The Melting World

–An injured horse flees the US bombing of Baghdad–
(Image taken from here)

I was asked about six months ago how I can be an anti-war idealist in light of what horrible things happen in our world. I was asked how I can say, for example, that war is wrong, when it was the way in which someone like Hitler had to be stopped. It’s a difficult question.

I have been thinking about this for a long time, trying to formulate why I feel any act of violence against another human or living thing is only a worsening of the situation. And it comes down to my inner voice. I can’t see the good in violence, and I can’t support or condone it, even though I can understand why some people prefer it, having moral justifications for it and perhaps financially thriving from it.

I admit the line gets fuzzy when I think of issues of self-defense, and if I became a victim of violence, or if I saw someone harmed, I would quickly move into response, of course. But that response is not violence in and of itself, it is a reaction to direct oppression. I believe people who practice the resistance of non-violence will in the end create a better world rather than a worse, even if they must lose their lives in the process. This is a gift that people like MLK, Jr., Gandhi, Biko, Nkrumah, and Jesus leave for us to learn from. They are humans, with faults and weaknesses like us all, but they chose the tougher path of peace and love.

I do not, however, feel war and killing people ever creates a better world, and many, many innocent people are killed in the process, many people are left injured mentally, physically, and spiritually, often losing their loved ones, and thus denying the world of so many unrealized lives. I will never be hawkish, as I find no wisdom or joy in bullying. I imagine the pain of all the people who have lost their children to war. How can anyone call these lost humans ‘collateral damage’? I cannot.

A great haiku poet, Taneda Santoka (1882-1940) wrote the below haiku during the war between Japan and China that broke out in July 7, 1937. No one in Japan was allowed to oppose this conflict, and all poets were supposed to support the war in their poems. Yet, because he was jobless and homeless, Santoka was free to express his true feelings.

Marching together/On the ground/They will never step on again.
Futatabi wa fumumai tsuchi o fumishimete iku.

Winter rain clouds–/Thinking: Going to China/To be torn to pieces.
Shigurete kumo no chigireyuku Shina o omou.

Leaving hands and feet/ Behind in China/ The soldiers return to Japan.
Ashi wa te wa Shina ni nokoshite futatabi Nihon ni.

Soaking wet,/ Quietly returning/ The remains of six hundred fifty.
Shiguretsutsu shizuka ni mo roppyaku goju hashira.

Sweat trickles down/ The white boxes.
Poroporo shitataru ase ga mashiro no hako ni.
(Translations by John Stevens)

Let us hope for love and reason to win out over chaos and hate. I conclude that, yes, I believe in the power of non-violence and in the actions such belief necessitates.