C.G.Ayling

Tag: Rhodesia

  • on Just War

    on Just War.

    I do not enjoy talking about my Active Duty Army days. In this I’m similar to an overwhelmingly vast majority of former military combatants. Indeed, I feel so strongly about this matter that it is one of the few subjects I refuse to talk about with even my own children. However I believe this topic needs to be brought into view where it can be examined by everyone with a conscience, so I’m making this exception.

    Why am I so reluctant to speak about my military past? For reasons I’ll attempt to articulate here. For reasons I suspect are the same virtually every other ex-combatant doesn’t like talking of their past.

    We all want to believe we are fundamentally decent people. Sadly when we’re on active duty in a combat role we encounter an enormous problem with being “decent people”. “On active duty in a combat role” doesn’t mean you’re sitting in a base-camp is some foreign country listening to distant gunfire and the occasional explosion. “On active duty in a combat role” means you are physically out in the field of war, you are going to have contact with the enemy, somebody is going to die, and you fervently hope that somebody isn’t you.

    And that is the fundamental problem right there. You fervently hope that somebody isn’t you…

    There is no such thing as a just war.

    It doesn’t matter that you are on the side of right and the enemy are on the side of wrong, because to them it is you who is on the side of wrong and they who are on the side of right. Wars are not fought by enemies, they are fought by people. And what decent person can ever justify killing another person they do not know, and about whom they know nothing? The enemy are not nameless, faceless, inhuman entities. They are individuals like you and me. That person you hope will die that you might live is someone’s child and is quite possibly somebody’s parent as well. Yet as an active duty combatant you find yourself in a situation in which your most ardent desire is to kill that someone.

    Time passes, you look back on those days from the vantage granted by time, experience, and reason and realize it was all for nothing.

    It was all for nothing.

    I fought in a war to keep my country free, but my country was lost anyway. Zimbabwe is the ruins of Rhodesia. Rhodesia, a country once described as the “breadbasket of Southern Africa” has turned into a place of widespread starvation in which people routinely tolerate grotesque injustice every day. So what did my fighting in the so-called “liberation war” accomplish? Isn’t it peculiar how history is written from the victors perspective?

    I ask again, what did my fighting in that war accomplish?

    It accomplished nothing. Nothing. Nothing, except the deaths of a whole lot of sons, and I am ashamed to say, the deaths of some daughters too. Tragically, those deaths are not nothing. Those deaths are the unwritten somethings of the forgotten heroes of a rewritten war.

    A terrible mistake is for people to imagine they know what it is like to be on active duty in a combat role. Until you have personally been there you don’t have a clue. Not a single clue. People extrapolate war into cute little sound bites like, “It is for the greater good.” Utter nonsense. The only people war serves are those immoral enough to profit from said war.

    Who profits from war? Those who sell weapons. Those who hold onto power by whatever means possible. Those who attempt to wrest power from whoever currently holds it, also by whatever means possible.

    There is no such thing as a just war…

    How can any situation in which it is tolerable and acceptable to kill other people simply because they are on the other side ever be just? It cannot. How can it be just to suspend all universal laws of moral decency and encourage the willful, intentional murder of people you don’t even know? It cannot. That one side in a war is unjust does not grant the other side the right to suspend morality. Suspending morality does not make one side just – it makes both sides unjust.

    Never forget wars are not fought by lifeless machines. Wars are fought by human beings. That nameless, faceless, inhuman entity you are encouraged to murder without conscience is not nameless, faceless, or inhuman. They are a person, they have a name, they have a face their parents and children love, and they are no less human than you. They deserve better than to be murdered simply for being on the other side of an unjust war.

    Perhaps this is why the war is off limits to conversation with my children. I want my children to think I am a good person. How do good people get involved in such terrible affairs as war? How can a decent person do things that are fundamentally unconscionable? How can a decent person ever forget their indecent deeds?

    I grow weary of people assuming war is a glorious affair.

    I volunteered for military service about a year before I would have been conscripted. I did so because I wanted to serve my country. And I did serve my country. But for what? Ultimately for nothing except the death of a whole bunch of people I never knew, but all of whom had mothers and fathers, and many of whom probably had children too. Such memories do not make me feel good about myself. That I was young and gullible should not be an excuse. It really should not. It is not an excuse sufficient to ease my troubled conscience. Not even a little.

    Perhaps these are the reasons former combatants are so reluctant to speak of their roles. Perhaps they are just people like me who look back on their deeds and know they are not just. Perhaps society demands our silence, but our conscience does not.

    There is no such thing as a just war…

    Credits: This post first appeared in a wonderful online publication called Hellbent Magazine. Visit their website and browse around, you’ll find the original post at this link.

  • Should family come first?

    Today is Thanksgiving day.  Thanksgiving is a time of family, both for enjoying the company of your family, and for reflecting on its importance in your life.  It makes me ponder the apparently obvious question of whether family should come first?

    For me family always has. My children hold an importance in my life I think they will only begin to comprehend when they have children of their own in their lives.

    So, yes. Family comes first.

    However that is only a partial bit of a greater truth. Another partial bit of truth is how we place the ones we love ahead of ourselves. And yet another bit of strictly personal truth {When is truth ever not personal?} is how I am biased against “first”, which is what this post is really about. Now be warned  I’m going to explore this matter at some length, so feel free to stop reading as soon as you get bored.

    The initial thoughts that pop into my mind are that first requires there be a last. First turns things into a competition, and love should never be a competition. Not for children, who should never need to compete for their parents love. Not for parents, who should never love one child more than another. And not for people in love, who should never think their love is greater than that of those who love them.

    Sadly, we often fail in all these instances.

    Time for an admission – I really don’t like competition. Sure, when I was growing up competition was everywhere. I competed to gain an entry place into the High School I attended. I competed with every other student in my grade level for placement in the top class. I competed in sports, both team, and individual. The day scholars competed against the boarders. My school competed against others, both academically and in sports. I constantly competed against my own siblings, then we’d team together and compete against the neighbors. When I entered military service, I competed against other conscripts for officer selection training. In the School of Infantry we were split into teams that competed against each other. We also competed against the members of our own team, in order to remain in officer training. After our basic training we competed for the military units we wanted to serve in. Some competed for secure headquarters postings, and some competed to gain an active duty posting in the field of combat. I fell into the latter category.

    And then shit hit the fan.

    We started competing for our lives.

    I am still alive.

    So why do I not feel like a winner for surviving?  During the war I felt like I was, and yet my side lost.  To my first-hand knowledge, the Rhodesian Military never lost a battle, yet the insurgents won the war.  The victors write history, and the losers are soon forgotten. Years later might have been when I finally realized that in war the soldiers who do the fighting are never winners, regardless of the side on which they fight. The aftermath of war is not victorious soldiers and vanquished, faceless foes, it is victims, some of whom were once soldiers, who were once people.

    Are there no winners in war?

    Yes, there are winners in war.  They are the unscrupulous politicians.  They are the financiers who profit from other peoples’ deaths.  They are the manipulators calling the shots, while cowering behind the scenes. They are those who never lift a weapon in combat, yet speak loudest of Defense, Justice, and Liberty.  The winners in war are the liars and the thieves.

    Mortal combat is the final competition.  Don’t mistakenly believe that combat is the ultimate competition, for ultimate has connotations of good, and there has never been, nor ever will there ever be, a good war.  Not ever, and nor ever.  Strong words?  Yes, but obviously not strong enough, since wars still ravage a humanity foolish enough to be easily manipulated by those who profit from death and misery.

    Perhaps this post gives clues as to why I am so biased against “first”, even in the case of family.  You see, for me,  first connotates competition.

    Competition…

    Competition should for be for the joy of competing, not for mere survival.

  • Conscious Activism

    On February 26, 2013, I posted back-to-back tweets from my Twitter account, @CGAyling.  The first stated:-

    “Social conscience: recognizing injustice. {widely encouraged}”,

    the second,

    “Social Activism: acting on your social conscience. {widely discouraged}”.

    A growing sense of inequity, prompted these thoughts.

    In my youth, fortune smiled on me.  The middle child of seven, my first memories are from our life in an extremely small village named Melsetter.  Melsetter is located in the scenic Eastern Highlands of a place now mired in tragedy, and renamed Zimbabwe.  In Melsetter, my father held a position of influence and my mother one of mystique – least those were my perceptions, for how else does a very young child raised in the security of a loving family see their parents?

    Fortune’s pendulum swung.

    Misfortune widowed my mother, leaving her to raise seven children.  While we lacked for things material, we never lacked for love.  My Godfather stepped into my life and assumed the figure of father for me, while never presuming to replace my deceased father.  The world seemed fair and equitable – a place of dignity, with difference assumed, and respected.  In my Godfather’s care, I learnt of conscience, and of deed.  He taught me that for conscience to hold any moral value, one must act upon it, with deeds.

    A decade passed, my Godfather moved to Spain, and a terrible war ravaged my peaceful land.  I served on the losing side, volunteering for service before my scheduled conscription into the Rhodesian Army.

    Why did I volunteer?  From a powerful sense of social activism – I knew Rhodesia was doomed to fall before the onslaught of communist backed terrorists.  (Terrorists is what we called them then, and terrorists is what they have proved to be.)  My conscience goaded me to act in defense of a homeland whose demise was imminent, and inescapable.  Following my Godfather’s lesson, I acted on my conscience and decided to volunteer for Military Service.  Widespread disapproval met my little act of possibly misguided activism.  Teachers drew me aside and told me that all I had to do was wait, the end of conscription was as hand – just as soon as Rhodesia lost the war.

    Even within my family, my decision met with powerful disapproval.  My three older brothers, already undertaking their National Service, each urged me to reconsider.  My mother cried, something I have very rarely seen.  Although shocked at my family’s lack of support, within my heart I knew that their admonishments were in attempt to protect me from very likely harm.  When my mother perceived I would not relent and intended to serve, she urged me to join Internal Affairs, the Airforce, or the Police – all alternative forms of National Service instead of the Army, and all with far less risk of combat.  However, my wish was to fight for my country, not serve in another less active role.  I joined the Army, attended the School of Infantry, and ultimately received my wish.

    Be careful what you wish for – for sometimes wishes are granted.

    Looking back through hindsight’s rose tinted spectacles, I question much of what I believed at that time.  It turns out that truth is not absolute – it is nothing more than our perception of available information.  However, whether I did the right thing is not the point of this post – the point, is that I acted on my social conscience.

    Question your conscience, to be sure its motivation seems pure, and then act on it.  Even if only to yourself, you will make a difference – and remember, change begins at home.

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    While you’re here, please take a look around my blog, you’re sure to find something to promote thought.