When War is Too Easy

 In 1965 I lived in Peshawar, Pakistan on a small US military base. The base existed to spy on China and the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1965 a war broke out between India and Pakistan over the nation of Kashmir. For those who don't know, Kashmir is a region on the subcontinent that is claimed by both India and Pakistan. It is also the home of a longtime independence movement. After a summer of increasing hostilities in other parts of the country, the war came to Peshawar. On my tenth birthday, the Indian Air Force bombed military and civilian areas near the US base where my family lived with a couple hundred other US citizens. The next day, US troops dug deep long trenches in the yards of the Americans, place sheets of plywood over them and covered the plywood with dirt. These would be our bomb shelters. They also painted every window on base black and began enforcing a curfew that required us to turn off all electric lights at dusk. For the next week, the bombers came every night. We spent most nights in the trenches in our backyards. Anti-aircraft guns fired all around us and we heard the ack-ack of the guns and the bombs whistle as they fell, then explode. It was both scary and adventuresome. My siblings who were with me in that trench continue to deal with the trauma it created. After a week of bombing, the Pentagon evacuated the women and children from the base. After an overland journey to Kabul, Afghanistan and then a flight on a C-130 outfitted for troop transport, we ended up living in military barracks in Karamursel, Turkey. We stayed there for three months. The nations supplying weapons to each side halted their shipments and a truce was negotiated at peace talks in Tashkent.

This was my first brush with war. The other was when my father deployed to DaNang, Vietnam in late 1968. Despite a couple close calls, he made it home physically intact and relatively stable emotionally. My experience in Pakistan taught me two very important things. The first was that war is a foolish, if not downright idiotic method of problem solving. The second lesson was that a war could be ended if the combatants ran out of weapons and ammunition.

That week of huddling through the night in hastily-made air raid shelters while bombers dropped their ordnance a couple miles away and heavy artillery on the ground tried to shoot them down was enough war for me. I knew then that I would not allow the draft to take me. I wasn't going to die for that nonsense and I wasn't going to kill. The lessons I learned from my experience seem to be the exact opposite of the lessons learned by those who make and profit from war.

My week of war is nothing compared to those who have fought in wars or lived in countries where war ripped apart their lives. However, that week is considerably more experience than the majority of those politicians and profiteers who now insist on escalating the war between Russia and Ukraine. These men and women, who act as if war is a Hollywood film or a video game, act as if they have little understanding of the trauma they are inflicting. Nor do they seem to be considering alternatives to the escalation they champion. Their lives as US citizens are lives full of triumphalism and military madness—a madness that sees war not as a last resort, but all too often as the only resort. Even after the debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, these politicians and all too many who vote for them reject the compromise peace requires in favor of combat; combat most often carried out by working class men and women.

Instead of spending billions of dollars on weaponry for Ukraine's military, banning all things Russian and reviving the lend-lease legislation of World War Two, the US should be insisting on a ceasefire and a negotiated peace. This approach may lack the optics of war, but is most likely where the war will end up, anyhow. Unfortunately, for the reasons stated above and more, Washington demanding a ceasefire is unlikely to happen any time soon. The madness of war is in place. This war is just too easy for US politicians and their constituents, especially those who make money from war: no body bags of US troops, big profits and no protests. It is the perfect war crime.