War is hell and wrong

Editor, The lighthouse:

I have been in this world for 74 years and I know one thing: war is hell and it is wrong.

I grew up during the Cold War. I didn’t have a carefree youth, having air raid drills in school and lessons on how to survive in a fallout shelter in fourth grade. I never took it for granted that the world as I knew it would survive as I watched the Cold War evolve into a nuclear arms race, precariously kept in check by a “strategy” called mutually assured destruction (MAD).

When I was in high school, I heard President Lyndon Johnson talk about a great society of equals and an end to poverty. I dared to believe that was possible, but then watched it go up in flames as my generation was sacrificed to the anti-communist crusade known as the Vietnam War. The “enemy” won, and 50 years later, Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is full of American tourists.

In my early 20s, I was living in London. The Irish Republican Army was planting bombs in English pubs, the latest episode in a centuries-old war with Britain. The illusion that the bombings had taken place somewhere else was shattered along with the shards of glass I had to carry around because a bombing had taken place not far from where I lived.

In my late 20s, I was a journalist covering the wars in Central America. I saw dead women in aprons, heard the pain of mothers wailing over the bodies of their dead sons. I saw 10-year-olds don uniforms and pick up guns to fight in wars started by generals.

In the last year of his life, my father, a World War II veteran, had to move into a nursing home because his dementia left him unable to live independently. When I called him to ask if he had adjusted to his new surroundings, I was amazed at the clarity of his answer.

“When I was a boy, they taught me to kill people. I got used to it, so I think I can get used to it too.”

He didn’t know the term for it, but what he suffered and what he came to terms with is what we now call moral injury. That’s why 20 US war veterans commit suicide every day.

My father idolized Dwight D. Eisenhower, the war hero who was elected president when I was a child. The five-star general who led the Allies to victory in Europe said this about the war:

“Every weapon that is manufactured, every warship that is launched, every missile that is fired ultimately represents a theft from those who are hungry and have nothing to eat, from those who are cold and have no clothing.”

We have all been robbed of the dignity and security that comes with living in a country where no child goes to bed hungry, where quality health care is a human right, and where educated voters are not vulnerable to manipulation by power-hungry autocrats.

Instead, our government has spent $8 trillion on wars since 9/11. That money would have been better spent securing our future by giving every child in America a world-class education, by ensuring that every American who wants to own a home can afford it, by providing quality health care from cradle to grave, and by seriously addressing global warming, which threatens the health, home security, and quality of life of every American.

Union general in the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman, is said to have originated the phrase “War is hell.” The full quote is: “I am tired and fed up with war. Its glory is moonshine. Only those who have never fired a shot, nor heard the cries and groans of the wounded, cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for devastation. War is hell.”

The hell that war creates and perpetuates is on the news every night. Recognizing this terrible truth could set us free, but only if we are brave enough to repeat it over and over again and insist that our “leaders” be brave enough to stop it.

Kathy Hersh
DeLand