Armed hostile conflict: atrocity of atrocities

By William R. Jones

In my early formative years, Hollywood and TV and toy guns and games inundated and inured me to violence. It was always the good guys against the bad guys. My father fought in WWII and the Korean War and my brother in the Vietnam War. Later, schooling taught me of other wars around the world.

The one that hurt most and most awakened me was the Rwandan Civil War between the Hutu and Tutsi groups. The power struggle resulted in genocide. The Hutu killed thousands of Tutsis on the banks of the Kagera River. Viewing the 1994 TV newsreel, I lost count of the disposed of corpses as the current and rapids swiftly carried the bodies through the course of the river. Prior inundation and inurement were of no effect. The scene of bloated torsos and splayed limbs seared my mind's eye indelibly. I was shattered! How could humans collectively and revoltingly murder other humans? As Tolstoy asked and answered: what is war? It is the naked and criminal business of murder!

With the present ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, what are we to do? With the emergence of property rights and this past February's invasion of Ukraine and annexed territories, precious innocent lives are caught in the cruel midst of war. Nothing I write can change things or save them. We must rely upon leaders and diplomats, as they scurry about, to prevent military conflict escalation. They must not cling to obsolete and outworn ideas. They must not be egoists or lazy or blunted with the arrogance of power.

Whether the table talks slide north or slide south or east or west, let there be talks! Let us not be deceived, we know that some men are unreasonable. Let us not be deluded, money brings us the war of the richer against the poorer and internecine slaughter. Is there any way to deliver us from the menace of war? Perhaps, we would do well to consider that “an unjust peace is better than a just war” as Cicero quoted.

When shall we learn war no more? When shall nations finally cease with epithets of war? When shall present-day men-at-arms quit and sing, “Farewell to arms.”

When and how did war begin? No one knows. However, by 5000 B.C., war had become an endemic addiction. Humanity has not changed or suspended the trade of war in more than seven thousand years. Today, due to the incompetent lunacy and shortsightedness of the arms race and in this world of the conglomerate, the neutron bomb if employed can indeed end us. One past Columbia University historian stated: no international Eighteenth Amendment will get rid of war or the instruments of war until civilization finds a way for accomplishing what war has done in the past. Simply prohibiting war is not going to get rid of it.

Reading the United Nations Charter, it is confusing and confounding that some of the obligated member states are not bound to international peace and security. Law of man or force, or a combination thereof, may be required to keep nations to their agreed-upon pacts.

Uncomfortably, I conclude that there have been times in human history in which it has been necessary and morally right to kill in order to prevent even greater killing. There can be an excess of tolerance and permissiveness. Ukrainians must stand up and take the war for all they have and are!

The author (wrjones@vsu.edu) published the novella. "Beyond Harvard," and presently teaches English as a second language.