I'm On the Side of Civilians

This week I was talking with a friend who made an interesting statement. "I'm not Conservative or Liberal, Republican or Democrat... I'm on the side of Civilians."

This resonated with me. And it reminded me of a statement I heard last fall: "The problem is the Bureaucrats." In fact, I heard that statement twice in two days, from different sources.

Whether it's Ukraine or Gaza, Israel or Somalia, it's apparent that the decisions made by those who wield power are going to have consequences that impact the powerless. America alone has been bombing countries since the beginning of World War II. The world was horrified by Guernica, a civilian village in Spain bombed by fascists during the Spanish Civil War, yet in how many times and places has this bombing of civilians taken place? 

America alone has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, the Congo, Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Libya, Bosnia, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. American bombs and missiles are being generously supplied to Israel to destroy Gaza. In many of these cases we claim to have been liberators. I'm curious what the civilians whose homes have been pulverized have to say about all that. 

At the end of Joseph Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness, Kurtz, a central character who has descended into madness in the heart of Africa, utters these memorable, haunting words as he reflects on the darkness and depravity he has encountered: "The horror! The horror!"

The statement encapsulates Kurtz's profound realization of the moral corruption and brutality that he has witnessed and participated in during his time in the Congo. It's all the more ironic because he is the one who supposedly came from a "civilized" culture. Ultimately Kurtz serves as a chilling commentary on the human capacity for evil and the consequences of unchecked power and imperialism. 

While headlines herald the machinations of the powerful and the elites, let's not forget the civilians. At the end of the day one must continue to ask, "What about the people?"  

Cruel and Unusual

"When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie." ~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Three decades ago I picked up Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and couldn't put it down. It's a fairly massive volume of story after story of the horrors committed in Soviet Russia under communism. Without a free press, a whole system of atrocity could exist. It was a horror, and not the way civilized peoples were meant to co-exist in "the good society."

Solzhenitsyn detailed a brutality limited only by the imaginations of men. These are the kinds of things one imagines Kurtz was referring to in Conrad's Heart of Darkness when he uttered that verdict on the nature of his heart: "The horror." Yet Kurtz himself simultaneously confides, "I had immense plans."

Conrad's story is a work of fiction, though often fiction can be a better mirror of reality than what passes for non-fiction sometimes.

The twentieth century has been filled with horror. Pol Pot in Cambodia, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the Ottoman Turks' efforts to eliminate the Armenians, Mao's starvation of 35 million Chinese peasants in the fifties. Much of what was going down occurred because in these dark places there was no free press. There was no light.

But when the lights were turned on at Abu Graib, it made us uncomfortable to discover that our country had been similarly making horror. When the pictures hit the Internet, Americans winced. That's because our Eighth Amendment to the Constitution states: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. This kind of thing could not be condoned. Yet in other places, out of sight and out of mind, horrors will continue unabated.

On another front, the fighting continues in Gaza. The Israeli army has fired on aid trucks and a Red Cross ambulance trying to help the wounded. Innocents are starving, but who will intercede? The U.N. Security Council has called for a cease fire in a 14-0 vote (the U.S. abstained), but will there be any action taken? At least in this situation, there are cameras rolling, and people of conscience can at least see what is going on, if they would but look.

No wonder Dylan once wrote, "I've seen the kingdoms of this world, and it's making me feel afraid."