militarist
Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Wed, 19 Aug 1998 09:00:43 +0000
There are few enough people who having a direct experience
of battle ever wish to return to it - or see it inflicted on their
children. I've been priviledged to have one or two as close friends.
Most of the politicians of the 1930s were men who had had
that direct experience. It lived on in their minds informing most
of their decisions. They weren't fools about Hitler or the other
dictators, they simply felt that anything was better than war.
And that position led inevitably to the next, much, much more
terrible one.
The vivid memory of this makes people of my generation (born 1929)
look on the pacifism of the baby boomers with grave misgiving.
One of the many reasons Clinton is despised in Europe is reflected
in his soubriquet The Draft Dodger. That squalid quasi-pragmatism
of his that slides away into lying, evasion & smarming is the same
one that slid away to a place of safety when his less favoured peers
were dying - as it seemed perfectly validly then & perhaps still -
to fight tyrrany. We're left in the West with a so-called leader
who has simply never developed the internal organs for making
the hard decisions that might have to put necks on blocks -
especially his own.
But another thing. Those same men of my acquaintance who came
through combat all looked on `dedicated pacifists' with a gentle
contempt. Not so much because of their principles but because,
having missed the most terrible but also most intense, most
ineffable experience that life offers, they had been left only
half-men.
ALL of us who missed that lesson are half-men compared with
those who have had their priorities clarified by living minute
to minute with the possibility, or likelihood, of immediate
dissolution.
I personally have little doubt that the creation of Holden &
the Glasses & the rest of them would not haved been possible
but for the experiences of Sergeant X.
Scottie B.