Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Whose war are they fighting?

Whose war are they fighting?

3600 Coalition forces personnel and 25170 Iraqi Military and Civilians are killed since the beginning of the Iraq war. And these are just the official figures (http://icasualties.org/oif/ and http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/) and does not include the people killed every evening in the Iraqi market places by some car bomb or a suicide bomber. Does anyone count still? Does anyone in the rest of the world even vaguely remember that there is an active war on in Iraq? I read these news and it throws up a zillion questions on life - Do I understand how happy I should be to be alive and not limping. Do I appreciate how lucky I am to come to office, work in a secure air-conditioned workplace and drive back home to my wife and kid? I feel overwhelmed by the sheer power of the thought that there are places in this world where people lack this basic comfort of a normal human life!

I am not talking logic here; because rationale ceases to exist where the war starts. People talk reason only till the first shot is fired. After that it is an eye for an eye. After that every other shot is either reasoned with one of the two: Vengeance or a fear that a second shot 'might' be fired. Analyze it and you see that it's a very simple closed loop algorithm with no 'break'. And not surprisingly, both sides use the same algorithm. So a war can never be won forever and history vouches for it. Nations remember defeat, groups of people brew the grudge. So its only a temporary stop - positive steps can only lengthen the time period between wars.

After I realized that wars are a never ending phenomenon embedded into the history of human civilizations, I started thinking of ways to increase the 'calm' period between wars. Was there ever a period when no wars were fought and the entire mankind lived peacefully together? Perhaps not. In no Yug or eon of time, did it happen. A time of complete peace - There is always a war between the Gods and the demons. Definitions are just a matter of which side you are standing. From the vedic periods (Rig Veda!), when some Devatas of the post ice-age were mastering the sciences of engineering and anatomy, the other bunch of Devatas were fighting a war with Dasyas. While the vedic rishis were mastering science and spirituality in the tough yet peaceful Himalayan heights, there were a bunch of their countrymen (!!?) fighting war. Removing the 'allusive' symbolisms of vedas (as beautifully decoded by Aurobindo in his 'The Secret of Vedas'), the dasyas were fighting the aryans to steal their cattle and food. Cause while Devatas have plenty of riches and foods, Dasyas were suffering from hunger and weather. (I know this is a WRONG WRONG example - The Vedic kings of the yore were extremely responsible citizens of the planet!!)

The reason I wrote so much about a vedic age war is to just bring out the similarities of reason. Now it is very easy to see why Iraqis are fighting back or why Somalians are fighting in Mogadishu - they are not fighting for a religion, they are not fighting for a cause. They are fighting because of their 'lack' while a whole new world on the other side suffers from 'excess'. They hate a country, a land of free will and of million opportunities because of the thought (??) that The Nation is dancing over their poverty and their cadavers. They hate the problems of obesity and 'fashion'-induced anorexia while their kids die of hunger everyday infront of their eyes. They hate it when 'The Nation' spends millions on advanced research to convert edible corn into fuel. Put the religion aside for a while and think of what Iraqis, Somalians and millions of Africans go through when they realize that the sugarcane and corn that they grow in their fields would be used to fuel "The Nation's" cars. It throws me, a well educated comfortably living Indian, into an abyss of deep thought - How many more cars on those vast roads, how many more fuel guzzling monsters with one person driving inside?
How long will a nation justify its greed with its capabilities? How long can one nation use up so many resources of the planet with a faint sense of respect and responsibility?

Is it not surprising that many people who are fighting war in Iraq from Iraq's side are first timers to terrorist activities? (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0718/dailyUpdate.html) What is pushing them to this? You can read the biographies of hundreds of popular terrorists like Khalid Sheik Mohammed etc and see that these guys are well read and more so studied in the US before becoming terrorists. What drove them to it? I used to link it to the religion they followed, like a whole lot of us who directly/indirectly, openly/covertly do. But there must be more than just the religion. They must have found a symbolism to a 'demon' or a 'satan' in the opposition that they are fighting. An apparition, part of it true and part of it created.

All soldiers of war need to be shown the 'bad' side of opposition to create a strong reason to fight. Be it the crusades or the jihad or just a plain simple War against a dictator! It's time for us to question, is there some thing more than the religion that is inciting this? A war cannot be won with more troops. Its an age-old war tactic that a war has to be won psychologically - first by draining the soldiers of their energy and then by draining the soldiers of their 'motivation' or reason. If you take away the reason, the soldiers see nothing but bloodshed. When you take away the principle, its becomes just plain carnage. Its no longer a crusade or a jihad. Think of it yourself, no sane human mind can justify violence without reason. You can analyze any crime and check it yourself.

In Iraq, now a lot of US soldiers are losing that reason to fight! They don't see a reason to bomb a civilian home. All the reasons of Saddam being a dictator, a person who kept Iraq in shackles, a person who held weapons of world destruction, all have gone flat. Then whose war are these innocent troops fighting, dying away from their families, butchered by a mass of people taking out all their vengeance against an entire nation on a bunch of individuals? Defending what and whom are these innocent soldiers dying? Atleast the other side has a reason for death - the need to take revenge, the need to die for a religious cause etc etc. They are atleast dying a valiant death , "thinking" that they would be martyrs. What are these coalition troops dying for? The other side might lose more people, but this side is dying a more painful one. This side is paying a price for a nation's mistakes. So psychologically, US troops are fighting a lost war.

Can all the nations with a will for peace repeat the tactic on the other side? Can they take away the reason for these poor, illiterate foot soldiers and jihadis of Africa/Kashmir/MiddleEast to fight against US and the developed world? I believe there is an end to this massacre only if the solution is in that direction. Only if the countries show more responsibility to the planet and by reaching out to the fellow citizens - it might require tougher choices. It might require sacrifices -starting from leaving your car back at home and using public transport!!! :)

NOTE: Have written this piece to induce thought and as often happening with my latest writings, it is more emotional and less rational. So there can be infinite logical loopholes and pick them for your own intellectual curiosity :)

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I thouroughly agree - Its a waste -human and economic and there seems to be no way out as long as the military-inductrial complex of richer nations continues to fule wars for the benfit of their own economies or personal agendas like Geroge Bush - It is silly, irrational and might I add completely stupid!

Unknown said...

I thouroughly agree - Its a waste -both human and economic and there seems to be no way out as long as the military-inductrial complex of richer nations continues to fule wars for the benfit of their own economies or personal agendas like Geroge Bush - It is silly, irrational and might I add completely stupid!

Anonymous said...

Il semble que vous soyez un expert dans ce domaine, vos remarques sont tres interessantes, merci.

- Daniel