World War One was hailed as the War to end all Wars, and it should have been thus. Instead, we are still somehow crying over the dead and being mildly romantic about "heroes" and such. The truth is still hardly being told, because we like it that way, we like to be lied to, since we do it to ourselves on a permanent basis. On this day, we should be pulling out our Lyn McDonald books, switching off the telephone and curling up in a corner for some difficult reading... McDonald wrote about the war from the soldier's standpoint, and from the vantage point of close observers of the tragedy unfolding, the nurses who cared for the wounded and dying, for example. Read The Roses of No Man's Land on an empty stomach.

World War One was the epitome of war: The rich and powerful fighting among themselves. On the battlefields, the soldiers and lower officers were not "led" anywhere, they were ordered into the meat grinder to be killed as sure as the sun comes up. The generals and the pols, all of them, should have been tried for crimes against humanity. That applies to those who start wars nowadays as well, our planet is too tight, too close-knit, to afford conflict.

I look at the Congo and wonder where do these imbeciles get their weapons from. And what is their aim, aside from raping, looting, killing, exerting power. Men against the defenseless. Bravo, slow clap. For the profit of armsmongers. Because whoever says arms are built for defense, has his or her head stuck in a place where the sun never shines. Ultimately, they are there for aggression and they will be used for that purpose.

Anyway.... World War One:
There was no heroism, none, the idea was: you got shot up or turned into pink mist for no real reason. Did any of those who profit from the war give a hoot? As a kid, in France, I still saw the old veterans. They had some benefits, a sign in the metro in Paris that reserved them a seat, and they had a few days earmarked for a dismal parade down the Champs-Elysées. Like most men, they just shut up all the time. Actually, there should have been parades of mourning by the mothers of all those kids shot up for nothing but the pleasure of three cousins and warlords. And of course the fellows who earned millions manufacturing phosphorus bombs (ooo, how chic!), phosgene gas, barbed wire, "liquid fire" as flamethrowers used to be called... Take all that useless hardware and multiply its potenty by about 1 million, and you have today. Lesson Learned? Killing makes money.

War is a disgusting spectacle (unpleasant shot, but real), a complete failure of human enterprise, and it should be treated as such rather than be whooped up as some sort of opportunity for heroism. The gloating when it is over is also a dismal spectacle. The damage wars do is not only in the immediate. It runs down the generations, the trauma spreading like some horrible DNA-driven canker. I can track it down in my own family, 90 years on.

As for "just" wars, they don't exist. In my books, there was no WW2, it was just the continuation of WW1. And one more thought before this 90th anniversary sinks into oblivion:

There are no civil wars but ultimately all wars are uncivil civil wars.