Editorial - Victims of war

Sydney
6 April 2003

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Catholic Weekly takes a holiday over Easter

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A voice for the disabled

Faith centre moves

Younger set is 50

Fr Chris is guest

Ecumenical Stations of the Cross in wetlands

US move welcomed on partial birth abortion

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Editorial - Victims of war

Letters - Ash Wednesday

Conversation - Fr Patrick Byrne, Rome-based head of Children’s Mission: Big project or small, ‘it must be for kids’

Voice of Youth - Renaissance of thinking about the Middle Ages

Celebrate Love? Live it to the ‘max’

Heading off conflict before it hits crisis point

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300 at social justice forum

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Editorial - Victims of war

The battered brown shoe on the foot of a dead Iraqi soldier emblazoned across the newspaper page said it all: This is war.

The soldier, identified only by his pathetic shoe, half off his foot, and grubby grey sock, had not had any proper army boots. Pity this poorest of soldiers.

The image was reminiscent of another war more than 20 years ago, the Falklands War, when British troops, coming across the enemy on that British island colony in the South Atlantic, about 400km off the Argentine coast, found many of them to be no more than boys and so poor they wore neither boots nor shoes. Some were no more than 12 years old.

The soldiers presently fighting in Iraq are, thankfully, somewhat older than this, but still too young to die for what can only be seen as a failure - a failure of negotiation, a failure to stay the diplomatic course.

Many Catholics and others are against this war, but, now that Australian troops are involved and fighting in the Gulf, we also need to think about their need for support from those at home.

If one accepts there is a need for an Australian Defence Force, one must also accept that Australian soldiers do not have a choice about whether to fight or not when their political masters choose to send them to war.

There are fears that the war in Iraq is shaping up to be a similar political disaster to the Vietnam War. Australian soldiers fought in that war, too, and paid an extra price. Some, when they came home, were shocked to find that, unlike their predecessors who fought in World War II and were welcomed home with literally open arms, they were objects of some civilian censure instead.

But they were not different men to those earlier veterans, just a younger generation who found themselves fighting a less popular war.

Most of them had not even chosen the path to war, but had been conscripted. There are no Australian conscripts involved in this war.

If we do accept the need for a standing army - and most people do - we must also accept that members of our Army, Navy and Air Force have been sent to war and we need to support them.

They are men and women on the frontline and facing possible death. They, as well as the Iraqi soldiers, deserve our compassion and prayer.

Soldiers can be as much victims of war as civilians, especially when they are engaged in an unpopular war.