to forget how important life is and what it is to kill, if a sentence is passed on to be carried out by a headsman. One is more likely to consider the sentence seriously before passing it, if he himself is carrying out the punishment. To me this is not unlike what we do today. In the fantasy world of Eddard Stark, if a king or noble man uses an executioner instead of doing it himself, he is dehumanizing the man or woman he has condemned by not looking them in the eyes; by not acknowledging that their life is sacred and should not be taken lightly.
Is life in the our world no less important? Should we not take killing as seriously as that fictional man? Is any life so trivial that it should be take so lightly as we take "the enemies" life in war? Should we not look into their eyes and consider who they are as a person, not as "the enemy?" Should we not consider who that person is leaving behind to mourn for him?
On Memorial day would it not be appropriate to not only remember those who died in the service of our country but also those who died in the service of other countries?
A friend expressed to me once that she loved history because it was true and could not be disputed. To this I replied that she should perhaps think about it this way; while you cannot dispute dates when certain events took place, much of history is really just the story of the victor. Who decides which side is right and which is wrong? The victor. Who decides what accounts are penned down? The victor. Would history not be very different if the tides of any great war had gone the other way? Might we not be singing a different song about those we consider to be heroes and great people if we had been on the other side? Do we ever consider what history might look like from the losing side? In his novel, The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown says. "Angels and demons were identical - interchangeable archetypes - all a matter of polarity. The guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer."
So today, let us not forget those we've lost. Those who bravely died for this country. But also, let us not forget that war is not one sided. Let's not forget those who died on "the other side." Let us not trivialize life, for every life is valuable and important, no matter who it belongs to.
