Soldiering On
With or without a war.
Hello beautiful readers!
The world goes on and life continues in the midst of the mess. Another ceasefire, or peace deal, or whatever it is called this morning or afternoon, or evening, is declared. And nothing has changed. Conflict continues, nobody knows what is safe or where to go for refuge. And soldiers continue to follow orders. They follow orders and do not know what their actions will prove or accomplish. While the drones and the missiles and the bullets fly, we all wonder what is happening and what it is for.
This is how wars are. Most of modern warfare is done through screens and scopes and radar displays. Face to face encounters are the exception. But on the other end of those video links and at the reflecting point of the radar waves, there are lives. Lives that are suddenly cut short by a screaming missile, or buzzing drone, or a bullet that arrives before the sound of its wake. It does not matter which one of these it is, the life of the target is either ended or changed forever.
The morality of war has always been a tangled violent bloody mess. One country attacks another with or without provocation, and the killing begins. Aggressor and defender each justify their position and the horrors they are inflicting on the enemy. Both sides receive bodies from the front lines, broken or dead. Suffering explodes with every bomb and each blow. Diplomacy is hard. It is frustrating. It is slow and messy and often filled with lies and deceptions. It is sometimes impossible but always worth working hard at for as long as is necessary because diplomacy is better than war. EVERY time.
War is the failure of diplomacy. War is the failure to have creative conflict. It has been said by someone (it is hard to tell who) that “diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell in such a way that they actually look forward to the trip.” Delicate. Quite the art. That is a rare set of skills and a precious one. Diplomats are priceless. But diplomacy sometimes fails. And when it does, the result is too often war. Tragic. Devastating. Grief inducing. Wasteful. Horrific.
It does NOT have to be this way. War is not inevitable unless we are weak and fragile and unable to engage in honest diplomacy. Yeah I put those two words together. On purpose. And I meant it. But it is not impossible. To be diplomatic does not have to mean to be dishonest. It does not have to mean being deceptive. In fact that kind of “diplomacy” is just aggression without the immediate bloodshed. Conflict that hides a knife beneath the well tailored suit and tie is just violence delayed. It is warfare accomplished by deceit instead of shelling. History holds plenty of that. It may avoid the use of arms and the leveling of cities by force, but it results in devastation by other means. It is not innocent. It is not without violence, even when it accomplishes its destruction through deception.
We can learn to be honest and forthright and make it work. Of course it is always possible that the other side will not respond. It is always possible for diplomacy, even radically honest and transparent diplomacy to fail. And that failure is war. Tragic, devastating and horror beyond words. War is failure.
May we hone our skills of conflict. May we learn to disagree and argue and struggle and wrestle with our differences and our difficulties. May we engage in careful diplomacy and urgent words. May we avoid the failure that results in violence. May we learn the skills of humanity that gives us courage to seek mutual gain. The world is almost never a zero sum place. There is abundance in this world. We CAN learn to share and when we do everyone benefits.
And when we fail there is war. God forbid we stop trying to end those and avoid the horror to begin with. God bless all skilled diplomats and grant them wisdom.