Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time passing…

Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time ago…

Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards everyone…

When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?  (Pete Seeger, 1961)

At the beginning of this journey I visited Hiroshima and reflected in this blog about war and death. I close with a similar reflection from my experience in the Tyne Cot Cemetery, the final resting place for the tens of thousands of men who were killed in the battle of Passchendaele in Flanders in 1917.

This World War I battle raged between the British and the Germans for 100 days, and when it ended British soldiers had moved forward less than five miles… all of which was later reclaimed by the Germans. Between the two sides, 500,000 soldiers lay dead or injured. More than 140,000 Allied soldiers were killed, reflecting a gain of mere inches for each life lost.

I learned a lot during my travels around the world, and look forward to sharing some of it when I return home. But one lesson is burned indelibly into my consciousness: war is senseless. It was senseless in 1914 when the world stumbled into combat after the Serbian Kingdom’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. It is senseless today.

It is relatively easy to whip up war fever among the populace— as they did in Austria, Russia, France, England, and Germany in 1914— playing on both fear and false patriotism. It is much more difficult to put national pride and politics aside in the interest of peace and seek common ground with those whose world view is different from ours.

Walking through this cemetery with its 12,000 graves of British soldiers, and 35,000 names inscribed on the Memorial to the Missing, I could not help but reflect on the necessity of doing just that. I don’t want my grandchildren, or the children and grandchildren of the people I met during the last 51 days, to be names on a memorial wall.

This trip (to Japan, South Korea, India, Kenya, South Africa, Portugal, Belgium and England) has shown me that the world is too small for violence, and it is time for my generation to say: “No more!”

It is time to take the risk of being peacemakers rather than warmongers. It is time to recognize that military might does not guarantee peace. If it did, America would not have been at war off and on during my entire 67 years of life… from World War II through Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and assorted other skirmishes across the globe.

But we haven’t learned. The British morning papers today featured stories about Republicans in the United States Senate stonewalling the nuclear arms control treaty with Russia for seemingly partisan reasons. Today six of our NATO allies— all in Russia’s neighborhood— appealed to the Senate to ratify the treaty.

“For us, its European security that is at stake”, Lene Espersen, the Danish Foreign Minister, said.

We Americas have to realize that it isn’t just about us. I come home with the understanding that what we do affects people— not just governments, but people— around the world, and they look to us for leadership. We do not live in a cocoon, isolated from the world, and we must stop acting as if we do.

The Republican blockade is senseless, and is tantamount to playing politics with the lives of millions of people. When will we ever learn?