What Are We Teaching Our Young?

WHAT ARE WE TEACHING OUR YOUNG?

I can't help it.  I see the young man in that TV ad jogging through the neighborhood.  I listen as he shares his thoughts with us.  It's not for the money, not for the glory.  "It's for them", he says, the people in his hometown.  These are the people he cares about.  This is why he trains.  He must really care.  What is he training for?  He must be in med school, or firefighter training, or civic engineering college.  Maybe he's studying to be a teacher or a computer programmer.  Maybe he'll design power plants that don't pollute.

Then we find out.  It's an ad for the army.  This fine, healthy, beautiful, young American is learning how to shoot people from a distance, or kill another person in hand-to-hand combat.  Maybe he's also learning how to blow things up, or learning about the huge variety of weapons and how to control them from the cold sterility of outer space, or about the use of psychological torture in interrogations.

I just can't help it.  My two middle fingers snap to attention and I jab them toward the TV in a double salute to the global merchants of hate and their perverse commandeering of American virtue.  How dare they portray the brutality of war as this dreamy, virtuous, patriotic choice!  The saviors of our hometown!  The blessed martyrs of Freedom!

It all seems so idyllic, so pure and clean, this portrayal of caring for the community one comes from.  Any human can feel the tug on the heartstrings as s/he considers the dangers present in the modern world.  We can just envision our moms standing on the porch with apron on and pie in hand (Isn't that what you were born for, girls?), and we can thank the young man and his friends for standing up to protect our peaceful town against a sinister and heartless enemy.  The way the Washington junta would have us look at it, the war is a classic case of good versus evil.  Us good, them bad.  It's as simple as that.  You're either with the US, or you're with the terrorists. 

But contrary to the way the government tries to portray them as amoral zombies, the "enemy" is human, just like mom.  The enemy has a mom.  Mom doesn't want her islamo-fascist kid to die, and neither does the mom of the agent of "the Great Satan", our hometown boy. 

Now we're supposed to be "staying the course" for George Bush.  We're supposed to keep in mind the goal of our mission which is… of course it's… well, we'll leave that to the big thinkers and planners.  Ours is but to do our duty.  But my thoughts stray when I'm tired and the smoke from the TV and my cigarette rises in the evening.  It can't be all that unpatriotic, and so far, I don't think it's a crime, to wonder how it is to be a young man, jogging in a town in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or any one of the many places in the world where children are taught that America is the Great Satan.  Come to think of it, they probably don't jog in the streets there, for fear of being killed, or because the streets are filled with the rubble of what used to be downtown.   If the counterpart to the young American soldier does not come from a place that the US "coalition" has destroyed, he is from the next town over, or from a neighboring country.  He either sees the destruction first-hand, or hears of it from a relative or on the regional media.

For both American and middle-eastern or Asian youth alike, who witness these attacks either on TV, or, for the non-Americans, maybe in their home towns, as it has been since the dawn of mass-communication, the message is repeated daily as they reach enlistment age: if you love your country, you will hate and kill the people in other lands far away.  Thus the seeds of eternal enmity are planted in the brains of the young of many lands.  It seems the only patriotic thing to do is to sign up.  We hear about the tactics military recruiters use in searching for the next wave of youthful soldiers.  I'm sure the youth of all cultures are under constant pressure to express their patriotism or righteousness by joining forces against foreign evil.  The ones that do enlist are told they are heroes, defending the world against tyrants and their evil religion, making the world safe for democracy, and spreading freedom throughout the world.  These notions have yet to be put to the test under the light of scientific scrutiny.  But these bright, but green youth are no match for the sophisticated ploys of advertising and the societal pressures of a fearful public who demand protection, so many of them go for the package: serve just a year or two, get money for college, and be a hometown hero.

Due to all these repeated messages, the choice seems clear to the young, and so they enlist in what they are told is the noble cause of the century.  But their bubble soon gets burst and they undergo a complete breakdown of the persons they were, and they are reshaped into the finely crafted swords that the knights of democracy need to accomplish their mission.  Recruits undergo ruthless, relentless, and grueling training, social, political and religious indoctrination, and are fully equipped and organized into units of trained killers.  Our little-leaguers and paper-boys are then ready to ship out, to meet the enemy and to smite him and smite him again.

When exposed to the reality of military action, these young people from both sides lose their innocence forever.  They see heinous acts and horrible carnage, see close friends and family dropped by a single bullet or blown up or disfigured or dismembered.  They participate in battles which destroy towns and kill civilians.  For one side, the town is on the other side of the world.  For the other side, it is their own town.  Do you think they ever feel patriotic in taking up arms against an occupying army from a foreign land?  Do you think they ever think of their mothers as they aim an RPG at an American vehicle?  Do you think they ever feel like they are doing the only thing they can do, to defend their motherland?  I shudder as I think what it must be like to see one's main street reduced to rubble, or to carry the coffins of family killed while cowering defenseless in their homes.  Don't you, ever?  Just take a minute and close your eyes.  You are downtown in your town, sitting outdoors because it's a beautiful day, having lunch.  Now bring to mind how it would be to experience a sudden, huge, searing blast which blows your lunch off your lap, knocks over your bench, kills an injures dozens of your friends and fellow citizens, and makes a big ugly hole in the downtown landscape.

Thus war has always been, and for the longest time now, wars have always been waged in someone else's homeland, not our own.  (I wonder how much fervor the American junta could whip up if American cities were being destroyed alongside Iraqi and Afghan cities.)  And so the youth of the world are returning home after a crash course in death and destruction.  What lessons have they learned?  How will they apply those lessons through the rest of their lives?  It is always the ones who have "laid their lives on the line" who are looked to for leadership.  How will these scarred and battle-hardened youth lead? 

And the questions just keep flowing out of me.  How is it that we have learned no lesson from all the myriad wars we have seen or studied?  How can we send our tender youth, generation after generation, into the hell that is war?  How can we be savage enough to continue such depraved abuse of our fellow humans and our planet?  How is it that we do not tire of the endless repetition of the lead-up, perpetration, and aftermath of war?  How can anyone make sense of this ugliest aspect of human behavior?  Is there truly no other choice?  Are we inescapably bound to fight and kill each other and each other's families until there is only one side left standing?  Why is it wrong to ask these questions?  Is it wrong to advocate non-violence in inter-cultural relations?

I ask questions until my mouth turns blue and I get only rhetoric from all sides.  No one is making sense.  I know in my head, my heart, and my soul what the answers to these questions are.  Peace is the end which must be pursued.  Communication is to be preferred to confrontation.  Negotiation in the spirit of mutual respect must be encouraged.  Thoughts of revenge are to be dealt with on the psychologist's couch.  Racism and religious bigotry are not to be accepted.  The babies and elderly of all nations are to be held sacred.  We must take care of the only speck of dust in all of space that we know will support life as we know it.  Irrational fervor in the cause of self-protection must not take precedence over the real needs of all the people of the world.  We must stop being afraid of each other, and we must start taking care of each other.  In short, if you can't love your neighbor on the other side of the world as you would your own neighbor and your mom, you will have no peace on your side.  There is no other way to save the world from destruction.  Peace among peoples is the ultimate mission, the only one which can be supported by a truly moral interpretation of all the evidence we have.  Therefore it is the clear choice of a moral people to redefine 'heroism', 'patriotism', 'duty', 'honor', and love.  We should be saturating our airwaves with messages that extol the virtues of peaceful co-existence.  Think how different the world would be if all the sacrifice, selflessness, idealism, determination, perseverance, organized effort, economic power, and repeated mass-media messages were done in the name of ending the hunger, disease, inequity, injustice, and planet-wrecking which seems to be our destiny today.  The benefits of any other course of action pale in comparison to what could be achieved as a people united in the cause of peace, love, and sharing.  This much seems obvious to me.

In light of this, another question occurs to me: why would we choose to educate our youth any other way?

"Naturally the common people don't want war, neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.  But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."

Herman Goering at the Nuremberg Trials   

"Captain – logic dictates that we pursue another course."

Spock, Star Trek, original TV series

"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."

Salvor Hardin, Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

"Love your enemy."

Jesus, in the Bible