The Paradox of War and Humanity

Why don’t we say “no?” Why do we do the things that forever haunt us? We spend a lifetime trying to understand the paradox within. How can we be so barbaric, yet so kind? How can we love others so dearly, willing to do whatever is necessary to protect them in life and death, while also being so willing to destroy others in life and death?

We do not know what we do not know. We are so sure of what we think we know. We fail to comprehend what we know we don’t know. And sometimes, we do not even recognize what we truly know. (Homage to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.)

We chastise and crucify the soldiers “just following orders.” We demonize the enemy who commits war crimes—while burying our own. There is true evil on every side, but I would argue that most “evil” is perpetrated by mere humans. They are nothing more or less than what their society has shaped them to be. They are the young and scared.

We are all of those things. We are human. We did not know what we did not know. We were so confident in what we thought we knew. Sometimes, to fight evil, you must become evil. Sometimes, we have to become what we hate. We become everything we need to be to survive. We become what we must. The juxtaposition exists only when we are no longer surviving—when we return to the world we fought to protect.

War and its warriors are not righteous. They are not pure. They are the tattered and torn, forced to become what is necessary and left to reconcile the impossible for a lifetime. We are The Fury. We are The Platoon. We are Saving Private Ryan. We are forced to make impossible decisions.

To those who self-righteously seek to crucify the soldiers of Abu Ghraib, the Marines who pissed on dead bodies, or—even though I find him to be an asshole—Eddie Gallagher as pure evil, I ask you to politely fuck yourself.

Accountability is necessary. We must punish indiscretion, but we must do so fairly. We must do so justly. We must do so by asking ourselves what we demand from the warrior. The self-righteous stand in judgment without experience. Let us not forget the lessons of Milgram, Zimbardo, Asch, and other pioneers. The outside world can create the perfect dream, but reality does not exist in our imagination.

I have made peace with what I have done. I have done wrong. I have been what I needed to be. I have been what this country has demanded of me. I have done things I am not proud of. The paradox is forever etched into my mind.

To destroy evil, I became evil.

Sometimes, the act does not define the man.

Or maybe that’s just a self-preserving delusion.

________________________________

Jake is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.