Friendly Fire & Collateral Damage

"Friendly Fire" is a euphemism & a metaphor for firing from your own side as opposed to the enemy. It is attributed to the"Fog of War," the confusion inherent in warfare. People who fight wars are good at euphemisms & metaphors. "Collateral Damage" is the unintentional deaths and injuries of people, overwhelmingly women & children, who are not soldiers, and damage that is caused to their homes, hospitals, schools, etc. How you can call it unintentional when we have smart weapons systems & satellite GPS guidance to target precisely where the bombs & rockets fall I really don't know.

Yesterday 3 Israeli hostages were "mistakenly" killed by Israeli soldiers. How can you mistakenly kill people holding a white flag? How can unarmed people be a threat? They weren't wearing shirts so weren't suicide bombers. One of the men had long ginger hair & blue eyes. not your average Arab. I imagine many of the Israeli soldiers in Gaza are young & may be anxious & need to react to threat quickly, but this just shows how futile war is.

The consensus of everyone who understands the history of war seems to be that all wars eventually can only be fixed by negotiating directly round a table. Armistices, surrenders, and ceasefires have interrupted combat in varying ways. They silence weapons but also maintain the state of war, which ends only with a peace treaty.

According to the Chopra Foundation there are 10 ways to resolve conflicts & end wars;-

1. De-escalate the concept of enemy. An enemy can be reframed, in progressive order, as an adversary, competitor, partner, teacher, and finally your equal.

2. Treat the other side with respect. Otherwise you lose them before you start.

3. Recognize that there is the perception of injustice on both sides. This is a point of agreement adversaries can join in.

4. Be prepared to forgive and ask for forgiveness. Here forgiveness means letting go of your desire for retribution and revenge. This is an act of true courage. Even if you believe that the other side doesn’t deserve forgiveness, you deserve peace.

5. Refrain from belligerence. It will be taken as bullying and arouses renewed antagonism.

6. Use emotional intelligence, which means understanding the other side’s feelings, giving them value, and making them equal to your feelings.

7. Reach out to understand the other side’s values, both personal and cultural. The fog of war descends when two adversaries know nothing about one another. The result is a war based on projections and prejudice. The goal is mutual acceptance. At the deepest level we all want the same things.

8. Refrain from ideological rhetoric over politics and religion.

9. Recognize that there is fear on both sides. Don’t be afraid to express your anxieties and to ask the other side what they are afraid of.

10. Do not insist on being right and proving the other side wrong. Give up the need to be right allows you to focus on what you actually want.

 

It isn't simple, but it makes perfect sense. Any thinking person knows that it is true. Why is no one capable of doing it in Israel, Gaza, the Left Bank, Russia & Ukraine? Because they are blinded by another euphemism & metaphor - "The Fog of War." They are literally blind to the futility of what they are doing.