Where The Streets Have Names
Mariupol
They are stacked together with dozens of others in this mass grave on the outskirts of the city. A man covered in a bright blue tarp, weighed down by stones at the crumbling curb. A woman wrapped in a red and gold bedsheet, her legs neatly bound at the ankles with a scrap of white fabric. Workers toss the bodies in as fast as they can, because the less time they spend in the open, the better their own chances of survival…
More bodies will come, from streets where they are everywhere and from the hospital basement where the corpses of adults and children are laid out, awaiting someone to pick them up. The youngest still has an umbilical stump attached.
Each airstrike and shell that relentlessly pounds Mariupol — about one a minute at times — drives home the curse of a geography that has put the city squarely in the path of Russia’s domination of Ukraine. This southern seaport of 430,000 has become a symbol of the drive by Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to crush a democratic Ukraine — and also of a fierce resistance on the ground. The city is now encircled by Russian soldiers, who are slowly squeezing the life out of it, one blast at a time.
The surrounding roads are mined and the port blocked. Food is running out…
— Excerpt, The New York Times, by David Leonhardt 3/17/2022
Last night the Socrates Café convened at Barnes & Noble bookstore. Eight to ten of us were seated around tables pulled together in the middle of the cafe. The topic: “What do you think of war?” Almost as an aside, positive developments consequent to the hammer and anvil of war were mentioned: great novels, musicals, solidarity of peoples, great expressions of courage, etc.
We began our discussion, none of us having experienced even the bare edge of warfare. We all have lived our lives, raised our families under a normal, albeit short period of peacetime, in one of the most materially prosperous nations of all time. I remembered when the nation was roiled socially by the Vietnam war, — not that the army of General Vo Nguyen Giap was a threat to any of us who lived here.
A member of our group began the discussion. Comment was offered about just war theory, the stipulations by which a military assault could be considered “justified.”
I listened in shocked silence. Compelled to respond, I expressed irony at the very concept of “a just war”, when we know at least in the abstract know how exponentially deadly warfare has become in our time. Survivors of war are traumatized psychologically for the duration of their lives. Some are so severely disoriented that they are never without medication, or allowed to leave a psychiatric hospital.
Comment was offered at several points in the evening’s discussion, highlighting the palpable insanity of anyone who desires to wage war. That insight by itself could well have began as well as ended our discussion.
This morning on the road driving toward Starbucks this tune played on the radio. I’ve heard it before hundreds of times I suppose. Today it struck me in a different way, as if it were a prayer uttered by all and for all of humanity. Where The Streets Have No Name by U2. The lyric is about a place, an imagined ideal, where we have suffered enough, and caused enough suffering, — that we learn to build and not to burn down love.
Oh, when I go there, I’ll go there with you…
6 thoughts on “Where The Streets Have Names”
Just as we may like to believe that war is never justified we might also believe that war is an integral part of human nature. It has existed as a cultural norm for tens of thousands of years and I do not see it ending any time soon. This point of view doesn’t mean that I personally support a warring society. I understand your very salient point about the traumatization of those populations that have experienced war. But the bottom line is that we are an extremely dysfunctional species and we justify abhorrent behavior on a regular basis, normalizing it as a part of every day life. Is not the subjugation of women, the economic divide between rich and poor, the xenophobic rantings of white supremacists, or any other number of self-destructive tendencies akin to a form of war? I realize that having bombs dropped from the air on maternity hospitals is not the same as what I mentioned or the hurried burial of friends, relatives, and neighbors is also not commensurate to the psychological brutality of capitalism, but there are some parallels.
Where does this argument take us with regard to the justification of war mongering? My own feeling is that warring against war is justified. Much like being intolerant of intolerance is justified. There is an oxymoronic aspect to this way of thinking, but I don’t see any alternative if we are to have any chance of ultimate survival. Perhaps this conflict will lead to all out war and the demise of humanity, but we’re headed in that direction anyway.
I think that homo sapiens, like every other life-form desires survival above everything else. We justify killing because that appears to ensure our survival, at least in the short run. Now that we know just how dysfunctional that strategy for survival is, we ought to stop all justification of this behavior, should we not? Your listing of forms of violence that parallel the assault of warfare are to the point. And as for “human nature” perhaps that is a concept as unproductive, with a hidden barb, as is just-war-theory… Human nature can be anything at all that is conditioned to be…
It is high time that we all agree, every social collective on this planet agrees that warfare is a form of insanity, calling for “treatment” forthwith. What is taking place in Ukraine is bat-shit-crazy.
If we as a species, if the planet is to survive — we must dial back this habit of unleashing our demons in the form of war.
Remember that World War I was not called World War I at the time. In 1919 it was referred to as “The War to End All Wars” because of the horrendous brutality and extensive loss of life. Clearly even that did not cease our self-destructive tendencies. I doubt if this current conflict will either. It is a very sad commentary on the human condition. I wish I could give you a better response.
Your point is a reminder that resolve to end war lasts until as the generation so inclined, begins to pass on. I conclude that the work to live without war must be pursued generation to generation, to avoid becoming one of many will-o-wisp movements that soon disappear.
Not sure if the word “generational” fits here. The rise of Hitler that precipitated WWII began less than 12 years after the War to End All Wars. The Korean War began six years after VJ Day. The Vietnam conflict has its roots in the desire of Ho Chi Minh to expel the French in 1955. And on and on. Many WWI vets also fought in WWII and so on.
All good points.
Some have said that WWI was never concluded, that WWII was the German response to the inhumane surrender conditions imposed by the victors of WWI.
Korea was a conflict that the US did not initiate.
The devil is in the details. And this time, the phrase is meant literally.