WAR - THE FAILURE OF RECONCILIATION

Post 18/08/2025

War brings about utmost sufferings to people! The kind of suffering that is absolutely unbearable for mankind is beyond description, because war can result in absolute suffering which is death. Collective graves! The most brutal scenes of torture and exile of humans! And there are countless casualties who still live but in a persistent vegetative state.

There is a story about a wounded soldier who had to cut off all his limbs. He wrote to his parents:- I am still alive but I have lost one hand!- It's good that you are still alive, just go home with us! But then he replied: - I'm afraid that you will have to nurture me without receiving anything in return, because I have just had my leg amputated.- It’s alright, just go home now!

But by the time he wrote and said he had both his two hands and two feet cut off, only a lump of meat was left… there was no reply from his parents. This story is not to condemn his parents’ love, but to discuss another aspect of love: no matter how kind-hearted a person is, tolerance has its limits. Let’s recall a more classic story in the Gospel. Just before Jesus was arrested, Peter even said “I will stand by your side till the end.” But Jesus told him "Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." And it turned out true, when Jesus was arrested, a few people pointed at Peter and said “This is also a member of Jesus' group.” and Peter denied that he was not, and he repeated it three times, and by that time, the cock started to crow, he immediately remembered what Jesus had told home and burst into tears.

The story of the wounded soldier and Saint Peter tells us one thing: man is fragile cannot have the will of endless love to overcome the fear of death. The parents of the wounded soldier did not dare to accept the child who was no longer a human because all his limbs had been cut off. And Peter, who was an apostle and therefore considered a man with a greater sense of commitment, was still afraid of being arrested or tortured and denied his God three times.

Yet, war always pushes people to the limit of death! And yet, it left its enduring consequences which were hatred and envy. After World War II, for example, any soldier who returned with a German wife would be alienated, discriminated against, and hated, because people thought that the soldier married a wife who was the enemy.

War is disgustingly destructive! And how destructive war can be? Let’s imagine an aircraft which costs millions of dollars, installed by many skilled workers for a year, but to destroy it, we just throw in it a tiny match which costs less than a penny. Or a building built in half a century that only takes a few minutes to demolish with an explosive charge. Many experts calculate that a year of war consumes about 30 years of production and construction. But it is still an optimistic figure, there are many other calculations that the war can destroy hundreds of years of human construction. Let’s imagine and compare, just a tiny match burns a whole street or a mine is thrown right into the information server, how much damage can it cause?

Nobody wants to die from bombs or toxic chemicals! Nobody wants to be imprisoned or tortured! Nobody wants to slowly die from starvation because the fields have turned into battlegrounds! Therefore, nobody wants war! Before war broke out, people always tried to reconcile and promote diplomatic measures so as not to push the two sides onto the battlefield. Although people have tried to seek reconciliation, why does war still break out and seem to be unstoppable?

The philosopher Aristotle said: War breaks out because it is the hunting instinct of humans. What a profound explanation that lies in humanity's nature! What do humans hunt for? To earn food? To get fur for coats! To get leather for shoes! To get horns to make medicine and wine! In short, hunting gives people many things: nutritious food, fur coats, leather shoes… For example, recently, a queen attended a banquet in a gown made of animal furs and then was ostracized by the public, because that's how she encouraged wildlife hunting. There is a painful tragedy, humans hunting animals has already brought countless benefits, but humans hunting each other even makes greater profits. Hunting animals only brings meat and skin but hunting humans bring even more booty: the enemy’s widows become their sex slaves, men became their slaves like in the Auschwitz concentration camp of Nazi Germany, or borders and territories, ports and cities of the enemy became their own properties…

Writer Victor Hugo once described the abundance of war in “Les Misérables.” When The Battle of Waterloo ended and dead warriors were all over the valleys and the fields. It was a dreary loss. But then there was a happy Theresa crawling on the corpses to collect watches, purses, and other precious things on the bodies. If it was only a pasture to raise horses, or a rice field to harvest, how could the grass and paddy fields grow into wallets full of money or a pocket watch or a wedding ring? It was clear that war was a loss to the dead warriors and their family members, but to Theresa or many others, war was a great and super-profitable harvest.

Before the war broke out, there were usually two sides: the warmonger and the pacifist. The pacifist side did not want their people to fall into a state of death and dispersal so they tried their best to prevent war. On the contrary, the warmonger side intentionally pushed the whole nation into the war because according to them, the war brought benefits to the people: the territories, the market, the ultimate glory of victory, or the preservation and enhancement of the so-called honor. But there is one thing that this side never publicly announced: the interests of their own faction and clan.

War in most cases is the export of contradiction to the outside. When a country is in a conflict and on the verge of collapsing, it tries to export its conflict to other nations by waging a war of aggression. When the war broke out, all the human resources, financial resources poured into the frontline and so did all national concerns; therefore, people forgot all the internal conflicts. And then whether the war ended in victory or draw, the internal conflict had passed or had been replaced by the resolution of the external issues, and the warlord then got all the benefits of maintaining his power.

Why did the failure of reconciliation push many nations and the world into war? Because, as we have discussed, the hardest thing for humans to overcome is the greedy nature. If an individual just pursues his selfish desires, he will do harm to others. And if a group of people or a nation just wants to benefit themselves, they will not come to the table of reconciliation with a peaceful mind and want both sides to benefit, but instead with the attitude of superiority and want to get the better of the reconciliation. And that is the smouldering cause of every failed reconciliation which will give rise to the outbreak of war.

A new era has come with the invention of many deadliest weapons for mass murder so it will be even more dangerous if people do not know how to reconcile to prevent war. The motto of reconciliation in this new era is “win - win” which means both sides will win or benefit. Hopefully, we should not come to the table of reconciliation with a hunting instinct because such an attitude is already obsolete, but instead, we should come to the table of reconciliation with a willing goodwill so that both sides, both nations and ideologies can coexist in peace.

Paul Duc - 29/5/2015

(translated by Dang Linh Chi)

 Painting: from FB, Printest