War is self-harm.
War is self-harm.
War is self-harm.
This is true on every level.
War pushes people in the direction of dehumanizing others — whoever the others are this time around. This allows for bottomless depths of cruelty. Succumbing to that, we injure ourselves morally, spiritually.
War uses violence as if that has ever solved a thing in all of history.
Show me a battle in which militants have not killed other militants — or civilians — who are on the “same side” as them. “Friendly fire” is on my top ten list of disgusting euphemisms.
War uses violence as if it has ever solved a thing in all of history, as if history is a linear collection of events wrapped up in neat bows instead of a spiraling collection of actions.
Instead of learning to be whole, people learn not to resolve differences in fruitful ways. Tell me how this is any different from the gun violence in America, whether we’re talking about people being shot inside of cars on the street or while sitting at their desks in a classroom.
War is destruction — of people, places, and things. In it, we erase our own cultural heritage. Given both the American obsession with materialism and the outcry over the mere removal of statues in the United States, you might logically expect to hear non-stop petitioning for the protection of cultural landmarks and entire museums. While industry publications routinely report a return of objects looted from museums during World War II, how much was destroyed completely, and how much of what is returned has been divorced from its context — now an object without a known story or provenance? This is the loss we give ourselves and future generations through war, a removal of memory, of art, of artifacts.
War is destruction — of people, things, and places. It wrecks where the bombs fall, and then the harm ripples out from there. Our imaginary boundaries do not seal us off from the damage done to air, to water. We know that at minimum 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by military operations; given the amount of information that militaries keep classified, combined with the straight up lying about what they do, it’s safe to assume that percentage is far higher.
Is it worth fucking up our own habitat for these out of control pissing contests around the globe?
