The Triangle of power and the Artifice of War

A plea to young people to realize what really happens in war

 

The Triangle of Power and the Artifice of War

 

Young people listen closely.  What you are about to read is the truth that no one wants you to hear. 

When you are young, you are easily led astray by your passions.  You have been raised all of your life to respect the law and the leaders of the land.  You have been inculcated by the ideals of democracy, freedom, and liberty.  Though you have little more than a remote idea of what any of these words really mean, you are taught to hold them in the highest regard.  You are warned that your democracy, freedom, and liberty was paid forby the bloodshed of others and that you may be called some day to fight for God and Country so that others too may be blessed with the life you were given.

Because of your passion and teachings you will step up to the ideas of glory, duty, and the call to honor.  You will be lead by brilliantly dressed warriors, brass bands, in parades, and waving flags.  Political leaders will call you out and tell you about your duty as a patriot, and hold you to the honor of serving your country in the glory of war.  They will set you up upon a virtuous pedestal, and swear you into the branches of service.  They will give you a uniform and a gun.  They will convince you that you are a fearless soldier with the cause of God and Country marching on before you.

So much time they will spend herding you and building you up.  For maybe the first time in your life you feel powerful and important. Great and powerful people stand in front of you, honor you, and speak high tribute of you.  You are taught the rank structure that narrows like a triangle.  At the time, it does not seem suspicious, but all the hoopla and fanfare seems to be designed to honor you, and you are at the bottom end of the triangle!  But you are young and you are riding the waves of praise and the intoxicating feeling of patriotism.

You are now part of the military power triangle whose top is the president, and then funnels down to generals to colonels, to majors, to captains, to lieutenants, to sergeants, to corporals , to privates and then to you, the stripe-less new recruit.  You feel thrilled being led by such greatness and you feel like you would follow them anywhere, and so you do.

You follow them to war, but something strange begins to occur.  All these great leaders begin to trail off the closer you get to the battlefront.   The political leaders proudly wave you off at the airport.  When you land, the generals sternly send you to off to your units.  Your colonels send you off from your units to your battalion,  Your major sends you off to your company, your captain assigns you to your platoon, your lieutenant places you into your squad, your sergeant puts you in line, and the corporals and the experienced privates push you to the front.  Now the triangle is raised up with all of its weight on top of you..

You and all your naïve recruits are nervously forced to the front line.  All those great leaders who called you into battle are a million miles away.  They are hiding safely behind you.  You are their shield.  Your life means nothing more than a pawn on a chess board, and you are about to face your enemy.

Sadly you discover your mirror.  The enemy are not chinks, or japs or crauts, or commies or guks or camel jockies.  They are scared young people just like you!  They have mothers and brothers and girlfriends.  They enjoy life and were pushed into the fray of war just like you.  They are being pushed into you by the point of another triangle with a different set of leaders far away.  Both triangles are now reversed and the widest ends face each other to begin war’s greatest tragedy—the bloodshed of the innocent.

The irony is that all of the people responsible for the war are as far away as possible from the actual fighting.  But didn’t they talk a big game?  Didn’t they say this was the greatest honor a man could give for his god and his country?   Then why aren’t they here with you?  They left you!  They pushed you forward and then got the hell out of the way.  You are trapped.  The triangle that once seductively led you now reversed on you.  It is behind you and angrily thrusting you full force into war’s meat grinder..

Then the cannons blast, the bullets fly, and the bombs fall—and you are right there in the middle of it.  If you try to run,  the triangle will call you a coward and shoot down in dishonor  Your only choice is to fight your mirror and then they will call you a hero…or bury you as one.

You feel tricked, duped, hustled, and bamboozled.  There is no glory or honor here.  Your only duty is about killing—killing young people just like you.  Your blood turns to ice and some where the Devil is laughing his a*s off. 

 

How many times will the young fall for this bitter tissue of patriotic lies?