I don't remember exactly when I first read that quote, or even what history book it was that I read it in. But there's no doubt that it had a powerful effect on me. Like all boys, I had a tremendous desire to grow up and do something heroic. Also, like all boys, I wanted to be just like my dad when I grew up, and since I knew from a very early age that my father had been a soldier and fought in the Vietnam War, I wanted to do the same.
Growing up in America at the height of the Cold War in the 1980s, there was a LOT of encouragement for boys like myself to think this way. Most of the TV shows and movies in the 80s had a pro-military theme, and there was also many shows whose characters were Vietnam veterans who spent most of their time solving problems using violence, despite having no legal authority to do so. Anyone who grew up in the 80s will remember movies like "Die Hard" (still my favorite Christmas movie) and the Rambo trilogy, Top Gun, and Red Dawn as well as TV shows like "The A-Team", "Airwolf" "GI Joe" and "Magnum P.I.
These movies and shows made war, killing and violence look glorious and heroic, and it made anyone who objected to these things look weak, cowardly, infantile and stupid.
With a few exceptions, they also made war and violence look safe, as the protagonists rarely died or even got hit, and even when they did, they healed quickly and by the next episode of the show they were as good as new.
So, I grew up thinking it would be fantastic to be a soldier at war, and I consumed thousands of pages worth of history books and watched hundreds of hours worth of movies, including both non-Fiction documentaries and fictional stories. I also read books by men who had been career soldiers, like H. Norman Shwartzkopf and Colin Powell, and they made it sound like SO MUCH fun!
And then of course, there was the collective works of Tom Clancy, who has been called the "poet laureate of the Military-Industrial Complex." Reading his books definitely fed my desire to be a soldier and defend the civilized world against its many enemies, foreign and domestic.
But alas, when the time came for me to enlist...I failed my physical exam.
So, I went to college instead and studied Political Science, Anthropology, International Relations and the Bible, not necessarily in that order.
I WAS able to be part of the ROTC program at my university, and on more than one occasion, I performed tasks better than the regular Army soldiers who were there to teach us how to do things, which REALLY irritated me since those guys had obviously passed the physical exam I'd failed. As I was finishing up my fourth semester, which was as far as a person could go in ROTC without enlisting, the CO of the ROTC battalion, a Lt. Colonel who was a veteran of Gulf War 1, told me it was too bad I had failed my physical because in all other respects I was exactly the kind of young man the US Army was looking for.
That just made it worse.
But time passed, and God put other things in front of me. The vast number of books I'd read and movies I'd watched didn't entirely go to waste, as they were all relevant to the study of international relations, which made up the bulk of my academic work. Later, in my work as a journalist, they would also be useful. In fact, it was as a journalist, rather than as a soldier, that I ended up finally allowing me to experience war and violence at close range (no pun intended.)
The first time I was ever shot at was several years ago when I went down to Sderot (this was before the Iron Dome) chasing a story for the Messianic Times newspaper. The crude rockets I dodged that day seemed like a really big deal at the time, but that all seems laughably prosaic now. In subsequent years, covering subsequent wars, (they really do all run together in my memory after a while) I'd dodge bigger rockets, drones, missiles, etc. while never throwing anything back, not even a paper airplane.
Because the fact is, I am still technically a civilian. Most war movies are about soldiers, but the overwhelming majority of people who experience war do so in the capacity of a civilian, COMPLETELY helpless to do anything to affect the conduct of the war one way or the other, at the mercy of forces beyond their control, just trying to hold on and survive under very difficult circumstances.
This current war, which might be coming to an end in the next few days, has been a very different experience for me in every way. Unlike all the previous wars, which I participated in as a journalist, mostly watching from a safe distance and only occasionally getting close enough to be in any kind of danger, this war came right to my front door.
Two years and two days ago, Hamas attacked Israel and the next day, Hezbollah joined in the attack. This was followed by attacks from the Houthis in Yemen, Iranian-backed Shi'ite militias in Iraq and Syria and eventually Iran itself. However, when this war started, I was most afraid that there would be terrorist attacks here in Jerusalem and possibly even against my family's home, just like what had happened in the Gaza border communities.
To prepare for this possibility, I did what a lot of other Israelis did and applied for a license to acquire and carry a pistol. I have no idea why, but there was no way to appeal the computer's decision, so I just carried around a baseball bat whenever I took the dog for a walk until I managed to get some pepper spray.
No terrorist attack ever came against me, but over the past two years I've heard the air raid siren many times, often waking me up in the middle of the night and forcing me to get the kids out of bed so we could grab the dog and run down to the bomb shelter. No missiles ever landed here in Jerusalem, but debris from a few interceptions landed here and also in adjacent communities, so the danger was very real. We also had large fires that threatened some neighborhoods in Jerusalem, which were allegedly deliberately set by arsonists.
The police even arrested a guy trying to set fire to some bushes just a few blocks away from my apartment. When I heard that, I walked over to the place where he was arrested and it blew my mind how he could have been "trying" to set a fire in that spot. If I had be "trying" to start a fire there I could have had a roaring blaze going in about 10 seconds. I can't imagine what stopped this guy, but whatever it is, I'm grateful for it. Other alleged attempts at arson WERE successful, and hundreds of acres in the hills around Jerusalem and other major Israeli cities burned. I must also add that there was also reports that the fires might have been started through simple carelessness, which is kind of hard to believe, but I suppose it's possible.
In any case, my home, the place where my children sleep at night, was in danger in this war, and that was an entirely new experience for me.
Now, as this war is likely coming to an end, I'm sitting here reflecting on everything that's happened, and I'm coming to some conclusions.
War DOES offer opportunities for heroism, and you don't have to be a soldier to take advantage of these opportunities.
My dog was a hero of this war, keeping the children in our building laughing and having fun in the bomb shelter so that they'd forget about being afraid and upset. One of the other dads who lives upstairs told me that he didn't even have to push his children to go down to the shelter during an alert, they were always eager to go because they'd get to pet the dog.
However, whatever chances there might be for a soldier to grab some "glory" during a war, there are no such chances for a civilian.
Beyond that, there's the question posed by a song from the 1960s, "war, what is it good for" and that song actually echoed the question asked by many other artists, notably the great German novelist Erich Maria Remarque, whose towering masterpiece "All Quiet on the Western Front" included a scene in which ordinary soldiers discuss this question and one of the few answers that they come up with that make any kind of sense is that it's good for industrialists, because they get rich manufacturing weapons.
That has always been true, and these days, it's more true than ever. A recent headline caught my eye, in a bad way, because it said "Bangladesh air force gets nod to spend billions on multirole fighters."
REALLY?!
Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, with millions of people living in crushing poverty, few natural resources, VERY poor schools, hospitals, roads, etc. and yet, somehow, they've decided to spend billions of dollars on fighter aircraft.
But it's not just Bangladesh. A recent video posted by The Infographics Show gives us a look at how many different countries all over the world, including rich and not-so-rich countries, are spending so much on "defense" that all the things they're trying to "defend" are simply falling apart, raising the question of what the point is.
Here in Israel, as I wrote in a previous blog, there are many people, families and entire communities who are on the ragged edge of financial collapse, and things might be about to get even worse for them as the government will have to both raise taxes and cut services to pay for all the things it has had to spend money on during these last two years of war. To that can be added the hundreds of soldiers killed and wounded, the heartbreakingly high number of divorced couples, domestic violence, substance abuse, household debt, and the list just goes on and on.
There is no question that this was a "war of no choice" for Israel, and there is also no question that the sacrifices we have made, and continue to make, were absolutely necessary. But I am still appalled when I look at all the damage it has done to us, and the price we will be paying for a very long time.
Needless to say, this is dwarfed by the massive price that Russia, Ukraine, and all of Europe and America are paying and will continue to pay for Vladimir Putin's war, which was completely unnecessary and which has cost Russia so much and gained it very little, if anything.
So, to sum up, I am both proud and oddly grateful to have lived through this time, and I am also very grateful to God for allowing me to see that I do not, as General George S. Patton did, find that my usefulness to mankind has ended with the conclusion of this war. I am a husband to a marvelous wife who needs me and the father to two sons and a dog who all need me. Being a husband and a father offers many opportunities for heroism on an almost daily basis. They should make a few movies about that.
I am also a journalist in a city where there will always be news that people need to hear about, and that will be true whether there's a war being fought or if there isn't.
Another conclusion I've come to is that, with all due respect to Rambo and Magnum P.I., objecting to war and violence is not weak, cowardly, infantile, and stupid. I am not, and can't imagine ever being, a "pacifist," but I HAVE come to a place in my journey where I am very disgusted at the damage wars cause, the costs they impose and the sheer madness that is a huge part of why so many of them start and continue so long.
One of Jesus' titles is the "Prince of Peace" and I'm very much looking forward to His 1,000-year reign on this earth, when there won't be any wars, and we can all spend our time and resources on more productive pursuits. Until then, whether we like it or not, nations will continue to follow the advice of the Romans, that "if you want peace, you must prepare for war."