Veterans Day comes to Tufts in the form of yet another three−day weekend not very different from all the others enjoyed by those who don't have class or labs on Friday and/or skip their recitations.
That was a little harsh, so I will rephrase: For the majority of the Tufts community, Veterans Day is a three−day weekend during which a few campus groups might put on events and the news is temporarily awash with light military fare. Tufts students are not special sinners in this regard; an alien observer might be forgiven if they assumed that the Veterans Day holiday in America was mainly a platform for boosting furniture and car sales.
America has been at war for more than 10 years and had 21.8 million living veterans in 2010 — roughly 7.2 percent of the population. Yet there is hardly any reaction at all each year on the day designated to remember that historical events referred to as "Vietnam" and "Iraq" were and are being fought by real human beings. The vast majority of American service members survived their wartime experiences and continued on with their lives. Many struggle with life−altering or, ultimately, life−ending injuries for decades at one end of the spectrum and unsettling memories on the other. Others did not, and many of their bodies lie in some of the 131 national cemeteries in 39 states and Puerto Rico, as well as Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the Philippines and Tunisia. Others remain missing and unheard from, their fates totally unknown.
I should say before I go any further that I myself have no military experience whatsoever, and my intention is absolutely not to speak for, or on the behalf of, those who have. Instead, I address the majority of Tufts who, like me, have no firsthand experience of war whatsoever, who have never been shot at or bombed and who have never feared kidnapping, occupation, rationing or starvation. I implore everyone like me at Tufts, and especially my colleagues studying international relations, political science, law or any path that will someday lead them to occupy the seats of power charged with control over war and peace, to remember a simple, but forgettable, truth.
War is real. It affects people like you and families like yours, in cities, countries and neighborhoods not so different from your own, and it is waged by real human beings on both sides.
I myself am often guilty of forgetting this small truth; I claim no self−righteous superiority over anyone else. Too many of us think of war with Iran or a second Korean War as nothing more than a thought experiment. We speculate on their outcomes, make hypothetical body counts and speculate about outcomes and likelihoods of their constituent events and turning points. We theorize about the best way to avoid or provoke such an action or such an event catching us by surprise. Meanwhile, we relegate the suffering of human beings to a footnote, a caveat so self−evident that it almost need not even be said. "People die in war," we tell ourselves, before moving on without engaging with that statement's visceral reality.
When I hear my classmates, pundits and politicians in the wider world talking about war, I sometimes imagine their reaction to actual devastation war brings. I picture them confronted by the widows and parents of dead and wounded soldiers, with the young people destined to be soldiers and with the twisted bodies of the dead and wounded.
History unequivocally shows us that preparing for and waging war are necessary in certain circumstances. War has been with us for millennia, if not since the beginning of humankind. War sometimes comes to us or presents itself as the only viable response to an extreme threat. However, we should always keep the practical realities of the subject in mind when we talk about war.
To take one example, the next time you read an article that touts unmanned drone strikes as a brilliant tool against terrorism because of their "minimal collateral damage" of "only" 20 or 30 civilian deaths, take a moment to consider this. How you would feel if a missile tore open a Starbucks near your house and incinerated your father as he stopped in for his morning coffee? How would you feel walking through the charred scar left by the detonation, feeling the heat of the twisted wreckage and smelling the burnt upholstery and scorched flesh? What would go through your mind as you picked your way among the charred wreckage of vehicles, buildings and human beings?
Imagine the rage and despair that would fill you, the unbelievable mix of grief and despair that would well up inside you and the possible stirrings of a powerful lust for revenge that might fill your mind after the initial shock had subsided. Magnify that whirlwind of emotion by the hundreds of thousands, even millions, and you have begun to imagine the effects of war on a nation or people. Imagine such blood−and−fire soaked events stretching out for days, months, years, claiming the lives and happiness of hundreds, of thousands, of millions.
This kind of imagination does not require a bleeding heart, and, after using such an imagination, making the case for war does not always require the lack of a heart at all. It does not require one to fit into pro− or anti−war, liberal or conservative, or any other ideological group. It merely requires that we face things as they are, not as abstractions obscured by bloodless euphemisms like "civilian casualties" and "collateral damage."
William Tecumseh Sherman, a Union general from the American Civil War — the last time that war raged across the United States on a huge scale — wrote that, "War is hell." He knew what he was talking about; he is principally remembered for burning much of the state of Georgia to the ground. If we want to engage with war as a topic of discussion, examination and study — as we do every day in international relations, political science and related fields — we should make sure we think of war as what it really is: the deliberate infliction of hell — shock, horror, pain and death — on other human beings.
This Veterans Day, I ask you to take a moment to consider war in a way different from the one we use on a daily basis in our classes, reading articles and books or watching the news. We should take care not to think lightly of such an unleashing or allow our lucky position of comfort and security in the world as Americans and students at an elite university to blind us to the realities of what we talk about when we talk about war.
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Philip Ballentine is a sophomore who has
not yet declared a major. He is secretary
of the Tufts Alliance Linking Leaders in
Education and the Services.
