War Doesn’t Decide Who’s RIGHT, Just Who’s LEFT

Anzac Day

I saw the statement “War doesn’t decide who’s right, just who’s left,” on TV. the night before ANZAC Day. That statement, I truly believe, is the one that, way above any of the others, best describes the result of all wars. We see and hear grand expressions about “glory,” “honour” etc., usually being spouted by politicians whose only battles are fought from the safety and “parliamentary privilege” of the debating chamber and whose most dangerous weapons are the words that they frequently end up eating.

Wifred Owen was a soldier/poet in World War 1 and one of his most famous poems was “Dulce et Decorum est,” the final verse of which is written below.

“If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin,

If you could hear at every jolt, the blood,

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud,

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,

My friend, you would not tell with such high zeal

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie, “Dulce et Decorum est,

Pro Patria mori.”

For those whose Latin is a “bit rusty”, the phrase “Dulce et Decorum est, pro Patria mori” means “It is sweet and right to die for your country.” In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die for your country. There are several hundred US and British service personnel, having gone home from Iraq in body bags, who would now, given the opportunity, seriously question the wisdom and truth of that statement.

John Singer Sargent’s painting Gassed hangs in the Imperial War Museum in London; the canvas is over seven feet high and twenty feet long. This impressive painting depicts soldiers blinded by gas being led in lines back to the hospital tents and the dressing stations; the men lie on the ground all about the tents waiting for treatment.

"With mustard gas the effects did not become apparent for up to twelve hours. But then it began to rot the body, within and without. The skin blistered, the eyes became extremely painful and nausea and vomiting began. Worse, the gas attacked the bronchial tubes, stripping off the mucous membrane. The pain was almost beyond endurance and most cases had to be strapped to their beds. Death took up to four or five weeks. A nurse wrote:

I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case-to say nothing of ten cases-of mustard gas in its early stages-could see the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great mustard-coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes . . . all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke." [1]

Does the paragraph above sound familiar today? We have the Blair (Blare) of Bush sounding off about sticking it out to the end and all he other fervent expressions to hype up those who are at the sharp end while they (the fearless leaders?) “chickenhawks” as some American writers call them, sit at home, counting their profits, along with the international moneylenders who finance the weapons and the reconstruction on all sides, while the long suffering taxpayers do the paying, the fighting and the dying. “Dulce et Decorum est pro Patria mori?” I don’t think so. [2]