The tragedy of Afghanistan

An Australian warrior was killed recently at the opening of the new fighting season in Afghanistan.
That is distressing, for multiple reasons.

 Sgt Brett Wood, who
 was recenlty killed in
 Afghanistan.

The death of anyone, anywhere and for any reason should be sufficient to make us pause and reflect and, should the relationship be close, weep or at least feel a deep loss and sadness.
However, when the death results from a conflict in which our country should not be involved at all, it is more than distressing, it is a tragedy.
But there is more; to declare a dead soldier, who is simply a beautifully trained and equipped killer, as a warrior elevates him to a metaphorical status of which he is not worthy.
The term warrior elicits, in the imagination, images of one who is honourable, tenacious, courageous, faithful, intelligent and resourceful, and one with whom we would like to stand with when confronted by circumstances that were less than comforting.
Not for a second would I argue that Sgt Brett Wood didn’t have those qualities, but I object to the romantic interpretations of “warrior” being attached to him.
Further, I argue that the intelligence we suggest a warrior has is not something I would attribute to the broad sweep of our number who agreed that people with those skills should be sent to places like Afghanistan.
It is a mistake to describe our trained killers as warriors as in different circumstances they would be before our courts as murderers.
The romantic images that the term warrior summons are most certainly not applicable in a battlefield’s hellish-like realities.
The phrase “the fighting season” also alarms me as it brings a sad normality to the deathly struggles faced in Afghanistan that, in reality, should be extraordinarily rare, rather than as common as “the growing season”.
True, we should acknowledge Sgt Wood’s death and not, from our Prime Minister down, celebrate his dedication and sacrifice as that simply reinforces a culture that finds a perverse satisfaction in violence and war in what it considers the extension of a perceived greater good.
Humankind, one of the rare life forms that will kill its fellows with an irrational pleasure and for reasons that defy its inherent intelligence, is devoid of historical examples in which violence has resolved tensions.
Violence might resolve the immediate, but always brings with it unintended consequences.
Despatching young men and women to obscure places to risk death, to prosecute violence in the name of values not really understood is outrageously wrong.
Even though our values might have once been worthy, they have since been prostituted and corrupted by corporatism and militarism, with our alleged democracy being the realm of the few, rather than the many.
Three more have since died and so the tragedy continues.
(June 7, 2011)