Put on your big boy pants

As I’ve written before, sometimes a column is difficult to put together. This week’s is one of those columns. Mostly I try not to step too deeply into politics, but it’s all politics, isn’t it? Everything has a political side and today I’m trekking down the road I’ve avoided in the past. War. Armed conflict. I have avoided the politics of war. I have avoided writing about war. I have avoided talking about war. I have avoided debating war.

I read the newspapers. I listen to the radio news. I watch the television reports. I can’t think of an occasion, in my lifetime, when a war, declared and fought, ever really solved all of the problems that precipitated the conflict in the first place. My dad was a flight sergeant and a bomber during the Second World War. He signed up when he was far too young. He trained in Alberta and shipped out from Quebec City, barely matriculated from high school. On his first day in the UK, he arrived too late to fly out on a night mission. He spent his first night in a quonset hut with dozens of empty bunks. Those bunks never saw the backs of the men who’d slept in them the night before. All were shot down by “enemy fire”. Dad waited 30 years to tell us about that night. He told us he’d been spared because of a paperwork mix up. To dad, the worst part about fighting for a cause was the innocent casualties. He fully expected he’d die in an air strike, and very nearly did on several occasions during his tours. I believe dad, like a lot of young men, had hoped for a much more romantic outcome, but the moment he entered that bomb bay, he knew it wasn’t a storybook tale of heroics. It was real. It was dirty, dark and scary. Johnny Canuck was a character in a comic book. Dad, and the rest of the men in his group, were real flesh and blood people. When his gunner was shot, he didn’t get to turn the page and there wasn’t a happy ending on that flight. Someone cleaned out the mid-upper turret, the dome was replaced and they were back in business two nights later. Maybe dad had read too many books where the heroes got to go home to a parade, a loving spouse, a warm hearth and lifetime of praise and accolades. I think he was young enough to believe it might be like that and signing up was the right thing to do. But for the rest of his life, he was tormented by his mental images of the civilian casualties. The unarmed bystanders. The women, the children, the elderly and the infirm. The people who just wanted to be with a loving spouse near a warm hearth, to go to work or school or play.

Over the years since dad told us his first night story, I always felt there had to be a better way to deal with the politics of wartime injustices. Sending thousands of troops into a street-by-street, home-to-home battle just doesn’t seem right nor did it work. My point is, and I do have one, what will happen if the US, and big business, agree to send troops into Syria? And I do believe it will happen. And, what about Canadians being sent? Our armed forces won’t be there to stand around, to look good in uniform and hand out bandages. The reality is there will be even more civilian casualties because there will be more ground troops. Murder of innocents shouldn’t be the price of peace. In war, especially where civilians are hostages and in the line of fire, everything that could go wrong will likely go wrong. An escalation of bombing and destruction will ensure, with each side believing they have the right and are right in their assumptions. And what if, in the unlikely event, an American strike on Syria goes all textbook? Is there a guarantee that things will be better for the people of Syria? I doubt it. At the end of it all, there will be chemical weapons on the auction block and they will end up in the wrong hands. Get rid of one tyrant and another will take his place.

I don’t think war should be a business, although we always speak in terms of the cost, which is always measured in dollars spent before the human casualties are mentioned. Nope, nope. I think war should be a game. A game played out in a remote battlefield. If civilian folks wanted to be spectators, they could pay a price as they would on any game day. The terms and conditions would be spelled out, prior to the start and, with the exception of the heads of state who would have to be in attendance at all times, the rest of the participants would be “willing participants” in an all-or-nothing, no chemicals, no nukes, organized-or-not, heavy-duty combat. The nation with the most toys and players left at the end would win the game. I’m not trying to be funny. If the big kids want to fight it out, let’s give them space and keep them away from the breakables. Like a lot of you, I’m acutely aware of what the real cost of armed conflict is in human terms. I’m not prepared to stand by and watch Harper and Obama send troops into Syria if they’re not willing to admit it’s big business, and to roll up their friggin’ sleeves and be one of the pieces on the board. Put on your big boy pants and play nice.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca