Another way of looking at war: a way I agree with

Johnny Got His Gun, a novel written after the author had read about a British officer who was wounded in terrible ways in WWI, tells the following story:  An American soldier goes off to fight in the war that was supposed to end all wars: World War One. And ends up as a literal basket case. No limbs, no ears, and worst of all, no face. He is a man caught by the emotional storm that erupted in central Europe following the assassination of the duke Franz Ferdinand in a part of the world as alien to him as the planet Jupiter. What's most powerful about this novel (later made into a film) is that it silences the mad chorus and gives its only voice to one of its victims. The film begins by showing footage of this ineluctable march to death with all its strutting pomp and circumstance which would eventually swallow up millions of lives for all eternity...except that out of the resulting rubble rises Joe Bonham, the "Johnny" of the story.

After coming to the realization of the extent of his injuries, neither Joe nor the movie's viewers know what place or what time he's been slotted into. He's simply been pulled violently and suddenly by a brutal undertow and left to drift far out into the deep sea without a piece of his former framework to hang onto. The aforementioned set-up allows for much of the film to play out in Joe's mind as he gradually recalls his days before and right up to his fateful encounter with the German shell that placed his living mind inside the body of the dead.

While the root of this sentiment involves the brutality of war, Joe also protests the organization of modern warfare that has the interests of the moneyed classes as its purpose. Joe thinks in terms of an "us" vs. "them" axis, and it quickly becomes clear what he means by these vague designations. "Us," the archetypal little guy, refers to the poorer classes who work with their hands and make just enough money to be potentially happy within in their local life. "Them" refers to the upper, moneyed classes whose interests have dictated the war, yet who do not endanger themselves but instead send workers to fight against other workers. The oppression of the working classes by the upper classes is not a blunt matter of coercion. Instead, the novel tracks the ways in which power works through subtler means, such as through the misleading promise of abstract words such as "liberty."

With Joe's conviction that war and its goals have nothing to do with him, or people like him, comes his understanding that people such as himself have nothing to gain by fighting in a war on terms of others. Joe understands that most men go to war for idealist hopes, but he is skeptical about the worth of these abstract ideals. Joe understands that abstract words like "democracy" and "freedom" can shift in meaning and are often meant to mean democracy or freedom for a specific few. Furthermore, Joe, with his unique position of being on the edge of life and death, can attest to the fact that dying men think only of their families, friends, and, most important, their wish to be alive—not about abstract ideals.

"The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people."

EXCERPTS from the  book:  He thought here you are Joe Bonham lying like a side of beef all the rest of your life and for what? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we're going to war. So you went.

But why? In any other deal even like buying a car or running an errand you had the right to say what's there in it for me? Otherwise you'd be buying bad cars for too much money or running errands for fools and starving to death. It was a kind of duty you owed yourself that when anybody said come on son do this or do that you should stand up and say look mister why should I do this for who am I doing it and what am I going to get out of it in the end? But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you've got no rights. You haven't even the right to say yes or no or I'll think it over. There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.

Of course a lot of guys were ashamed. Somebody said let's go out and fight for liberty and so they went and got killed without ever once thinking about liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose idea of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can't rob and you take away some of his liberty. You've got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's just a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it?

No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar. Next time anybody came gabbling to him about liberty- what did he mean next time? There wasn't going to be any next time for him. But the hell with that. If there could be a next time and somebody said let's fight for liberty he would say mister my life is important. I'm not a fool and when I swap my life for liberty I've got to know in advance what liberty is and whose idea of liberty we're talking about and just how much of that liberty we're going to have. And what's more mister are you as much interested in liberty as you want me to be? And maybe too much liberty will be as bad as too little liberty and I think you're a goddamn fourflusher talking through your hat and I've already decided that I like the liberty I've got right here the liberty to walk and see and hear and talk and eat and sleep with my girt I think I like that liberty better than fighting for a lot of things we won't get and ending up without any liberty at all. Ending up dead and rotting before my life is even begun good or ending up like a side of beef. Thank you mister. You fight for liberty. Me I don't care for some.

They were always fighting for something the bastards and if anyone dared say the hell with fighting it's all the same each war is like the other and nobody gets any good out of it. If they weren't fighting for liberty they were fighting for independence or democracy or freedom or decency or honor or their native land or something else that didn't mean anything. The war was to make the world safe for democracy for the little countries for everybody. If the war was over now then the world must be all safe for democracy. Was it? And what kind of democracy? And how much? And whose?

Then there was this freedom the little guys were always getting killed for. Was it freedom from another country? Freedom from work or disease or death? Freedom from your mother-in-law? Please mister give us a bill of sale on this freedom before we go out and get killed. Give us a bill of sale drawn up plainly so we know in advance what we're getting killed for and give us also a first mortgage on something as security so we can be sure after we've won your war that we've got the same kind of freedom we bargained for.

And take decency. Everybody said America was fighting a war for the triumph of decency. But whose idea of decency? And decency for who? Speak up and tell us what decency is. Tell us how much better a decent dead man feels than an indecent live one. Make a comparison there in facts like houses and tables. Make it in words we can understand. And don't talk about honor. The honor of a Chinese or an Englishman or an African negro or an American or a Mexican? Please all you guys who want to fight to preserve our honor let us know what the hell honor is. Is it American honor for the whole world we're fighting for? Maybe the world doesn't like it. Maybe the South Sea Islanders like their honor better.

For God's sake give us things to fight for we can see and feel and pin down and understand. No more highfalutin words that mean nothing like native land. Motherland fatherland homeland native land. It's all the same. What the hell good to you is your native land after you're dead? Whose native land is it after you're dead? If you get killed fighting for your native land you've bought a pig in a poke. You've paid for something you'll never collect.

Why wouldn't they let him be seen? His condition could shock people into realizing the futility and stupidity of war.  Oh, now he realized why:  He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like. Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn't fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret. They knew that if all the little people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons-of-bitches we won't fight we won't be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what speeches you make no matter what slogans you write. Remember it well we we we are the world we are what makes it go round we make bread and cloth and guns we are the hub of the wheel and the spokes and the wheel itself without us you would be hungry naked worms and we will not die. We are immortal we are the sources of life we are the lowly despicable ugly people we are the great wonderful beautiful people of the world and we are sick of it we are utterly weary we are done with it forever and ever because we are the living and we will not be destroyed.

If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us. They will not be us the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food the guys who make clothes and paper and houses and tiles the guys who build dams and power plants and string the long moaning high tension wires the guys who crack crude oil down into a dozen different parts who make light globes and sewing machines and shovels and automobiles and airplanes and tanks and guns oh no it will not be us who die. It will be you.

It will be you--you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves you who would have one cobbler kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live. Remember this. Remember this well you people who plan for war. Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives.

We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel. But if you destroy our peace if you take away our work if you try to range us one against the other we will know what to do.

[If all men would refuse to go to war at the urging of those in whose interest it is to make war, if all would-be soldiers stood up and said, "NO, we will NOT fight your wars for you.  We will NOT fight so you can reap more and more wealth.  We see who you are, selfish cowards who use every trick in the book to keep yourselves out of military service, and never sending your own sons into battle -- but always urging us to be 'patriotic' and to 'love our country.'"  You, who do NOT love your country, you who are NOT patriotic, you who are motivated only by greed and lust for power.  If all men would stand up to you, and refuse to take up arms, wars would stop -- and you would be out of business. That this will one day happen in a more enlightened world is my hope and my prayer.]

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