The Road Back From War

      From birth to death life is a journey, for some more arduous than others, but a journey nonetheless, fraught with the sadness and joys, the challenges and achievements, the fears and triumphs that mold our humanity.

       Like any journey, we will on occasion wander paths – sometimes reluctantly, sometimes eagerly – that are in directions we neither want to go nor should go, but we go nonetheless, to find out where they lead or what we could learn along the way.

        As it is so with America and war.

        War becomes unfashionable after the last one fought. America struggles to get away, only to find ourselves wandering down more paths of conflict, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes eagerly; embracing war when we are successful, opposing war when we are failing – always forgetting, whether in blood or treasure, that war is wasteful.

      Wars are never won or lost. They are just ended, left to be fought on another day, in another season, but always for the same reason – power and glory, the same old story.

Erich Maria Remarque, here at ease at the Hotel Curhaus in Davos, Switzerland, 1929, knew the futility of war. The title of his World War I novel about war’s ravages on the human spirit, “Im Westen nichts Neues,” means “In the West Nothing New.” When the novel was published in English, it had a more benign, perhaps deceiving title: “All Quiet on Western Front. (German Federal Archive)

America began the 21^st century like she began the 20^th century – at war. Then it was the war to keep her imperial possession – the Philippines – from Filipino resistance fighters; today it’s to battle global terrorism and protect her self-interest – oil and markets.

We fight to keep the nation secure and the world stabilized, though the citizenry is not interested in world stability, they are interested in their safety and security. Few know clearly the power of their military. Fewer care to know the destruction it has wrought.

        Our sense of duty and self-interest to stabilize countries in the war-torn Middle East keeps pulling us down Conflict Road. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have made us weary; we want an end to the fighting in a region where we have long been, once dared not go, now dare to go again.

           Narratives about our wars in film and verse tell some of us we have been worthy along that road, abiding our ideals; and tells some of us that we have been unworthy, failing to abide those ideals. Reality is ever more complicated.

          The road to war is never ending, always another fight just around the corner; just one more, but always just one more.

            Long and uncertain is the road back from war. We struggle to keep in that direction, to reach a time of peace, but we find the way difficult to navigate. We are doubtful, but always hopeful; we are vengeful, but desire to be peaceful.

           We try and take the road back from war, but it always leads us down the next road to war.