Wars without Victors

Bharat Dogra

In several contexts it needs to be emphasized that increasingly there are no victors in present-day wars. In several significant ways those who proclaim themselves to be victors and are even recognized as such by most others also suffer serious harm at physical as well as moral and mental levels. Many weapons leave such a toxic trail that even those who use them to kill and hurt others are harmed, sometimes in very painful ways. Less visible is the moral and ethical crisis created among conquerors and conqueror societies due to the enormous number of people they kill and harm in pursuit of false and dubious objectives.

The soldiers of most invading armies are often assigned very cruel tasks. However, beneath their helmets and uniforms, they too are human beings with fears and feelings. The war affects them in two clear ways. Firstly, there is the risk of personal injury, disability, and long-term serious harm caused by exposure to various weapons, bombs, ammunitions and materials. Secondly there is the less visible but nevertheless perhaps even more significant risk of how their minds and hearts will be affected on a permanent basis when they have performed those cruel and unjust tasks that have been assigned to them. After all these young men and women have absorbed at least some ideals in their education and before being sent to fight they were probably encouraged to think of themselves as liberators. When they see that their actual assignment is highly unethical and cruel, this is bound to have a very disturbing impact on the minds of these young soldiers of the invading army.

Speaking of their experience of two wars the veterans of the US armed forces have stated in a statement, “In the Gulf War (of 1991), as troops, we were ordered to murder from a safe distance. We destroyed much of Iraq from the air, killing hundreds of thousands, including civilians. We remember the road to Basra - The Highway to Death - where we were ordered to kill fleeing Iraqis. We bulldozed trenches, burying people alive. The use of depleted uranium weapons left the battlefields radioactive. Massive use of pesticides, experimental drugs, burning chemical weapons depots and oil fires combined to create a toxic cocktail affecting both the Iraqi people and Gulf War veterans today. One in four Gulf War veterans is disabled.

“During the Vietnam War we were ordered to destroy Vietnam from the air and on the ground. At My Lai we massacred over 500 women, children and old men. This was not an aberration, it’s how we fought the war. We used Agent Orange on the enemy and then experienced first-hand its effects. We know what Post Traumatic Stress Disorder looks, feels and tastes like because the ghosts of over two million men, women and children still haunt our dreams. More of us took our own lives after returning home than died in battle.”

It is evident from this statement of war veterans, who have seen and experienced present-day military invasions more than anyone else, that–

*    So dangerous are present-day weapons that even the winning side of a one-sided war is likely to suffer heavy physical damage.
*    Even in one-sided wars, soldiers of the stronger side are habitually asked by superiors to inflict massive unbearable cruelty and kill without any need for killing.
*    All this cruelty is of course most horrible for the victims but it also leaves permanent scars on the victors, on those soldiers who are forced to inflict these cruelties.

This last aspect, frequently ignored, is very important for understanding the enormous costs of war for the victors. As the veterans of US armed forces have clearly said of the Vietnam experience, “More of us took our own lives after returning home than died in battle.”

The parents of many American soldiers going to war are aware of these risks, as is evident in several statements released by the organisation ‘Military Families Speak Out’ around the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. One parent Stephen Cleghorn said, “If we go to war in Iraq, the loss of innocent civilian lives will be high and horrific... The soldiers in the area will know what they have done. They will see it with their own eyes or they will see it in the eyes of their fellow soldiers.” Nancy Lessin and Charley Richardson said about their son, “We don’t want him to be wounded or die. We don’t want him to be forced to wound or kill innocent Iraqi civilians. That would kill a part of him–and a part of us.”

This then, is the invisible cost of war. Reader’s Digest has described the suffering of a child, Kim Phuc at the time of the bombing of Trang Bang (Vietnam) by US planes (R.D. November 1997),

“The bombs, canisters filled with napalm, had smashed into ground behind Kim and instantly ignited. The jellified gasoline, designed to stick to and incinerate anything it touches, splashed onto Kim’s back. Her flowered cotton shirt and pants –even her sandal–combusted. She was engulfed in a cloud of smoke and fire as napalm peeled away the skin from her back and left arm. Terrified, Kim kept running. At first she could feel nothing. Then she felt as if she had been thrown onto an open fire. In horror she saw the skin drop off her arm like clothes off a doll. As she ran naked down the road that led out of the village, she began screaming, “Too hot! Too hot! Please help!”

This magazine also noted the impact of this suffering on the sensitive mind of the pilot who caused this suffering: “Now he stared at the picture of Kim Phuc, her agony caught for eternity. His own son Louis was about the same age. He could almost smell the child’s burning flesh.

...Later he kept his role in the bombing of Trang Bang secret, locked deep within his soul. It surfaced in the form of a nightmare. First Plummer would see a picture of Kim, with arms outstretched and mouth frozen in a silent scream. Then the image would widen to include Kim’s brother and cousins running alongside her. Finally, he would hear their screams, louder and louder until he felt surrounded by the accusing children. To drown his guilt, Plummer began drinking heavily. In July 1973 he married for the second time, but he still kept his secret. No one can understand, he thought. John Plummer’s drinking cost him his marriage in 1979. It was a vicious circle; he drank to put the bombing out of his mind, but the drinking made him more obsessed.”

Apart from tormenting the sensitive mind forever, war-time cruelties can also have a somewhat different impact. In order to come to terms with the cruelties inflicted by them, some soldiers deliberately train their minds to become very insensitive to human suffering. This insensitivity later enters into their close personal relationships and can destroy them. Thus, domestic violence has been reported at very high levels among soldiers of several invading armies that have been involved in cruel acts.

A person (or group or nation) who inflicts injustice and injury on others, will either live with a guilt complex (if he wants to retain some sensitivity) or else he’ll have to reduce himself to a level of insensitivity that will prevent him from feeling small but precious joys of everyday life and this in turn is bound to adversely affect his closest relationships including those with his family members. Thus relationships of dominance are not only destructive, these are also self-destructive.

[The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Protecting Earth for Children, Planet in Peril, Earth without Borders, A Day in 2071 and Man over Machine—A Path to Peace.]

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Frontier
Vol 57, No. 38, March 16 - 22, 2025