October 5th, 2009 by Life

What Price the Warrior?

Warrior - wikimedia

The commander yells out to the remaining front line,“Protect your country at any cost.”

This is the very same words his president just ordered them all to do. Then to heart, each and every soldier swore to “Protect against my enemy at all costs.” “…with my life and to the last man.”

But the irony of that situation does not mean anything unless one has been pushed against the wall; seen the despair of innocense, of loved ones’ cries; the ravages of what war turns humans into…the life of hell on earth.

Warriors are not created equal. They are made on the battle fields. The survivors that go on from one life ending challenge to another start to become something else…something more primal…their souls turn on its tenacious clinging on to life. Together, body, spirit and soul will rip apart another entity of body, spirit and soul apart to keep their own intact. As the numbers dwindle, the survivors get stronger. The more you survive, the more you morph into that new being… Is this whom we call the warrior?

How many millions of soldiers go to war straight from home to the training of several months and then into the jaws of the devil and out the demon’s rear end? What happens to them when the survivors come home? Newspapers and politcians call them heroes, victors, warriors…I can tell you, each and everyone of them have become something else. The one that left is no longer the same one that returned. Something in their selves has grown beyond the understanding of the mere mortals at home…the ones the soldiers were supposed to have fought for.

Who is that Warrior?

Look in the mirror. Is that whom you think that is? Do you even know yourself? What have you really done to fight for what you believed to be true? I’ve killed, I’ve maimed, I’ve brought death and destruction, innocent blood or maybe the bad guys’ blood was spilled…doubts haunt you with incessant nightmares.

Once on the front lines and right in the middle of danger no one is sure of any rules of engagement. One does whatever it takes. As time wears on, so too does one’s being, down to one’s very soul. The event, the energy of the time takes over. You feel and you know your grip upon who you once were is ever changing and there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s no time to think, just DO or DIE!

Isn’t your existence what you’re fighting for? If you remain to fight, then the hope of your country, your loved ones, your way of life remain protected. No, all that remains a blurr. You are very simply fighting to stay alive. To stay alive you must snuff out the existense of that unknown, unseen enemy determined to do the same to you.

What does it matter if you’re missing an arm, an eye, a leg or two and perhaps a head? Perhaps you may know peace at last when your soul stares down your own body in the dirt…if it is still there and recognizable. Perhaps you become one of the wandering, dissatisfied souls of legend told.

Hey, and then were you sitting behind a bunch of buttons and pressing them on command like you were playing a deadly video game? Perhaps you were fighting the g-forces in your super jetfighter and sending out harbingers of deadly explosive death. Did the super hot armour around you not protect against an enemy’s barrage? Or perhaps you felt the searing heat of huge explosives that decimated your entire convoy. Who are you? What parts of firey hell did you consume?

The Judgement

In newspapers reporters tell the story of what has occured. The loss of lives, innocent bystanders getting caught between warring sides and paying the ultimate price. Civilians watch the outcome and tsk, tsk, judge the behaviours of the soldiers, the murderers of children…Brother human killing brother human. The atrocities, too hard to bear, much less see and deal with like the soldiers on the ground need to.

Trials and tribunals sometimes do find criminality among the “honest” and upstanding soldiers. They are warriors after all. Some are given medals for merit on the battlefield. Some lived to recieve it, others simply posthumously. The highway of heroes become a regular affair as our “Heroes, our warriors” are brought home (if they even have parts to bring home) to their families for burial.

The soldier has given of his or her life. Is that the outcome we all want to see? I’ll bet more of the same, if they’re lucky is happening on the other side of the battle…the so called “enemy”. You feel the pangs of loss, so do they. You know the anger of vengeance, so do they. But this time, the war is at their doorstep. What if 911 was war brought to your doorstep? Or was is at all? Or is the whole affair terrorism on the largest scale possible. To what means was it all about, that soldiers need to be made warriors that hopefully come home from a war so far away, it is unseen? Is oil all that precious or was it about the crushing of a dangerous nation that had oil in massive quantities? No, wait, then there’s communism, there’s the dictatorship, there’s the drug lord, there are still ebnemies to be battled and subjugated permanently…until the next one.