War

They put on Twitter a video of a puppy so traumatized by bombing that it could not eat. I might as well be dead. I know there are human children who have been wounded that way, and there are videos of them, too.

Why do the innocent suffer? Why is there is no protection for them? If I could reach the pilot, I would ask him: When you release your bombs, do you think about what is below? Do you care who lives there? Are you coming to my house? But I cannot reach him, and I have no answers.

Truth dies in war, they say, but war is a revelation, too. The statesmen in their bunkers are cowards. They drink the blood of children, but they cannot say they do. They talk instead about “security” and “defense” and “our precious way of life.” But really they just want blood.

Their God is voracious; He has an endless appetite. He feasts upon the “other ones,” the people who are not like us. He devours the people and the creatures and the land. His hunger can never be slaked, because He is empty — always empty! His vacant maw is a whirlpool of blood and bone and wood and water.

Who are the men who serve Him? Were they children once, or did they emerge fully formed like demons from Satan’s head? Did they ever know an innocent afternoon, playing on the grass in the Sun, not thinking about bombers in the sky? Who turned them into monsters? Did they never have a choice?

There is a choice, you know. You find yourself alone — but not alone, because Fear is there. And Fear tells you to find somewhere to hide. And to get a weapon: a rock, if that is all you can find. A stick of wood. Something metal: a knife. Or something with explosives: a gun. Or maybe build that thing that carries the fire of death. Then you will be safe! But I warn you: if you choose that way you can never go back.

Am I one of them? Was my father? Or his? Do the bombs carry my name onto the enemy below? If I lived there, would I think it was okay? Would it matter to me who lives in the house that is shattered by the wave of blast and fire?

Or would I say: “Fine! And let them go to hell! They are not like me. Not human. Not even animals! Only the enemy who wishes me death.” And when they die, if I think of them at all, I celebrate, and thank God for my deliverance.

Maybe that is me, dancing on the ruins. Maybe I rejoice in the inferno. Maybe I am happy to see my enemy reduced to ashes, their families destroyed, their dreams consumed in the flame of my survival. I live! I am alive! My God is strong, the land is mine, and I will live here forever, safe and free.

I do not think so. I would not like to think so. I would like to think I am some other thing: a man who can see further than that, who sees to the horizon, where the world turns under itself. I would like to live in the place where everything is one thing: the forest, the rivers, the clouds, the mountains — all one thing under the one Sun who offers us the light that life is made of.

But today there is a darkness on the wind. The light I live by is not the Sun, but the animated visions of the babies burnt and dying. And Fear is here, telling me to hide. And to get a weapon. Whatever I can find.