It was 80 years ago today, Sergeant somethingorother brought an end to play. Or something.
But what have we learnt? Judging from what’s going on in India, and Pakistan, and India-administered Kashmir, and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, not a huge amount.
If it wasn’t such a sombre occasion, it’d be laughable. Commemorating (a celebration of) a cessation of a bloody conflict while several others are in full swing.
In London, while everything seemed to be very monarchy-centric - that’s a little weird to me, even if some of those who were involved were front and centre in events of this week - I suppose most will see things as being done in the right spirit.
That said, Russia didn’t seem to have been invited to commemorations, which seems even weirder considering they lost 20-odd million people fighting the Nazis in World War II. The Russia-Ukraine war is sickening and Putin’s a rotter, sure, but it doesn’t erase the past - the nominally French-British, say, like me, owe a debt of gratitude to both America and Russia, if we’re talking big beasts, and any chance to talk peace should be snapped up.
No, it all sits very badly. Why are we still fighting each other? With bombs and guns? When you take a step back, it’s utterly ridiculous. In theory, of course, there’s “just war”, but this is largely flawed and egos are surely as much to blame as protection of civilians. War is a failure of diplomacy, always, and what’s happening in Gaza, for example, is a complete failure of conscience.
When it comes to territory disputes, what options do we have? I thought mutual assured destruction (MAD) meant no one would attack anyone who has nuclear weapons, even if attacking with nuclear weapons, because both parties would be toast, but it seems they’ll still fight it out and have the use of nuclear weapons as their red line.
Should we be happy with that? The lack of universal vaporisation is perhaps something to be thankful for, but thousands of soldiers die on battlefields and, yeah, Gaza. Catastrophic and barbaric. And it continues.
It’s so utterly - sickeningly - stupid that perhaps we should take to the virtual battlefield. No one dies, but one country puts their finest esports players against the equivalents from their foes. Who wins and the winning margin determines who gets what land and it all gets overseen by the UN. Perhaps mercenaries will be in form of 15-year-old gamers from neutral countries and all the guns and bombs and tanks and nukes will be confined to the screens showing Call of Duty or whatever.
Ridiculous, huh? Any more ridiculous than children losing parents and parents losing children? All the physical injuries and PTSD and war crimes?
No. Not any more ridiculous than that. Less ridiculous.
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