The Searing Winds of War
War is hell. Only an idiot would dispute that. No one wants to be involved in a war situation. Not as a combatant (well, let's backtrack: if you're a testosterone-ridden young male nurtured on jihad and desperately needing to blow off steam, entranced by the conviction that to become a martyr for Allah is the highest calling of mankind you're raring to go) and certainly not as a civilian locked into the theatre of war by circumstances beyond your control.War is hell on civilians. War isn't a pretty place to be. It frightens and baffles the hell out of children, and does likewise to their mothers, desperate to ensure their children's safety. Civil society shudders at the prospect of an imminent war, and does everything and anything in its powers to attempt to avert its outbreak.
Ah, but militias drunk on the exhiliration of divinely-inspired wars and the promise of glory at the successful outcomes of their bold initiatives, their courage in combat, their one-mindedness about dealing death and destruction to their fancied enemies, that's another story.
In the all-too brief (for civilians) suspension of aerial bombardment within Lebanon stranded villagers in southern Lebanon have ventured timidly out of what is left of their bomb-shattered homes to trudge north in the hopes of finding medical care, some prospects of safe haven. Small groups of elderly people, confused and horribly upset, some wounded, many ill, left behind when younger Lebanese fled to safety emerge, hoping for rescue from their intolerable situation.
Some residents of towns where Hezbollah is held in stellar esteem refuse to leave: "We will stay in our house even if it means we die," stated one woman as her cousins and young nieces and nephews clapped and sang an improvised song about dying together. "The Palestinians left their homes in 1948 for what they thought was a few days and they have never been allowed back," declared this same young woman. A reading of history that feeds into the frightening spectre of local mythology.
There are photographs in the newspapers showing people fleeing hot, dusty landscapes on bomb-pocked roads, white flags streaming from their car windows. There is much that these people, desperate to flee death and destruction believe. They do believe that Hezbollah is their salvation, their protector against their enemies, those who attack for the purpose of taking their hallowed land They believe that the time-honoured waving of white flags will offer a modicum of protection. Once it might have done just that, the universally-recognized symbol of innocence, submission, surrender, truce.
Would they fly this symbol of hope if they realized that Hezbollah casually flies such white flags when it drives its jihadist warriors from front line to village, from village to front line, in complete and utter disregard of an immoral abuse of the universal symbol requesting safe passage? That this symbol has now been rendered virtually useless, mercilessly highjacked by Hezbollah?
Not likely, although I've also read words of righteous anger from the mouths of fleeing Lebanese civilians, cursing the Israeli "invaders" for their lack of respect for the meaning of the white flag. Do these people ever practise self-examination, some introspection of their irrational but fondly held beliefs? Can they not recognize that if an armed thug hides behind the living body of his sister for the purpose of killing the sister of another man, the thug's sister is in mortal danger?
War is dreadful, there cannot be any doubt about it. It is estimated that over 500 people have been killed so far in Lebanon in the prosecution of this war. This war brought upon the country, healthily-emerging from a long disease of occupation and civil war toward a bright future, only to be laid low once again by a cancer in their midst which others have pointed out and recommended for surgical removal, but shrugged off as harmless by the country's government, its placid population.
Whose chest will not constrict with the empathy of sorrow for dead children, undeserving of their too-short experience of life.
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, August 01, 2006
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