Men at War

Listening or viewing news reports these days is most depressing, and if one has a heart and conscience, very painful one. Globally, the headlines are dominated by reports from the war front along with the systematic displacement and death of an entire people. A major consequence of this is the ancillary damage – to property, the ecology and human beings by way of starvation and disease. Regionally, our headlines revolve around the common scourge of murder, mainly by imported illegal weapons, with Haiti being at the centre of this burgeoning problem.

The recent “ceasefire” in Lebanon announced by a lame duck US President, while welcome, has brought no halt to the genocide of the people of Palestine. Indeed, the international media has adopted the failed strategy of what was called “Bantutisation” by the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. This involves separating Palestine into separate parts – Gaza, the West Bank, the occupied territories etc, so subconsciously one does not even realize the extent of the collective genocide callously carried out daily. While the Israeli government spreads its destructive tentacles in its stated quest to eliminate terrorists, its own citizens are not spared from the retaliatory consequences.

But it is not just the Middle East, in Eastern Europe the weapons of mass destruction are being rolled out and activated on both sides in the Russia instigated war with Ukraine.

Those weapons merely expose the depth of human depravity, expending billions to exterminate people instead of saving and improving human lives. In all this there are two inescapable realities. One is that the people who suffer most are not soldiers but innocent women and children. The other, sadly, is that men, whether in charge of governments, armed forces, or deadly research and weapon-making operations, are at the spearhead of all these actions which not only cause so much human misery but threaten the very existence of life on this planet. Ironically, this week began with activities to commemorate International Men’s Day. It is supposed to highlight the contributions of men to human development as well as examine the challenges they currently face.

Unfortunately, the balance sheet of male contribution on the positive side is cancelled out by the very ills that we mentioned previously, the scourges of war engineered overwhelmingly by ill-conceived male ambitions of dominance.

It is inescapable and must be addressed even as we recognize that there are other contributing factors.

It underlines that even as we pray for, and work towards, peace in the world, the issues of social justice and inequity between the sexes must also be addressed. For, as long as we continue to have such inequities, there will continue to be strife, the craze for domination and the scourge of war. Men have a grave responsibility which they can neither deny nor escape.