Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War
Hell is this Thing Called War
To be in war is to be in hell on Earth, captured by lunacy and bewilderment, panic, fear and unmatched levels of stress
invading your body. Bullets whizzing by, helicopters flying low, machine gunning anything that moves, fighter jets
roaring overhead, explosions everywhere, 500 pound bombs flattening entire city blocks, cluster bombs maiming and
killing, the tremors of the ground rattling your conscious, concrete flying everywhere, screams of pain and agony
surrounding you, hidden snipers killing indiscriminately, platoons of men caught in hours-long fire-fights, bullets,
artillery and rockets flying everywhere, the smell of blood in the air, the odor of sweat and urine festering about,
your heart palpitating thunderously, body parts strewn everywhere, pools of fly-infested blood lining the streets, the
nauseatingly putrid stench of rotting death omnipresent, hundreds of mutilated bodies thrown about, the ravaged remains
of a once vibrant city laying at your feet, your house destroyed, your family huddled in the corner of your most secure
room, your children shaking, lying in a fetal position, hunger overcoming you, your belly hurting for food, your tongue
and mouth desperate for water, your spirit eager for escape, your instincts telling you to survive, to hug your children
and never let go.
Welcome to Hell on Earth, where the devil’s excrement bleeds black and the neocon delusion dwindles into twilight.
Welcome to state-sponsored terrorism breeding unending crimes against humanity, where torture has replaced torture,
where human evil has replaced human evil and where tyranny has replaced tyranny. Welcome to the American Crusade and
Iraq Invasion, where 100,000 innocent civilians have died, in a year and a half, at the hands of the
military-industrial-complex and the killing machines it trains to push, aim, fire, direct, guide and launch its weapons
of death, carnage, destruction and human misery. Welcome to Fallujah, where bombs and missiles rain down from the
heavens above and cold-blooded monsters on a wanton murdering spree roam hellish streets below.
Iraq is where up to 2,500 to 3,000 American soldiers have been killed, their deaths made hidden, pro-rated daily
Enron-style in order to limit the psychological effect of mass casualties on the American people (you don’t really
believe Rumsfeld’s Pentagon or Bush’s White House or the Corporate media, do you? Remember, they lie about everything,
and the deaths and statistics of American soldiers is no exception. They have learned the lessons of Vietnam). Iraq is
where 15,000 American soldiers have been maimed, burned, shredded, disfigured, physically scarred and mentally
devastated, never to find normalcy again and never again to know inner peace, becoming an army of psychologically
mutilated energies, joining their physically healthy comrades in arms in a future battle against inner demons never to
be fully exorcised from within.
To be in Iraq is to be witness to a Pandora’s Box opened by Bush and the neocons where the destruction of Fallujah and
other cities is seen as liberation, where the introduction of martial law is seen as democracy and where the importation
of chaos, mass killing, utter destruction, terror and guerilla war is seen as a human rights campaign to free the Iraqi
people of tyranny. To be in Iraq is to see firsthand how an army lays waste to a large city in a grisly act of
collective punishment, how citizen soldiers turn into savage barbarians, torturing and dehumanizing innocents, murdering
wounded Iraqis, bombing civilian homes, targeting innocent hospitals and assassinating dozens of medical personnel.
It is to see trigger-happy, zit-faced, video-game conditioned, television desensitized, military-brainwashed twenty year
olds indiscriminately shooting innocent civilians, women and children all, trying to escape a city of death. It is to
see an army, priding itself on virtue and morality, purposefully making targets of all living humans in a city of
300,000, granting the green light for their foot soldiers to kill anyone, prosecuting the guilty only when caught red
handed, to salvage public relations or to play the game of politics. It is only when the criminal policies of those at
the top are somehow forever recorded on tape by the actions of soldiers that scapegoating of grunts in order to save the
hides of the brass is allowed. In the military, it is not a crime if nobody sees it.
To see the carnage taking place or imagining the terror now enveloping Iraq is to be inside a horrific nightmare that
refuses to liberate us from its vice-like grip. To be in Iraq is to be inside Human Hell, as monstrous as one can
imagine a place of such evil to be. It is to see Human Evil grow stronger every day, seeing the Cradle of Civilization
become a smoldering cauldron of exponentially-growing guerilla war. The violence only escalates, the death figures only
increase and an entire country of 25 million people is slowly but surely descending into the depths of despair and the
apex of unmitigated hatred and vengeance.
Hell is this thing called war, procreator of human evil and ambassador to sheer death and suffering. America has
exported war where none existed, chaos where order once stood and its legions of military-industrial complex mercenaries
birthing terror and pillaging resources. It has created a vast factory of resistance fighters whose assembly lines
continue to produce mujahideen with every bomb dropped or bullet fired, making Iraq a hornet’s nest of freedom fighters
intent on evicting American invaders and occupiers from their lands.
Their numbers grow, their cause gains worldwide support, the moral high ground is indisputably theirs and it is they
fighting for freedom and liberty, not for corporate profit and oil and to hide the ineptitude of the Bush
administration. The illegality of the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation cannot be denied; it was orchestrated
based on lies and deceits, for no reason other than for corporate profit. A sovereign nation, a threat to no other,
crippled by a decade of sanctions and US imposed economic genocide, was invaded by the forces of greed and the Almighty
Dollar. This illegal war, against all principles of universal precepts of human interaction, mandated by warmongers,
greed-mongers, profiteers and exploiters of human misery, is akin to Hitler´s invasion of Poland, while the entire world
watched aimlessly and indifferent before he invaded again and again and again. With Iran clearly next in the scope for
Bush, Israel and the lunatic neocons, humanity is one step closer to repeating the mistakes of the past, this time with
most ominous consequences.
The Iraq resistance, however, is already victorious, and once the United States escapes its bubble of infallibility and
enters the realm of reality, it will see this, wishing it had never entered the quagmire and debacle known as Iraq,
where the world’s only superpower was brought to its knees by yet another “barbarian-filled, savage-infested,
primitive-living, third-world of a country.” It seems that along with the ghosts of Vietnam can be added those of Iraq,
forever to haunt America for its continued ignorance of history, culture, civilization and the awesome will of the human
spirit to live free.
Yet in the Iraq resistance does the world now depend, for its freedom fighters have caused unexpected delays and returns
for the zealots in office. In them does humanity seek salvation from a warmongering dictator and a small cabal of
deluded Machiavellis whose ideology and insanity threaten the entire security of the globe. For it is their tenacity and
unrelenting guerilla campaign of aggression that has prevented further war, destabilization and catastrophe.
It is also in the American public that the people of the planet need for survival. It is this population that must wake
up and commence the greatest peace movement to ever exist, demanding that its loved ones return home from a war without
purpose and a cause without hope. We must bring the troops home, for they and the resistance are one and the same, bred
from the same lower castes, denied opportunity by the same state and system that purposefully oppresses them, now
demanding allegiance in death and sacrifice both in mind and body. For the Establishment needs the lower castes to do
its dirty work, dying and suffering for the profit, power and control of the elite, becoming its army of death and
conquest.
Thus Americans must rise like the people of Iraq, marching in the millions, together and strong, peacefully and
non-violently bringing down the system, fighting tyranny and despotism, demanding an end to this most heinous of fights
that serves no purpose other than to bring humanity even closer to self-destruction. The American people and the
resistance in Iraq are one, fighting the same enemy, seeking the same cause, struggling to free humanity from the grip
of everlasting conflict.
The Animal Uncaged
Beyond the special effects, blazing pyrotechnics, elaborate sets of carnage, unremitting weapons imagery, fake blood,
dramatized death and other Hollywood accessories used to condition and desensitize us to violence and warfare, only a
very small fraction of Americans have ever experienced real war and the devastation and suffering that always, without
question, seems to follows.
Few of us ever come face to face with a most malevolent demon, that entity resurrected by man over and over again, that
for as long as humans have walked the lands of Earth has, like an intrusive virus, penetrated our cellular structure,
attaching itself inside us and prospering with each new act of man’s wretchedness upon itself. Since the beginning it
has remained within us, gripping our nature with its raptor-like claws, waiting patiently for weakness to once more
consume our thoughts and passions, giving light to darkness and life to death. We are predictable creatures, after all,
for killing, raping, destroying, cleansing, starving, torturing and fighting ourselves is as widespread in our history
as a common cold is in winter.
It is warfare, that scourge of humanity, whose seeds of lunacy, rage, violence and hatred unearth among men the worst
evils of the human condition, turning us into crazed beasts made immune to the senses of human morality and the
constructs of universal law created by the wise, righteous, virtuous and principled among us over the course of untold
generations and throughout all corners of the globe. In battle, where man fights man in struggle for survival, all
rational assembly of goodness bred through social evolution is replaced by an innermost primitiveness of primeval ooze
long ago mutated.
The animal inside is thus uncaged, released out of its human cocoon, transformed into an unthinking predator devoid of
human virtue whose respect for life and learned morality cease to exist. Tamed humans become wild primates, captured by
the behaviors of all creatures we once were on our long road to what we presently are, falling down the hole of
evolution, regressing backwards to the law of the jungle and the survival of the fittest.
Through the yells and grunts of men in battle can the reality of primitiveness past be heard and felt. Hearing the wails
of the injured, the cries of the dying and the groans of enemies fighting in hand to hand combat, with only the winner
continuing life, must be an unwelcome voyage back to days long gone but bountiful throughout time, reminding its
observers of the long and violent human past that never goes silent. In war’s malevolent sounds can the demon of
humanity clearly be experienced, shrieks and screams unwelcome to the human ear, sending shivers of dread down our
spines.
It is in war that the true nature of what we are is released, visible for all those willing to see.
Madness Released, Wickedness Allowed
For war – that human weakness created by warmongering leaders that send to battle the mostly young, ignorant, easily
manipulated, testosterone-filled members of the lower castes of any one tribe – unleashes in human beings a most vicious
animal from the deepest reaches of our psyches. The primordial necessity to kill, the hunger to maim and rape, the
desire to inflict pain and suffering is therefore reborn, free to act indiscriminately, away from the menacing glow of
the rule of law and the watchful eye of humanity.
In war, in its battles and fights, killing becomes legal and permitted, a duty onto every soldier, a policy espoused by
the highest leaders of every side. Horrific crimes such as rape and murder of innocents, normally punished severely in
society, become a weapon of fear and terror, overlooked and forgotten, designed to weaken the enemy and its supporters,
seen as an unpunished necessity for the psychologically traumatized soldier seeking to exorcise demons and release
stresses tearing him apart. Throughout history, in all regions of Earth, untold millions of women have been sexually
victimized by individual soldiers turned animals or by gangs of warriors turned pack of wolves. It is part of the
disease, a symptom of the demon released.
It is because of war that laws and morality disappear, making crimes the normalcy of every day life and the morals of
ordinary men the vanished remains of humanity. In war, being wrong is considered right, evil is seen as good, and the
daily introspections of soldiers questioning war’s purpose is admonished, judged as a sign of weakness, heresy and
free-thought. In truth, morals are an enemy of warmongers, this is why free-thinking minds are eliminated during
military training, when god-fearing Christian boys and girls are transformed into cold-blooded automaton-like killing
machines, conditioned to kill without hesitation or mercy, brainwashed to obey and follow, never to think beyond what
they are trained or told to do.
In war the killing of innocents becomes a means by which to traumatize, terrorize and instill fear into the enemy and
its helpers, made legal by those in power, glossed over and made to disappear. In modern times, this practice is called
collateral damage by American Nazis in office, as if beating hearts, terrified minds and baby eyes were inanimate
concrete buildings and inconsequential infrastructure, nothing but rocks, concrete and rubble to be bombed and
demolished. This is nothing more than collective punishment of an entire population, perfected by the Israelis and
taught to the Americans, which seeks to destroy the collective will of the people and the resistance. It is purposeful,
it is strategy, it is policy and it is malevolent, a war crime and a crime against humanity.
In war the enemy and its supporters must be made to seem inferior, taking on the appearance of sub-humans or even
animals. This legitimizes their killing and the deaths of their loved ones, who, in the eyes of American GI’s, are seen
as a savage sub-species. Thus the learned constructs of morality and the traumatic questioning of murder by the human
mind are washed away, and the respect once afforded human life becomes nonexistent.
The German Nazis, similarly, called their enemies “untermensch,” or sub-human, easily killed, raped, tortured and
exterminated. Once people are no longer considered humans, it seems, their murder is easier to swallow, and thus the
killer’s mind can continue fighting, and killing. The Americans are today repeating many of the same atrocities as their
Nazi counterparts, becoming the same monster, using the same beliefs, mutating into an abyss of human wickedness from
where few minds ever return.
Down the Same Road We Follow
In the battlefields where today’s armies fight, the ghosts of history are once more made to appear, pitching battles of
old with claws and teeth, our ape-like ancestors fighting tree to tree and branch to branch for resources and territory,
power and sexual conquest. Later after our mighty Diaspora out of East Africa to all reaches of the planet our methods
of warfare evolved, stones and spears appeared, in confrontations over competition did clan versus clan and tribe versus
tribe find themselves, leaving destruction, extinction and ruin in their wake.
In these modern fighting zones of today can we see the armies of ancient city-states doing battle with rivals through
iron and armor, fighting each other for group loyalty, power, resources, belief and land, shielded by advancing
technologies, maimed by evolved weaponry, seeking higher ground for their cities, surrounding and protecting their
cities with defensive walls. Soon empires rise and barbarians fall, greater economies, populations and wealth always
prevail, the Caesars’ addiction for expansion of land and conquest of man grew, their ego and legacy was thus assured;
the Popes’ subjugation of heathens and pagans spread with the hypnotizing opiate of their theology and the devastating
violence of their cross capturing the minds and bodies of millions, their cultures erased, their ways of life altered
forever.
In the lands of Iraq do the winds of kingdoms and monarchies rise, entire legions of armies clashing in savage war,
thousands of feudal peasants fighting for nobles’ lands and kings’ thrones, new sophisticated weapons of devastation and
fiery hell are born, injury and death in greater numbers are thus assured. Visible ghosts and unseen winds give rise to
the nation-state, pitting country against country, manipulated patriotism versus brainwashed nationalism. Entire cities
are condemned to rubble, now millions of innocents and millions of combatants die, firestorms and bombs dropped from the
sky, bullets and ordinance kill from below. In the fields of death only blood blossoms, its crimson red color alive as
roses as the devastation of modern warfare makes dead men walking of those standing ready to fight and those hiding in
fear.
Two World Wars have enveloped the globe, following man everywhere he goes. Human violence and wickedness have simply
evolved, from our start in the tree to the land of the free. Genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder and extermination
continue to reign, we never learn, again and again. Today in the 21st century do we live, in a guilded age of smart
bombs and missiles that completely miss their targets, instead killing thousands of innocent men, women and children. In
times of depleted uranium munitions and bombs do we stand proud to thrive in, filling the bodies of both friend and foe
with the slow-killing disease called radiation. Thousands of nuclear bombs are ready to evaporate our planet; millions
of tons of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction have been produced, ready to poison and plague us; the
assembly lines of instruments of death, violence and destruction continue to run, their conveyor belts refusing to stop
the proliferation of weapons designed to kill and maim; space, the next frontier of war, is set to be weaponized and
militarized.
From the first stone and wooden weapons used by man to the latest gadgets invented by the military-industrial complex,
human war simply evolves in time and space, our weaponry growing more sophisticated and deadly with each new year, their
capacity to kill more people growing exponentially. The resources invested in the manufacturing of weapons only grows
more each year, now reaching $450 billion a year in the US alone.
Knowing humanity, our addiction for violence and penchant for war, it is not hard to fathom the next great war being our
last, as nation-states begin to compete for the last vestiges of Earth’s natural resources, which continue to dwindle
more each passing year. The need for oil, water, arable land and food, our pursuit of competition and elimination of
rivals, our failures to understand our condition or learn from our mistakes and the continued lingering of the virus
called violence embedded in a species six billion strong virtually assures that we will continue as we have always been,
the next time incinerating ourselves, becoming ash and dust, finally making extinct millennia of perpetual war and
suffering. The road of history does not lie, its sides filled with untold destruction and human death. If we continue
ahead as we always have, we will be lucky to survive fifty more years. Under Bush, it will be a miracle if we survive
four more.
With humanity, it seems, only where our hands cannot reach does peace exist. Only where we fail to conquer does war not
thrive. In lands free of human minds and bodies balance remains and nature flourishes, emancipated from the destruction
that follows man everywhere he goes like a trail of footprints through muddy paths. Everywhere we roam extinction
begins, so it is only logical that with us it should end.
For only the dead have seen the end of war, finally liberated from the virus, the plague and the demon that infects us
to our core. Only the dead have seen the end of war, so rejoice and relax, for if we fail to act, we will all be there
in four years more.
*************
Mr. Valenzuela´s new novel is now on sale through Authorhouse.com at Echoes in the Wind Sales Page. A philosophical, eduational and spiritual story on humanity and our civilization, as relevant as today´s headlines,
this book is almost 600 pages in trade paperback form on sale internationally through secure web page transaction.
Additionally, the novel is now available on Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com, as well as other online book sellers. If
preferred, the novel can also be ordered at any local brick and mortar bookstore worldwide through the book´s ISBN
number, 1418489905.
Manuel Valenzuela is social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst, Internet columnist and author of
Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com. A collection of essays, Beyond the Smoking Mirror:
Reflections on America and Humanity, will be published in early 2005. His articles appear regularly in alternative news
websites including informationclearinghouse.info. His unique style and powerful writing is read internationally and
seeks to expose truths and realities confronting humanity today. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at
manuel@valenzuelas.net. A collection of his work can be found visiting his archives and by searching the Internet.