Of War – WHY? FOR WHAT? - Alcyonenews

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Posted May 17, 2024

Of War – WHY? FOR WHAT?

A long time ago a young Turk colleague Engineer,told me that his dad died bitter because Turkey did not enter WW2. He was a Colonel in the Turkish Army and would have made it to General, if Turkey had entered the War. My friend could not understand his dad, and I did not either. I am sad the war ever happened and bitter that it failed to be the war that ends all wars.

I learned about Love & War at school, reading Homer. In the “Iliad” Homer relates the Trojan war from the beginning to the end. In a nutshell, Prince Paris of Troy abused the hospitality of King Menelaus of Sparta and took Queen Helen with him on the return trip to Troy. King Menelaus became upset, and took the issue up with his fellow members of the “Worshipful Company of Greek Kings and Allied Trades”. They would march to Troy to retrieve Helen and punish Paris for sexual assault. They consolidated their armies and off they went to war. But they found Troy a well walled city and could not scale the wall to fetch Helen. The impasse was resolved by a most remarkable man, Odysseus, aka, Ulysses, King of Ithaka. Homer devoted an epic poem, “Odyssey” to him and since several writers have written books about Ulysses.

Ulysses invented the “Trojan Wooden Horse”, kind of an over-land submarine. The Greeks deployed it judiciously and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They penetrated the wall and indulged in the fruits of warfare, pillage, rape and killing. Then they burned Troy, to teach the Trojans a lesson about virtue. The victory is commemorated by “Trojan” the Globalized (save for the Vatican) condoms makers.

In 1914 a dude, Gavrilo Princip, popped Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo Town. Franz was the Austrian Archduke and Austria had a fierce Army. War erupted to square the assassination resulting in “15 to 20, million people dead and 20 million wounded. The cost was $125 Billion (= $125 Thousand Millions).

The Vimy Ridge battle of that war took the lives of 3,600 Canadians and maimed some 7,000 more. We are proud of them for having put “Canada on the Map”. But I am sure Canada would had got on the Map the civilized way.

It has been argued that the man with the little moustache and the shiny riding boots goosestepped onto the world stage on a path paved by the “Allies” of WW1. That is to say Hitler happened because the Allies showed no mercy for the defeated Germans in settling the scores after WW1. In other words WW2 happened because the WW1 victors’ revenge was too rich and backfired ... War deals in power and power corrupts.

WW2 killed some 75 Million people and cost some $4Trillion (= $4 Million Millions). Perhaps this was the worse “Act of God” to befall humanity, next to the Dark Ages. Yet sadly it did not become the war to end all wars, either.

“WW3" was different from its predecessors. This because of necessity I guess. The “Military – Industrial Complex” about whom USA President Eisenhower had warned us, was in control of the World and had to be catered to. The mellee was tagged “Cold War” to distance it from the previous wars, for PR reasons. It made it sound sporty, something like the Pheasant shooting parties on British Royal Estates.

However, after the WW2 slaughter, there were not many kids left fo feed to the cannons. The people of the world were not amenable to more war while still licking the wounds of the previous one. These realities caused the conception of the “Cold War”. This was the old “terrorism” which had been deployed by the Christianists to do and operate the Dark Ages, marketed under a new, a euphemistic name.

I have seen no Cost/Benefit analysis of the war triggered by the Helen – Paris romance. Nor yet from the war done to punish Gavrilo for inappropriate discharge of a firearm. I do appreciate that there were more serious matters underlining both the Trojan War as well as WWI. But Helen’s eloping with Paris and the shooting of the Archduke are very important stories for they were used to sell the war to People. This expands the well known fact that the first victim of war is the truth, to include that a basic ordnance of war is Propaganda.

I was in Greece, a country attacked by the Mussolini Fascists; and by the Hitler Nazis; I was air-bombed; was occupied by both Germans and Italians; they caused us to starve, many to death, collapsing on the sidewalks; we resisted; and the Nazis burned down whole towns and killed the inhabitants. I have lived under overt dictatorships, too. And I have lived thought the immense brutality of two civil wars.

WHY? FOR WHAT?

But I saw humanity in all its magnificence, contrasting the barbarism. By both Italian and German troops. Such shows of kindness do not materialize in peace time. They happened under the dark clouds of war which gave them a special brilliance, made them look like fireworks in the dark of the night. As those memories of kindness tumble into my dizzy cranium, Louis Armstrong comes alive and blows into my mind his inimitable “What a Wonderful World ....” It dries the tears ... that is all ...