By Patrice Greanville
This article is being reposted by readers request.
“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.“
__________
Be advised that this article leads to images which are extremely graphic and disturbing. These are not cosmeticized pictures of this terrible reality that now threatens to expand to yet more regions of the world. Most of the photos were captured in Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
__________
[T]he poetic prophesy above is not likely to come true any time soon. War has been romanticized in innumerable books and movies, and made fortunes for those who exploited the subject well. (Clint Eastwood is still at it, among others, with outings such as, Flags of Our Fathers, while movie and television tycoon Jerry Bruckheimer, of Top Gun fame, a perfect example of what a cynical cultural prostitute is all about, has willingly become a one-man propaganda ministry for the Pentagon). In most movies-at least until recently-soldiers died “beautifully”-no hideous wounds, no real gasping fear in their eyes, they even got to say a few noble words for posterity, proof of a charitable destiny that, despite assigning them death, did not deny them their fifteen seconds of fame.
“There, for the Grace of You Know What, Go I.”
But war —as any thinking person knows—is ugly. And war is also ruthless, sordid, and ill-mannered. It doesn’t give most people time to proffer pretty speeches. And like death-which is its normal and inevitable companion-war remains in some ways unfathomable and mysterious. Wars can be depicted as noble only by those who are too naive, too young, too deluded, too corrupt, too sociopathic, or too stupid to understand the obscenity that killing in such an organized fashion represents. Are there “good wars”? Maybe. Nothing is absolute, not even something as heinous as war. But we’ll leave that question for another day, another article. Let us say however this much: most wars in the history of our species have been useless, stupid enterprises; for all the suffering and mayhem they have caused, they have been utterly unnecessary…the instruments of “knaves and the glory of fools”, a massive carnage unleashed by every single form of human defect and backwardness: greed, deceit, ignorance, fanaticism and mass stupidity.
CONTINUE READING
PATRICE GREANVILLE is The Greanville Post‘s founding editor and publisher of Cyrano’s Journal Today.
This article was originally published in 2006.
¶
ADVERT PRO NOBIS
______________________________________________________________
IF YOU THINK THE LAMESTREAM MEDIA ARE A DISGRACE AND A HUGE OBSTACLE…
to real change in America why haven’t you sent at least a few dollars to The Greanville Post (or a similar anti-corporate citizen’s media?). Think about it. Without educating and organizing our ranks our cause is DOA. That’s why our new citizens’ media need your support. Send your badly needed check to “TGP, P.O. Box 1028, Brewster, NY 10509-1028.” Make checks out to “P. Greanville/ TGP”. (A contribution of any amount can also be made via Paypal and MC or VISA.)
THANK YOU.
