What Would It Take To Go To War?

One of the problems of being cognoscente of history and of the world around us is that  leads to self questioning.  What would I have done?  What would I do? They are questions that can be postulated but never really answered.  The truth lies only in the resolution of the moment as it confronts you, nothing more, nothing less.

Of course there are the radical questions of true moral sincerity.  For instance if you lived in Germany during the war would you have sheltered a Jewish friend?  What if the decision came at risk to you and the lives of your family?  I like to think that I would have helped but only the moment could have really shed light on the true answer. 

It is always easy to find reasons and make excuses for not doing something.  The people I truly admire are the ones that don't.  The ones that have convictions so strong they set aside the implications on their own lives.  I know a woman who gave up a life in America based on her political convictions during the Reagan years.  When catchup was declared a vegetable by the Reagan Administration, remarkably not unlike pizza today, she decided it was too much.  As a student she stayed in France and never looked back. I admire her for that courage.  She rebuffs me saying it would have been more courageous if she had returned and fought for the America she believed in.  I suppose I could have done the same thing when I was a student in Europe about the same time but I didn't, I came home.  Did that make me brave?  I don't think so. 

Abraham Lincoln Brigade

A harder exercise in thought is to examine the events of your own lifetime and the decisions you made.  I have often wondered what conflicts I have lived through that I have felt deeply enough, sufficiently pulled by my convictions to sacrifice my life for.  In the past Americans have done this.  During the First World War before America became directly involved many left on their own volition and traveled to Europe to fight or aid in the war effort.  Between the wars when Hitler was using the Spanish Civil War as an excuse to test his war machines over 2,800 Americans left to fight along side the Spanish partisans.  They even had their own name, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  Over 700 were killed in the conflict.  American history tends to forget these heroes.  Despite being the first to oppose fascism in Europe they were considered Socialists and Communist sympathizers.  Many were persecuted during the Red Scare led by Senator Joesph McCarthy in the 1950's.


During my life time I can't think of a single American conflict aside from one I might have professed the conviction and sympathy with to have joined on my own volition.  The thought of doing this today in America is almost alien but there were many times in our history when young men and women volunteered on their own for service.  They were not drafted, not coerced, they simply believed.  My time came during a war in Europe.  I am 44 years old, and even a junior historian should be able to calculate I am not speaking of the World Wars.  These came long before my birth.  No, I am speaking of a conflict that occurred in a land that has seen armies march across it since ancient times.  Greeks, Turks, Austro-Hungarians and Italians all left their marks.

Mass grave in Srebenica

In the early 1990's as Eastern Europe began to dissolve the Serbians made a grab for control of the crumbling nation of Yugoslavia.  Serbia's last adventure on the world stage was to provide a spark for what erupted into the First World War.  This time it was an open attempt to massacre a minority population in the newly formed Republics of Croatia and more nefariously, Bosnia Herzegovina.  It wasn't just a war, it was a slaughter of the innocent.  The weapons were not just guns, they were rape, humiliation, assassination and massacre.  Of course this has occurred in many places in the world but this time it was in Europe.  It was a few hundred miles from where I was a student, where I spent a year of my life.  Towns and cities were under siege and snipers targeted anything that moved.  Some of the worst violations occurred in the small Bosnian town of Srebrenica.   In July 1995, Serbian military and para military forces commenced assaulting Srebrinca sending 5,000 people to seek refuge with a small contingent of United Nations Dutch Peace Keepers.  The Dutch commander pleaded for NATO airstrikes but the alliance did nothing.  Another 20,000 people who had taken refuge in Srebenica attempted to hide wherever they could.  When the town was first captured and placed under Serbian control, the Serbian forces did not stop.    Many of the towns women and refugees were raped and beaten in front of their husbands prior to their husbands execution.  The Serbs systematically separated all men from ages 12 to 77 from the women and commenced transporting the women and children to Tuzla.  I can't help but think that my own son, now 14 years of age, would have been required to remain.  Any man that fled was gunned down.  Those that remained under the protection of the Dutch Peacekeepers were expelled and turned over to the Serbs.  The remaining men, over 7,000 of them were massacred and buried in mass graves.  Major Robert Franken the Commander of the Dutch Peacekeepers upon leaving Srebrnica declared his mission a "success."

Major Robert Franken Dutch Commander

Bosnian Concentration Camp

All across Bosnia and in parts of Croatia the killing continued.  The rapes continued.  All the while NATO and America did nothing.  Eventually American President Bill Clinton rebuffing Republican protests against action ordered air strikes eventually leading to the end of the conflict.  While Bosnia was simply an appetizer compared to what occurred under the Nazi's the memories and the images still make my jaw tighten and my throat want to wretch.  I marched in protests in Washington DC prior to American involvement in the war.  I have my own excuses why I didn't go.  I was recently married, I had just started a career, yet in my heart and soul I know that this was the one time in my life there was a conflict I could have gone to.  A war I could have fought for.  A tragedy that had to end even if it meant my own life. Every person has to answer these questions in their own heart, in their own soul.  They have to decide when the world is larger than themselves.  When their own needs vanish for the needs of the many. 

We confront these questions every day in smaller form.  They occur in simple propositions.  A donation to a charity or support in some way of someone or something in need.  In funding a program to feed or educate children or making sure our elderly don't die in poverty.  So many issues can be resolved with a little discomfort.  Sometimes, on rare occasions they ask us to risk the sacrifice of our own lives.  I don't know if I failed in the moment I was tested.  I hope I didn't yet there is a side of me that wishes I had given more.   It was the only time for sure I can say that this man who tries to live his life in as non-violent a way possible might have chosen a different path.  A path that would have led me on a quest to protect the lives of the innocent.