October 25, 2003

Listen to the Words of the ARealists@

Dare break the walls of the prison in which the self-proclaimed Arealists@

Have encased you. They need cannon fodder for their future wars

And steer the course of the debate, AWhy War?,@ away from childhood.

They need a young generation which has been hurt, abandoned, hungry,

Brought up in poverty by a stressed mother, left too long in day care,

For those are the ones who will be willing to give up their lives

Hoping to gain, in death, the honor, admiration, respect and even love

They felt they lacked when they were thrust, helpless, into the world.

Soldiers are a society=s manufactured product, like any other product.

ARealists@ frame the discussion as if childhood is separate from war,

As if all of us at adolescence suddenly become fully formed persons

Ready and willing to sacrifice for our motherland, our original mother

Having little importance B that despised, dull, routine, animal-like,

Domestic world of women where repetition and drudgery hold sway,

Where work is so valueless, it does not even count as producing wealth

And is haughtily omitted from such measures as the gross national product.

If childhood has nothing to do with war, then why do familial terms

Crop up so often in the parlance of war? The language of the Arealists,@

Supposedly reflecting reason, facts, science and objective truths, abounds

With allusions to powerful mothers and their small, needy, bad progeny...

An omnipotent Motherland, a Statue of Liberty with a nurturing breast,

Soldiers protecting women and children (as if the dead could protect),

Battle initiating boys into manhood (as if there were no other way),

A world divided into good and evil (as indeed is that of a four-year old).

ALet the boys rise and play in front of us,@ intoned Samuel, in 1050 B.C.

To start a hand-to-hand combat in which all 24 participants were killed.

Many primitive tribes named their children after their vanquished enemies.

St. Augustine, while reversing the early Christians= opposition to all wars

And devising ways for the Church to justify as least some wars, shuddered

At the thought of re-living his childhood, unquestionably preferring to die.

Medieval knights became Abrothers-in-arms@ after underground combat.

The Aztecs called their doomed prisoners Asons,@ and themselves Afather.@

Reformation leader Martin Luther abhorred all disobedience to the state.

Jean Jacques Rousseau contended that citizens refusing their civic duty

Thereby revealed their want of love of the fatherland as a civic mother,

By nature being monstrous wretches, unworthy of seeing the light of day,

And deserving, like children disrespectful of their mother, to be killed at once...

Hitler described his childhood as one of seven in two small basement rooms,

From age three receiving daily beatings by his father, no matter his behavior,

His father also attacking his mother brutally, so that by age six he had become

A Apitiable@ child suspecting things which would fill even adults with horror.

A just war elaborates a punishment administered by a benevolent parent.

Empire=s authority over its colonies mimics that of a parent over children.

The atomic bomb was Oppenheimer=s Ababy,@ the hydrogen one, Teller=s.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by ALittle Boy@ and AFat Man.@

Star Wars uses Athird generation@ weapons, bombs have to be Aclean,@

Defense intellectuals pat their missiles and bombers like small babies,

Wars are Apissing contests,@ each side expected to use all he has got,

And today=s Third World countries are considered to be still Adeveloping.@

War is the revenge of children on adults

For not giving them what they needed

In order to grow up with equanimity

Free of having to either sacrifice or kill

Don=t let the Arealists@ control the narrative

Turn the discourse about war towards childhood.

Bibliography

Manufactured product

Ruskin, John, Unto This Last and other writings (Penguin Books, London), 1985, p. 226; cited in Pepper, William, An Act of State B The Execution of Martin Luther King (Verso, New York, N.Y.), 2003, p. 173.

John Ruskin (1819-1900) contended that criminals should be regarded by their society as any other manufactured product.

Gross national product

Waring, Marilyn, Counting for Nothing B What Men value and What Women are Worth (University of Toronto, Toronto, ON), 1999, pp. 57-59 and 75- 92.

ALet the boys rise...@

Samuel II, pp. 2 and 13; cited in Van Creveld, Martin, The Transformation of War (Free Press, New York,. N.Y.), 1991, p. 162.

As related in the Book of Samuel, the phrase was actually uttered by Avner, servant of Ish Boshet.

Primitive Tribes

Lopez, Barry, Of Wolves and Men (Charles Scribner=s Sons, New York, N.Y.), 1978, p. 119; cited in Ehrenreich, Barbara, Blood Rites B Origins and History of the Passions of War (Owl/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 1997, p. 140.

Lopez describes the tribes in the North American plains.

Sagan, Eli, Cannibalism B Human Aggression and Cultural Form (Harper and Row, New York, N.Y.),1974, p. 21; cited in Ehrenreich, Barbara, Blood Rites B Origins and History of the Passions of War (Owl/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 1997, p. 140.

Sagan describes the tribes in New Guinea.

St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.)

St. Augustine, Confessions; cited in deMause, Lloyd, The Emotional Life of Nations (Karnac/Other Press, New York. N.Y.), 2002, p. 285.

Medieval Knights (1100-1500)

Barber, Richard, The Knight and Chivalry (Harper and Row, New York, N.Y.), 1974, p. 209; cited in Ehrenreich, Barbara, Blood Rites B Origins and History of the Passions of War (Owl/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 1997, p. 140.

The Aztecs (1425-1521)

Bataille, Georges, The Accursed Share (Zone Books, New York, N.Y.), 1991, p. 51; cited in Ehrenreich, Barbara, Blood Rites B Origins and History of the Passions of War (Owl/Henry Holt, New York, N.Y.), 1997, p. 140.

Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Elshtain, Jean, Women and War (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL), 1987, pp. 135-136.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

Elshtain, Jean, Women and War (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL), 1987, pp. 60 and 69.

Hitler (1889-1945)

Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampt; quoted in Miller, Alice, For Your Own Good -- Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (Farrar, Straus, Giroux, N.Y.), 1980, pp. 260-261.

A just war

Van Creveld, Martin, The Transformation of War (Free Press, New York,. N.Y.), 1991, pp. 128-129.

Empire=s relationship

Plato, The Republic; cited in Van Creveld, Martin, The Transformation of War (Free Press, New York,. N.Y.), 1991, pp. 152-153.

The atomic bomb

Cohn, Carol, ASex and Death and the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,@ in Gioseffi, Daniela, Women on War B An International Anthology of Writings from Antiquity to the Present (The Feminist Press, City University of New York, New York, N.Y.), Second Edition, 2003, p. 61.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Star Wars

Caldicott, Helen, The New Nuclear Danger B George W. Bush=s Military-industrial Complex (The New Press, New York, N.Y.), 2002, p. 27.

Defense intellectuals

Wars are Apissing contests@

Third World countries

United Nations Human Development Programme, Human Development Report 2003 B Millennium Development Goals, A Compact among Nations to end Human Poverty, (Oxford University Press, New York, N.Y.), 2003, p. 363.

Don=t let the Arealists@

Elshtain, Jean, Women and War (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL), 1987, pp. 87-90 and 122.

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