Of Men & Missiles

Thomas Friedman wrote in yesterday's NYTIMES about the micro vs. potatoe-chip difference between Israeli and Hebollah troops. The former were "caught off guard" because they're busy thinking about how to build a better micro-processor while the latter are obsessed with building their Islamic state. This image of bright young men with eager minds huddled around either a mother board or a missile casing almost brought me to tears. One group has the possiblity to make better lives for themselves and their families through work and an economy that allows entrepreneurship; the other seems perhaps less endowed with those creative and imaginative outlets all humans require to rise above limited circumstances. And both are destroying each other in the name of religion, old world rights, territory and some sovereign sense of righteousnes. I look at the pictures of destroyed towns and broken lives, of anguished faces and that heartbreaking photo of a tiny baby buried in rubble with only its mother's hand partially excavated next to it and feel... nothing.

This is very troubling; that I now look at these images of war and devastation and natural disasters around the world and can no longer process the disbelief, the horror, the sadness that I used to. Is it overkill? Have I reached my limit of compassion? Do I not care? Or have I just built a nice protective suit of armor to keep from going under every time it looks like another atrocity is on its way?

When I worked in population education years ago, we used to use El Salvador as an example of a country whose demographics were such that something like 75% of their population was under the age of 20. We warned that unlimited population growth in economies that could not employ their men was a recipie for revolt of some sort or another. The Sandinistas at the time had full coffers of able young bodies for their cause. I see pictures in the news of all these Muslim men around the world, fighting, protesting, mourning, rebuilding, worshipping and these photos do reach out to me, for they represent this incredible need we all have to be necessary, to be heard, to be vital. When war or ideology or inequitable resource allocation gets in the way of a young man's ability to provide for himself or his family, it's always a recipie for trouble, whether it be the Afghani poppy farmer or the homey in south Central Los Angeles. Women seem to weather these times better; they have their familes to care for, their networks of support. It's the men who sit around their hookah pipes, or their cell phones, or cigarettes and grainy TV pictures and try to make some meaning of their lives. This waste of talent breaks my heart; for a life without purpose is one of loss. Of time, of dignity, of essence.

Missiles flying across borders like rocks across a neighbor's fence as men ache for a homeland, a job, a raison d'etre. Their women at home, cobbling together a meal, tending to the children, mending curtains, painting their toe-nails if they dare. When will we all step back a moment and remove our heels from their dugouts? Will it take some nuclear insanity to wake us up? Or are we going to keep lobbing bombs at each other like 3 year olds with their water baloons? When do we turn the war machine into a sewing machine or a laptop or a remote controlled brain surgery suite? When will we allow our men to flourish so that they have more to lose than to gain by destroying their play pens?