Post by Robin on Mar 5, 2006 19:19:26 GMT -8
Just an odd little pondering I had. I was thinking about Robert Jordan, which got me thinking about battles, which got me thinking about wars, which got me thinking about all the fighting in Asia. Asia always seems to be the worst hit by wars, even if the fighting doesn't go on in Asia. So I figured I'd just write why I thought that, during all those wars, Asia was so frigged up.
NOTE**: The reasons for the royal frocking of Asia are many, most of them political. The reasons expressed in this piece are merely a sliver of why wars are started - I know that they aren't the whole enchilada. Kthx.
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A battle is not as gory as its aftermath. Guns and bombs and terrified, terrifying shrieks are not so disturbing, not so agonizing as the silence that follows; the thick, ominous silence that periodic breaks of the winners’ elated cheering do not efface, but merely goad on. It seems even more silent when those who were laughing or singing realize that they are standing on a graveyard, covered in the blood of themselves, their enemies, and their friends.
That their blood is mingled with their enemies’ is even more disturbing.
They do not need a reminder that they are as much at fault for all that suffering as their enemies were. They do not need a reminder that every ounce of blame they place on their enemies’ backs is also placed in equal, if not heavier, amounts on their own backs. When the battle rages around them, they can forget that the torment is, in part, their own fault. When the silence settles around them, thick as the blood-snow coat they wear draped casually over their uniforms, they can see clearly as Jimmy Cliff; the rain is gone. The corpses lying around them are as much their fault as the bastard Amerasian children they sired during their many couplings with “exotic” Asian women.
What they don’t understand yet is the significance of the two events. They were love struck for the Asian woman because they were “exotic,” or, in other words, foreign. They attacked this country, this whole damned continent, because it had “exotic,” foreign customs that they didn’t like. Oh, there were other reasons of course: bigger political reasons that most of these foot soldiers neither knew nor cared to know, but the main reason that the lands were so raped was because, like the women who were tied up in the whole thing simply because of slanted eyes and black hair, they were foreign. Had the soldiers also been in it just for political reasons, the rape of the land would not have been so complete. Get in, get out, get on with their lives. Diplomacy has long been the friend of politicians and doctors, not foot soldiers.
The silence after the battle allows for such thoughts. Because all wars, to some extent, mirror their brothers. All wars hide nasty little secrets that aren’t really secret, thanks to people like Pearl Buck and Ernest Hemingway. When the rapture of the battle captures them, the thoughts can be buried, but only in a shallow grave at best. And even if the coffin could be built a little stronger, buried a little deeper, those thoughts would come writhing out like the worms that tried - and failed - to feed on them, would come stumbling out, putrid zombies, to torment soldiers in the wake of a battle, showing, in the silent stares of the dead, the unending destruction of war.
The undying fury.
NOTE**: The reasons for the royal frocking of Asia are many, most of them political. The reasons expressed in this piece are merely a sliver of why wars are started - I know that they aren't the whole enchilada. Kthx.
---------------
A battle is not as gory as its aftermath. Guns and bombs and terrified, terrifying shrieks are not so disturbing, not so agonizing as the silence that follows; the thick, ominous silence that periodic breaks of the winners’ elated cheering do not efface, but merely goad on. It seems even more silent when those who were laughing or singing realize that they are standing on a graveyard, covered in the blood of themselves, their enemies, and their friends.
That their blood is mingled with their enemies’ is even more disturbing.
They do not need a reminder that they are as much at fault for all that suffering as their enemies were. They do not need a reminder that every ounce of blame they place on their enemies’ backs is also placed in equal, if not heavier, amounts on their own backs. When the battle rages around them, they can forget that the torment is, in part, their own fault. When the silence settles around them, thick as the blood-snow coat they wear draped casually over their uniforms, they can see clearly as Jimmy Cliff; the rain is gone. The corpses lying around them are as much their fault as the bastard Amerasian children they sired during their many couplings with “exotic” Asian women.
What they don’t understand yet is the significance of the two events. They were love struck for the Asian woman because they were “exotic,” or, in other words, foreign. They attacked this country, this whole damned continent, because it had “exotic,” foreign customs that they didn’t like. Oh, there were other reasons of course: bigger political reasons that most of these foot soldiers neither knew nor cared to know, but the main reason that the lands were so raped was because, like the women who were tied up in the whole thing simply because of slanted eyes and black hair, they were foreign. Had the soldiers also been in it just for political reasons, the rape of the land would not have been so complete. Get in, get out, get on with their lives. Diplomacy has long been the friend of politicians and doctors, not foot soldiers.
The silence after the battle allows for such thoughts. Because all wars, to some extent, mirror their brothers. All wars hide nasty little secrets that aren’t really secret, thanks to people like Pearl Buck and Ernest Hemingway. When the rapture of the battle captures them, the thoughts can be buried, but only in a shallow grave at best. And even if the coffin could be built a little stronger, buried a little deeper, those thoughts would come writhing out like the worms that tried - and failed - to feed on them, would come stumbling out, putrid zombies, to torment soldiers in the wake of a battle, showing, in the silent stares of the dead, the unending destruction of war.
The undying fury.