Addicted To War? – Ask A Veteran

The greatest peace organization in the country has to be Veterans For Peace. After all, who would know the value of peace more than those who have been at the front line of the insanity of war.

I am not a vet. But I have spent years in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Kuwait, and Colombia. And the people there want peace every bit as much as we do. So if they want peace and we want peace why do we not have peace?

An alcoholic drinks and an addict does drugs even when they don’t want to. And we go to war in exactly the same manner. We continue to do the same things over and over because those who create war are addicted to the greed and the desire for power that war brings them. And they will never get enough. Their need for more is insatiable.

In her book Every Man In This Village Is A Liar, Megan K. Stack describes the after math of war.

Here is the truth: It matters, what you do at war. It matters more than you ever want to know. Because countries, like people, have collective consciences and memories and souls, and the violence we deliver in the name of our nation is pooled like sickly tar at the bottom of who we are. The soldiers who don’t die for us come home again. They bring with them the killers they became on our national behalf, and sit with their polluted memories and broken emotions in our homes and schools and temples. We may wish it were not so, but action amounts to identity. We become what we do. You can tell yourself all the stories you want, but you can’t leave your actions over there. You can’t build a wall and expect to live on the other side of memory. All of that poison seeps back into our soil.

I could strongly relate to Stack’s words because I had traveled to many of the same places Stack did as she wrote this book  and because in much the same way those who have suffered from the disease of addiction come to realize we become what we do. The good news is we have a choice. We can stop this madness anytime we decide to. We do not have to enable those who are addicted to war; we can send them to rehab!

Support the Veterans For Peace, but even more importantly – LISTEN TO THEM.