Appalachian Spring, Ability and War

It’s a spring day of just stunning beauty here in Dayton. Even the flowering trees seem to be wonders far, far beyond my power to appreciate. I see why the lilies of the field can be considered more beautiful than Solomon and all his glory.

I drove through parts of Appalachia last week, the mountains and valleys of West Virginia between Charleston and Bluefield, WV. Those places seemed so bleak, harsh, craggy, unyielding, during the winter. But now there is a delicate, multi-colored bloom of buds and early leaves spread all over them, transforming what seemed like a Moon-scape or Mars-scape into the most delicate, endearing metaphor for the love and beauty at the heart of the true life itself.

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Here is a thing that has bothered me all my adult life. I’ve never been able to figure it out, even though I believe that there is no problem that is more important.

It is the clear and obvious fact that killing another person is a very serious act, with infinite consequences to self and others, and that before one kills others, or supports the killing of others, or consents to the killing of others, one should be very careful, very circumspect, very informed, very humble, as to whether or not the killing is absolutely necessary.

World War One was one of mankind’s greatest catastrophes and yet its outbreak was greeted with extraordinary joy. Those of us who refused to go to Viet-Nam were very much a minority, at least during its early years. The widespread support and enthusiasm for the U.S.’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has now dwindled.

What baffles me is that it was easy to see right from the beginning that these mass killings were insupportable. Even kids knew they were wrong. If I could see they were wrong, anyone could. It wasn’t rocket science.

Jim Webb, the retiring Senator from Virginia, recently said that he may now be the only person in the Senate who thinks the Viet-Nam war was a good idea. I admire and like Jim Webb. His record of accomplishments is astonishing. Colin Powell’s is, too. So what went wrong? Why, with all their power and abilities and connections, were they not capable of doing that preliminary reflection and inspection before they went off to kill, which almost everyone now can see was wrong?

The best I can come up with in answer to this question after many years of reflection on it, is that it probably has something to do with love, which is our core, love in one’s early, formative years, where something false is told or believed. All the ability, intelligence, courage, character, vision that the person has is subsequently vitiated and become something which would have been better never to have existed.

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