Collateral Damage

Sixty years ago today, the RAF ignited Dresden. The resulting firestorms immolated tens of thousands of people, their city, and centuries of history. Today, we (humans in general, no fingers pointed at any particular group) continue to fill the ground with bodies separated from their lives by violence. When it's a We doing the killing, the We do a pretty good job of demonizing the enemy, lumping them all together in a tidy They. Every once and a while, a picture floats up, a kid with a burned face and body, and some missing limbs that reminds us that no matter how bad They are as a group, at least part of that They invariably are children, folks who want no part of the conflict, and folks who are actively fighting for peace.

So the We call that immolated future weeping in its bed Collateral Damage.

Ward Churchill resigned his position at the University of Colorado for writing a polemic that, among other things, likened some of the folks immolated in the World Trade Center attack as little Eichmanns. His choice of words was more effective than he anticipated, I guess, and he set ablaze his chances for making any meaningful contribution to discussion of the violence of nation-states in an inglorious Suttee. I've read it and am not going to comment on it other than it's hard to talk about this without setting yourself on fire. If you are, don't pour gasoline on yourself while you do it.

When nations raise arms against one another, who is a legitimate target, who is the victim of war crimes, and who is collateral damage is blurred. There are few sharp edges, but rather a fuzzy continuity of humanity from militarist who invades his neighbor to the peace activist who opposes him. Is there a point at which indifference becomes a tacit endorsement? The projection of force is not possible without the supporting infrastructure, thus it was OK to raze Dresden and reduce her children to ash. Later it was OK to vaporize the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for this reason as well. These horrific moments polarize many who think about them, and it's easy to take sides. But little Dresdens happen every day. On this anniversary, it's worth taking out a few moments to contemplate our role in it all. An aspect I think worth contemplating, too, is that of the folks who decided to launch the Dresdens and that of those charged with carrying out the Dresdens, large and small. These folks are people with families and dreams. They carry a heavy burden for all of us, whether we asked them to or not.