Minister Faust: War Destroys Everyone It Touches

[villager]

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Q: And what is left after everyone is destroyed? Your novel still seems hopeful...

A: What I meant about war destroying everyone it touches is that we need to get past our romantic notions that war is honorable and that soldiers are superior to the rest of us. There's nothing elevating about carrying and using guns for the government.

One of the biggest hypocrisies I know is that the people who spend the most time complaining about "big government" and "collectivism" are usually the biggest advocates of Big War, which depends on taking money from people and their society that produces little spin-off technology that improves lives, almost no public services, terrible working conditions for soldiers, terrible family lives for many soldiers' families, and, of course, the mass-murder of civilians across the world. War turns otherwise decent human beings into killers, torturers, thieves, and rapists. If you don't believe me, check out the work of Cynthia Enloe and Howard Zinn.

I'm not suggesting all soldiers are monsters... not at all. I have military folk in my family; I almost joined the military; several past and current friends are military people. There is some value in having some type of military. But most of the folks who slather their bumpers with "Support Our Troops" stickers don't mean that troops need psychological counseling to cope with the constant terror in which they lived, or the reality of the people they killed, people who were simply defending our living in their own countries. They don't mean support for the soldiers who will go on to commit suicide; they don't mean support for the families of soldiers who'll be terrorized by physical and emotional violence from fathers they no longer recognize.

Again, I don't mean all soldiers collapse these ways, but so many do that it's disgusting that we collectively pretend this destruction isn't happening. And I place particular blame on the news editors and producers, and the bumper sticker crowd, because what they fundamentally mean by "Support Our Troops" is "Always Question the Government Except When It Comes to Slaughtering People in Their Own Countries."

And I'd like to point out that everything I've written above applies to every country in the world with a military, which is almost every last one of them.

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http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/faust_interview/