Brothers In Arms In Endless Wars With No Theorem
Below is a video of the famous song by Dire Straits called ‘Brothers in Arms’ and reflecting on the suffering and heroism of soldiers. For me I see brothers in arms where I am holding them with love and compassion to heal their wounds.
The Dire Straits film clip reminds me of the 20 million Russia soliders who died during the Second World War. This is out of 70 million dead. When I was in St Petersburg (Leningrad) with Patch Adams we were taken to the museum and watched a black and white film, we saw people pulling sleds with bodies in such a harsh winter. The film spoke of the terrible cost Russia paid in that war. Many were dying from starvation.
I’ve spoken to soldiers and they have conveyed war as a horrible experience. Many don’t like discussing it. You can imagine the pain at losing a friend or witnessing horrific inhumanities. It is hard to imagine people think of ways to kill other people. The bullets these days explode inside people or blow them apart. My former partner was a soldier and he would wake up in the night not breathing. He saw horrendous murders and lost some of his own family. He would shoot over their heads, he never shot anyone as he saw their mother’s faces in their faces. In mine fields he was very brave he would walk in front of other’s who had families so he would die first if a mine was there. Thankfully he lived on. He was a strong advocate for peace and was one of the people who inspired me to become a peacemaker. His mother was the other one. They showed me the personal pain and loss of war and in exile, the loss of their home. They were Afghan.
Here is a poem I felt to write.
ENDLESS WAR IS NOT THEOREM
I am silent and speechless,
Staring into the face of your unbridgeable sorrow,
For the barbed wire is the cruel barrier,
That keeps all brothers in arms,
Terror and horror,
Electric shock to the senses,
Vomiting filth and muck in no man’s land,
Your only defence is purging out the evil,
You lay transfixed lost in a thousand yard stare,
There is no care nothing more you can bare,
As your heart is twisted, tortured, traumatised and tainted,
Confused and mortified by char and smoke screens,
Feelings drained like blood on the battlefield,
War weary eyes blurry there is no shield,
As the war never yields
especially at night,
Peace is fleeting between reliving the screams,
Submerged in bad dreams,
And lying sweating under covers,
The war is never over
When out
cold.
I send all my love to soldiers who went into war with noble intentions. It is an experience that lay people could never understand. It seems to me like all your worst nightmares came at once. I send healing and hope that you learn from your experiences and perhaps become a soldier of peace. Peace to you for all of your life. Know that you did your best.
Below is a video by Dire Straits. Many of the soldiers were in dire straits. Below the video is a sobering table, for me full of tears, depicting deaths across the world of soldiers and civilians. The numbers are staggering. Particularly in China. Man’s inhumanity to man.
Dire Straits – Brothers in Arms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_and_anthropogenic_disasters_by_death_toll
Wars and armed conflicts
The estimated low to high range of deaths is a Total of:
| 229,300,000 | 493,400,000 |
These figures of one million or more deaths include the deaths of civilians from diseases, famine, etc., as well as deaths of soldiers in battle and possible massacres and genocide. Where only one estimate is available, it appears in both the low and high estimates.
(my insert) Just imagine every number is a person with a family or unborn children. Imagine those crying at night whose lives are changed forever. I met a lady just recently who lost her son and she is devastated, imagine what it is like for all these mourning families, they would be horrified at their family members suffering. They are fathers, brothers and sons. We have to see the ‘other’as part of our family for the carnage to stop. Michael Moore in Farenheit 911 interviewed politicians asking if their sons went to Iraq, the answer was no. My question is if you cannot send your own child into harms way, how can you send other people’s children? That has to be the reality check. The high estimate at around 500 million families affected. It just sends concentric rings of more unhappiness and painful sorrow into the world.
| Lowest estimate | Highest estimate | Event | Location | From | To | See also | Percentage of the world population[1] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 40,000,000[2] | 72,000,000[3] | World War II | Worldwide | 1939 | 1945 | World War II casualties and Second Sino-Japanese War[4] | 1.7%–3.1% |
| 30,000,000[5] | 60,000,000[6] | Mongol Conquests | East Asia, Eastern Europe, West Asia | 1207 | 1472 | Mongol invasions and Tatar invasions | 7.5%–17.1% |
| 30,000,000[7] | 30,000,000 | Late Yuan warfare and transition to Ming Dynasty | China | 1340 | 1368 | Ming Dynasty | 6.7% |
| 25,000,000[8] | 25,000,000 | Qing dynasty conquest of the Ming Dynasty | China | 1616 | 1662 | Qing Dynasty | 4.8% |
| 20,000,000[9] | 100,000,000[10][11][12][13][14] | Taiping Rebellion | China | 1851 | 1864 | Dungan revolt | 1.6%–2.1% |
| 15,000,000[15] | 65,000,000 | World War I (High estimate includes Spanish flu deaths)[16] | Worldwide | 1914 | 1918 | World War I casualties | 0.8%–3.6% |
| 15,000,000[17] | 20,000,000[17] | Conquests of Timur | West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Russia | 1369 | 1405 | [18] | 3.4%–4.5% |
| 13,000,000[19] | 36,000,000[20] | An Lushan Rebellion | China | 755 | 763 | Medieval warfare | 5.5%–15.3% |
| 8,000,000[21][22] | 12,000,000 | Dungan revolt | China | 1862 | 1877 | Panthay Rebellion | 0.6%–0.9% |
| 5,000,000 [citation needed] |
9,000,000[23] | Russian Civil War | Russia | 1917 | 1921 | Russian Revolution (1917), List of civil wars | 0.28%–0.5% |
| 3,800,000[24] | 5,400,000[25] | Second Congo War | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 1998 | 2003 | First Congo War | 0.06%–0.09% |
| 3,500,000 [citation needed] |
7,000,000[26] | Napoleonic Wars | Europe, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean | 1804 | 1815 | Napoleonic Wars casualties | 0.4%–0.7% |
| 3,000,000 | 11,500,000[27] | Thirty Years’ War | Holy Roman Empire | 1618 | 1648 | Religious war | 0.5%–2.1% |
| 3,000,000[28] | 7,000,000[28] | Yellow Turban Rebellion | China | 184 | 205 | Part of Three Kingdoms War | 1.3%–3.1% |
| 1,500,000[29] | 2,000,000[29] | Afghan Civil War | Afghanistan | 1979 | Present | Soviet-Afghan War, Taliban Era, and NATO Intervention. Death toll estimates through 1999 (2M) and 2000 (1.5M and 2M). | 0.06% |
| 3,000,000[30] | 4,000,000[30] | Deluge | Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth | 1655 | 1660 | Second Northern War | 0.6%–0.7% |
| 400,000[31] | 4,500,000[31] | Korean War | Korean Peninsula | 1950 | 1953 | Cold War | 0.1% |
| 1,000,000[32] | 3,000,000[33] | Vietnam War | Southeast Asia | 1955 | 1975 | Cold War | 0.08%–0.19% |
| 2,000,000 | 4,000,000[34] | French Wars of Religion | France | 1562 | 1598 | Religious war | 0.4%–0.8% |
| 2,000,000[35] [dubious – discuss] |
2,000,000 [dubious – discuss] |
Shaka‘s conquests | Africa | 1816 | 1828 | Ndwandwe–Zulu War | 0.2% |
| 1,000,000[36] | 2,000,000 | Second Sudanese Civil War | Sudan | 1983 | 2005 | Religious war | 0.02% |
| 1,000,000[37] | 3,000,000[38] | Crusades | Holy Land, Europe | 1095 | 1291 | Religious war | 0.3%–2.3% |
| 600,000[29] | 2,000,000[29] | Soviet War in Afghanistan | Afghanistan | 1980 | 1988 | Cold War | 0.012%–0.04% |
| 800,000 | 1,000,000 | Du Wenxiu Rebellion | China | 1856 | 1873 | ||
| 500,000[39] | 2,000,000[39] | Mexican Revolution | Mexico, United States | 1911 | 1920 | Pancho Villa and Columbus Raid | 0.03%–0.1% |
| 500,000[40][41] | 2,000,000[42] | Iran–Iraq War | Iran, Iraq | 1980 | 1988 | Al-Anfal Campaign and Invasion of Kuwait | 0.01%–0.04% |
| 400,000 | 800,000 | American Civil War | United States | 1861 | 1865 | 0.03%-0.06% | |
| 300,000[43] | 1,200,000[44] | Paraguayan War | South America | 1864 | 1870 | Military history of South America and Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias | 0.02%–0.08% |
I wonder when will our world find peace? Hopefully soon. I guess it starts with me. I choose peace and conflict resolution. As Gandhi said ‘be the change you wish to see in the world’, as you change the world changes. Peace cannot come from war, it only comes from peace. This is the truth that sets us free.
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