perston

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Every war a failure...

This week's historiography class is discussing war, and for that we had to watch the 10 hour documentary on "Civil War". With it though, came to me all the memories of war, all the unsaid that my nation has been keeping in their diaries for a while now, a long while. Shock after shock, which is why I cannot stop thinking about our history. We have a tendency to repeat our many mistakes, and to get back to square zero every once in a while. War on the other hand, has merely scripted too many scars in our collective memories, and yet no one can escape the consequences of the war. It has been nearly two decades now since the war ceased, although the stories have not. The young generation of my country, sons of the warriors of old days, have now little faith in what their fathers fought for, nor do they conform to the ideologies of war. Watching "Civil War" over the past few days, I couldn't help thinking about the diminished agencies of people when wars are claimed, how soldiers turn into both labour and commodities. There is a lot more to that piece of land though, there is also gain of freedom, independence and dignity, each a daunting task on its own. It reminds me of Weber's "the Protestant Ethics", how martyrdom turned into an ethos ; how winning back the invaded land of Khoramshahr was not enough to put an end to the war; and how it went on for eight bloody years at the cost of thousands of lives and destinies... I am left in awe when I look at those days and see how brave the real believers and warriors of my country were. My country's men and women fought for different things, some for their country, some for their dignity and some for the sake of martyrdom. But no matter what they fought for, they were true believers in what they did.

I always thought there was never a winner to a war. I still believe that each party is the loser, and when I look at real lives of people who have given in to battles, I am moved by how big a loss any war is about...

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