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In 2007, I traveled to the eastern part of Sri Lanka, during the civil war. I wanted to understand the views of children and adults about recruitment to groups that engage in terrorist tactics, including attacks in which the attacker plans to die. The Tamil Tigers were skilled and well-organized killers. So were the government forces. Outside the country, the war was widely understood to be based on ethnic or religious differences, but that was a convenient fiction: It was a war, like all wars, about power and resources. We, citizens of the U.S., were partially responsible for the war. Our government was supplying the Sri Lanka government with weapons. The children whose family and friends were dying knew that.
The research I did in Sri Lanka is reported in the book Creating Young Martyrs: Conditions That Make Dying in a Terrorist Attack Seem Like a Good Idea. I continue to hope that my work, together with the work of scholars, activists, journalists, filmmakers, and others, will help Americans better understand the complexity and immorality of war — and encourage Americans to be skeptical about the simplistic messages delivered by our government. I hope it will also help Americans understand that it is not soldiers or weapons marketers who are responsible for war; it is all citizens who stand by, failing to exercise judgment, failing to take responsibility for the acts of our country.
In 2010, I returned to Sri Lanka, where I learned about the aftermath of the war and the fragile peace. Children without parents, and parents without children. The dead, the sick, the maimed, the traumatized — people were freer to talk with me about the personal losses of family members and friends, and the impact on children and adults who had experienced bombings, no matter from which side. The Sri Lankan government, at that time, claimed that there were no psychosocial consequences of the war. That was untrue.
In 2018, I traveled to the Balkans, where, in Sarajevo, I heard in detail from survivors about the 1425-day siege, when civilian survival was a matter of luck, with bombings and sniper shootings a daily experience, and the lack of running water requiring daily treks. The shadow of war is everywhere, even 20 years later. There are too many cemeteries, filled with too many bodies of people who died before their 25th birthday. You cannot forget. (I do not imply that the US is responsible for the Bosnian War; I only describe it here as further evidence of the suffering of civilians in war.)
Whatever one thinks about ancient wars, contemporary wars are immoral. Those who suffer most in all contemporary wars are civilians, many of whom want only to have a means to support themselves and their families and a peaceful place to live. They are generally no one’s enemy, but just people, often literally caught in the middle. At least they are no one’s enemy until they become unintentionally involved, when, for example, their child is kidnapped and disappeared, or forced to fight.
With a military that is powerfully marketed, and without having ever witnessed war in our communities, it is easy for Americans to leave the decisions about war to those who believe that there cannot be peace without the ominous threat of war, even nuclear war. We have acted on that belief for too many generations, with disastrous results for many civilians in war zones. But what if the American people were to understand their power to influence decisions about the actions of our military. Would we become determined to foster nonviolent resistance, to negotiate, and to find a path somehow to resolution of difference without war? Would we be motivated to let ordinary noncombatant civilians like ourselves live?
It seems it is now time for Americans to recognize our personal responsibility for the weapons our country sells, and for the wars we engage in, as well as those we support. Once we understand that this is happening on our watch, we have no choice but to stop it.
