generalspeaking

Unintended Death, Destruction

War is destructive. The destabilizing, dehumanizing conditions of war prove time and time again precisely how destructive war is of civil infrastructure, of tender human lives. War is that condition when one country seeks to oppress another, or one country offers its defence against the intent of another.

For which purpose each country expends enormous amounts of treasury that would otherwise be more gainfully utilized to advancing their economies - health and education systems, public infrastructure, culture, peoples' lives - to the assembly of prohibitively costly new-generation armaments.

The better to knock the living hell out of their perceived enemies.

Armies are constructed of individuals whose individuality has been knocked awry, to assume close partnership in a collective of others all of whom become interdependent for their survival on a choreography of delivering cold hard, sharp steel and blazing hot explosives to the lands they invade, toward the living breathing bodies of their opposite militaries, and just incidentally to civilians unfortunate enough to be in harm's way.

In Pakistan, as in Afghanistan, American drones fire missiles on presumed military targets. In the process, perhaps accomplishing the mission to kill militants, but also, alas, killing civilians, inclusive of children. Dozens of wayward strikes targeting militias, but hitting civilian enclaves, and also killing hundreds of unarmed civilians, taking an unintended toll. This is the unacknowledged face of war.

In Somalia, in Congo, in Sudan, millions of people have fled the scenes of battle, hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. These are not those enlisted in government armies, nor in irregular militias, but people cowering for safety in inadequate soft-target shelters.

War wafts its deadly impact anywhere it will, wherever armies shift their fields of attack and defence, and invariably there are thousands of people resident there and they become the unintended consequences of waging war.

Generally the international community feels great regret about this longstanding, ongoing, impossible condition of war and unintended death. There is a mental shrug and life goes on, wherever the conflicts do not impact.

It's hugely different, however, with the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Then, the world asserts its collective hostility and anger toward Israel, deeming it an unrepentant aggressor, clamouring for cessation and relief for civilians.

In the process the dire necessity for one country to protect itself against the deadly incursion of terror fire upon its civilians is sacrificed to world opinion that would have it that Israel, alone among nations, can do no right.

While a thousand civilians may die in inadvertent and regrettable fall-out from the attempt to dislodge from among them an army of terrorists, hundreds of thousands of innocents can lose their lives in internecine conflict, with no word of condemnation.

No outraged marches, no incendiary demonstrations calling for the world body to rescue the frightened refugees from Darfur from further and ongoing violent depredations, nor the Congolese from rape and murder; no high-flown rhetoric from the capitals of the world's nations, and the affronted gatherings of diplomats within the United Nations.

Why is this?

Labels: Conflict, Social-Cultural Deviations, World Crises

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, January 24, 2009