The futility of war

IN The Republic, Plato described how civilised states should be governed but noted, “Only the dead have seen the last of war.”Centuries earlier, Homer had shown how wars had transformed men into heroes. Shakespeare would show centuries later how wars brought out the worst in man.In our era, martial courage would be famously extolled in an Urdu couplet:Only the mounted warriors fall in battleHow will the toddlers fall that crawl on all fours?This glossed over Gen Sherman’s experience of the civil war which left him convinced that “All war is hell”, something that John Keegan brought out to good effect in The Face of Battle. But even those who glorified war were devastated by the horrific acts that took place on 9/11. The US retaliation that came in Afghanistan was swift and decisive, widely welcomed by the world.

The war to depose Saddam Hussein was not.Of course, it appealed to the troops who were sent there to fight it. Unlike their counterparts in the Vietnam war, they were volunteers. Many had joined to extract revenge on the terrorists. Evan Wright, an American reporter, was embedded in an elite reconnaissance platoon of US Marines. In 2004, he penned a book about the invasion, Generation Kill, which is now being screened by a US TV channel to much acclaim.Wright provides a view of the modern battlefield from the vantage point of these warriors. As they roll off into Iraq in their lightly armed Humvees they have only a vague idea of their enemy. They know he has no air cover and that his capability has been eroded by sanctions. But his army is equipped with several thousand tanks, artillery pieces and possibly nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Danger lurks in the vastness of the desert.The marines are young men drawn from Camp Pendleton, California, on a par with the Navy Seals or the army’s Special Operation Forces. But their exposure to the outside world has been limited to jaunts south of the border. They are overflowing with hormones, profanities, machismo and tattoos. One has a broken smile because two front teeth are missing. Another has an ungainly appearance for which he has been nicknamed ‘Manimal’. Yet another is believed to have fled the scene of battle at Khafji during the 1991 Gulf war and is called The Coward. Their leader, who does not command respect, is called Captain America.As it marches into Iraq, this platoon, like the rest of the corps, is simply out to “Get Some!” No one has bothered to educate its soldiers about the local culture. So when they see their first Iraqi around 10 in the morning, they cuss him for wearing pyjamas in daylight. All enemies are “Hajjis.”In the crossfire that ensues, innocent shepherds, villagers and city dwellers are killed. The marines watch helplessly as a shot-up boy dies in his mother’s arms and as a father carries his dead girl whose brain has spilled out to a roadside grave. A sheikh begs the marines not to rape his daughters while other Iraqis offer them boys as an alternative.

As the invasion progresses, large numbers of Iraqi soldiers surrender, many without a fight. The marines encounter long lines of Iraqi troops walking past them in civilian clothes. Many carry pink cards given by the American army units to whom they surrendered.But the marines cannot afford to feed them. The soldiers have to be ‘un-surrendered’ to bypass the Geneva Conventions. The Iraqi soldiers complain that the fedayeen have formed hunter killer teams to take them out. However, the marines are unable to offer them protection and send them in the other direction, knowing that it means certain death for the deserters.Evidence of Iraqi military incompetence abounds. Their armour waits until 10 in the morning to begin rolling out, at which time US combat aircraft take them out with consummate ease. In one night encounter, a T-72 tank is taken out by a single marine with a missile shot from less than 200 yards away. After a major battle with an Iraqi division, a US general says that his troops won not because he was brilliant but because his counterpart was stupid.One marine officer acknowledges that if a foreign force went to the US, the residents would do their best to catch an invader and string him up. Yet, when a marine is killed, the others resort to taking their revenge on the nearby village. The air force is called in and thousand-pound bombs are dropped. The marines, from a distance, see Iraqi men evaporate before their eyes. In another encounter, a marine sniper is sent in to dispatch potential Iraqi spotters from a distance. As he sees them drop through his scope, he reminds himself to not take pleasure in the act of killing, since that would be counter to his Christian faith.On the road to Baghdad, the marines relieve themselves under the open sky, day or night, and litter the roads with wrappers from their ready-to-eat rations. At night, they are haunted by visions of those that they have killed. Some marines fall victim to friendly fire, some are run over as they sleep by US vehicles and some, who can’t take it any more, step into a ditch and shoot themselves in the head. Even for the victors, war is one long ride through hell.And yet, somehow, amidst all the chaos and destruction, the Iraqi farmer tends to his sheep and drives his herds through the US formations. Five years after the war, many of the soldiers who fought in the Iraq war are despondent. More than four thousand of their buddies are dead. They won the war but lost the peace. Along the way some of them burned villages in order to save them. The crazier ones just fired guns to blow things up. Even the sensible ones were anxious to “get in the game”, as if war was a game too good to miss out on.Wright does not moralise about the war. Nor does he tell us how the Iraqis viewed it. But what he does say proves the futility of war.