12. WAR - THE FAILURE OF RECONCILIATION

(Translated by Dang Linh Chi)

War brings about utmost sufferings to people! The kind of suffering that is absolutely unbearable for mankind is beyond description, because war can result in absolute suffering which is death. Collective graves! The most brutal scenes of torture and exile of humans! And there are countless casualties who still live but in a persistent vegetative state. There is a story about a wounded soldier who had to cut off all his limbs. He wrote to his parents: - I am still alive but I have lost one hand! - It's good that you are still alive, just go home with us! But then he replied: - I'm afraid that you will have to nurture me without receiving anything in return, because I have just had my leg amputated. - It’s alright, just go home now!

But by the time he wrote and said he had both his two hands and two feet cut off, only a lump of meat was left… there was no reply from his parents. This story is not to condemn his parents’ love, but to discuss another aspect of love: no matter how kind-hearted a person is, tolerance has its limits. Let’s recall a more classic story in the Gospel. Just before Jesus was arrested, Peter even said: “I will stand by your side till the end.” But Jesus told him: "Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times." And it turned out true, when Jesus was arrested, a few people pointed at Peter and said “This is also a member of Jesus' group” and Peter denied that he was not, and he repeated it three times, and by that time, the cock started to crow, he immediately remembered what Jesus had told home and burst into tears.

The story of the wounded soldier and Saint Peter tells us one thing: man is fragile cannot have the will of endless love to overcome the fear of death. The parents of the wounded soldier did not dare to accept the child who was no longer a human because all his limbs had been cut off. And Peter, who was an apostle and therefore considered a man with a greater sense of commitment, was still afraid of being arrested or tortured and denied his God three times.

Yet, war always pushes people to the limit of death! And yet, it left its enduring consequences which were hatred and envy. After World War II, for example, any soldier who returned with a German wife would be alienated, discriminated against, and hated, because people thought that the soldier married a wife who was the enemy.

War is disgustingly destructive! And how destructive war can be? Let’s imagine an aircraft which costs millions of dollars, installed by many skilled workers for a year, but to destroy it, we just throw in it a tiny match which costs less than a penny. Or a building built in half a century that only takes a few minutes to demolish with an explosive charge. Many experts calculate that a year of war consumes about 30 years of production and construction. But it is still an optimistic figure, there are many other calculations that the war can destroy hundreds of years of human construction. Let’s imagine and compare, just a tiny match burns a whole street or a mine is thrown right into the information server, how much damage can it cause?

Nobody wants to die from bombs or toxic chemicals! Nobody wants to be imprisoned or tortured! Nobody wants to slowly die from starvation because the fields have turned into battlegrounds! Therefore, nobody wants war! Before war broke out, people always tried to reconcile and promote diplomatic measures so as not to push the two sides onto the battlefield. Although people have tried to seek reconciliation, why does war still break out and seem to be unstoppable?

The philosopher Aristotle said: War breaks out because it is the hunting instinct of humans. What a profound explanation that lies in humanity's nature! What do humans hunt for? To earn food? To get fur for coats! To get leather for shoes! To get horns to make medicine and wine! In short, hunting gives people many things: nutritious food, fur coats, leather shoes… For example, recently, a queen attended a banquet in a gown made of animal furs and then was ostracized by the public, because that's how she encouraged wildlife hunting. There is a painful tragedy, humans hunting animals has already brought countless benefits, but humans hunting each other even makes greater profits. Hunting animals only brings meat and skin but hunting humans bring even more booty: the enemy’s widows become their sex slaves, men became their slaves like in the Auschwitz concentration camp of Nazi Germany, or borders and territories, ports and cities of the enemy became their own properties…

Writer Victor Hugo once described the abundance of war in “Les Misérables.” When The Battle of Waterloo ended and dead warriors were all over the valleys and the fields. It was a dreary loss. But then there was a happy Theresa crawling on the corpses to collect watches, purses, and other precious things on the bodies. If it was only a pasture to raise horses, or a rice field to harvest, how could the grass and paddy fields grow into wallets full of money or a pocket watch or a wedding ring? It was clear that war was a loss to the dead warriors and their family members, but to Theresa or many others, war was a great and super-profitable harvest.

Before the war broke out, there were usually two sides: the warmonger and the pacifist. The pacifist side did not want their people to fall into a state of death and dispersal so they tried their best to prevent war. On the contrary, the warmonger side intentionally pushed the whole nation into the war because according to them, the war brought benefits to the people: the territories, the market, the ultimate glory of victory, or the preservation and enhancement of the so-called honor. But there is one thing that this side never publicly announced: the interests of their own faction and clan.

War in most cases is the export of contradiction to the outside. When a country is in a conflict and on the verge of collapsing, it tries to export its conflict to other nations by waging a war of aggression. When the war broke out, all the human resources, financial resources poured into the frontline and so did all national concerns; therefore, people forgot all the internal conflicts. And then whether the war ended in victory or draw, the internal conflict had passed or had been replaced by the resolution of the external issues, and the warlord then got all the benefits of maintaining his power.

Why did the failure of reconciliation push many nations and the world into war? Because, as we have discussed, the hardest thing for humans to overcome is the greedy nature. If an individual just pursues his selfish desires, he will do harm to others. And if a group of people or a nation just wants to benefit themselves, they will not come to the table of reconciliation with a peaceful mind and want both sides to benefit, but instead with the attitude of superiority and want to get the better of the reconciliation. And that is the smouldering cause of every failed reconciliation which will give rise to the outbreak of war.

A new era has come with the invention of many deadliest weapons for mass murder so it will be even more dangerous if people do not know how to reconcile to prevent war. The motto of reconciliation in this new era is “win - win” which means both sides will win or benefit. Hopefully, we should not come to the table of reconciliation with a hunting instinct because such an attitude is already obsolete, but instead, we should come to the table of reconciliation with a willing goodwill so that both sides, both nations and ideologies can coexist in peace. Paul Duc - 29/5/2015

12. CHIẾN TRANH -SỰ THẤT BẠI CỦA HOÀ GIẢI

(Paul Nguyễn Hoàng Đức)

Chiến tranh đem lại những đau khổ tột cùng cho con người! Thứ đau khổ bắt con người cam chịu tuyệt đối không còn cách nào cưỡng nổi, không có bút nào tả xiết, bởi vì chiến tranh đem lại đau khổ tuyệt đối là cái chết! Những hố chôn tập thể! Những cảnh tù đày tra tấn hành hạ con người xuống cấp phẩm giá một cách dã man nhất! Và còn có vô vàn người thương vong sống không bằng chết. Có một câu chuyện về một người lính bị thương phải cắt đi toàn chi thể rằng. Anh gửi thư cho bố mẹ : - Con còn sống, nhưng bị cưa mất một tay rồi! - Con còn sống là tốt rồi, hãy về ngay với bố mẹ! Nhưng rồi anh lại viết:

-Con sợ bố mẹ phải nuôi báo cô con, vì con không chỉ mất một tay mà còn vừa bị cưa một chân nữa. -Không sao, con hãy về ngay! Nhưng đến khi anh viết anh bị cưa cả hai tay và hai chân, chỉ còn một cục thịt thu lu… thì không thấy bố mẹ viết thư trả lời nữa. Câu chuyện này không phải nhằm cáo buộc tình yêu của bố mẹ anh lính, mà để nói về một khía cạnh khác rằng: dù người ta có tốt đến đâu, thì tình yêu cũng chỉ có một sức chịu đựng nhât định nào đó. Chúng ta hãy nhớ đến một câu chuyện kinh điển hơn ở trong Kinh Phúc Âm. Ngay trước khi Chúa Jesus bị bắt, ông Phê-rô còn nói “con sẽ theo thầy đến cùng”. Nhưng Chúa Jesus đã bảo với ông: “Trước khi gà gáy, con sẽ chối ta ba lần”. Sự việc quả đúng như vậy, khi Chúa Jesus bị bắt, có vài người đã chỉ vào ông Phê-rô bảo “đây cũng là người thuộc nhóm của ông Jesus”, ông Phê-rô liền chối không phải tôi, và ông đã chối liền ba lần, đúng lúc đó gà gáy sáng, ông liền nhớ lời Chúa Jesus bảo mà khóc rống lên.

Câu chuyện của người thương binh và ông Phê-rô cho chúng ta biết một điều: con người là mỏng giòn yếu ớt, người ta không thể có nổi nghị lực tình yêu vô tận để vượt qua lằn gianh của cái chết. Bố mẹ của người thương binh đã không dám nhận đứa con không còn là người do bị cắt nát tứ bề trở về. Và ông Phê-rô một tông đồ, được xem là một con người có nhiều phẩm chất dấn thân cao cả hơn người, vậy mà ông còn hoảng sợ chối Chúa đến ba lần khi thấy nguy cơ bị bắt giam hay hành hạ…

Vậy mà chiến tranh luôn đẩy con người qua giới hạn tột cùng là cái chết! Chưa hết nó còn để lại những di chứng hằn thù, đố kỵ, ghen ghét dằng dai mãi không thôi. Sau Đại chiến thế giới hai chẳng hạn, bất cứ anh lính nào trở về mà mang theo một người vợ Đức thì đều bị người ta xa lánh, kỳ thị, và khinh ghét, bởi họ nghĩ rằng: anh lính đã cưới một cô vợ thuộc dân tộc của kẻ thù…

Chiến tranh tàn phá ghê tởm thật kinh khủng! Mức độ của nó thế nào? Chúng ta thử hình dung, một chiếc phi cơ hàng trăm triệu đô la, được nhiều công nhân tay nghề cao lắp đặt trong cả năm trời, nhưng để phá hủy nó người ta chỉ cần ném vào trong nó một que diêm chưa đến một xu. Hay một tòa nhà xây trong nửa thế kỷ mà người ta chỉ cần vài phút để giật đổ nó với một gói bộc phá. Nhiều chuyên gia tính toán, một năm chiến tranh tiêu tốn khoảng 30 năm sản xuât, kiến thiết và xây dựng. Nhưng đó vẫn là con số lạc quan, có nhiều tính toán khác cho rằng, chiến tranh ngốn trọn hàng trăm năm xây dựng của con người. Chúng ta thử tưởng tượng và so sánh, trong trường hợp một que diêm đốt cháy cả dãy phố hay giờ đây một quả mìn lẳng vào giữa hệ thống cấp phát máy chủ thông tin thử hỏi thiệt hại là bao nhiêu lần???

Không ai muốn chết vì bom đạn hay chất độc hóa học cả! Cũng chẳng ai muốn bị tù đầy tra tấn! Cũng không ai muốn bị chết từ từ vì bị đói khát do những cánh đồng đã biến thành trận địa! Vì thế không ai muốn chiến tranh cả! Trước chiến tranh bao giờ người ta cũng tìm cách hòa giải và xúc tiến những biện pháp ngoại giao để không đẩy hai bên vào cuộc chiến một mất một còn! Dù người ta đã từng nỗ lực tìm kiếm sự hòa giải nhưng chiến tranh vẫn cứ xảy ra dường như không cách nào ngăn được trên mặt đất này?

Triết gia Aristote cho rằng: chiến tranh xảy ra vì đó là bản năng săn bắn của con người. Thật là một lý giải sâu xa nằm sâu trong bản tính của nhân loại. Con người săn bắn để làm gì? Để kiếm thực phẩm? chưa hêt! Để kiếm lông may áo! Chưa đủ, để kiếm da đóng giầy? Vẫn còn, để kiếm sừng làm thuốc, hay ngẩu pín ngâm rượu… Nghĩa là, đi săn đem lại cho người ta nhiều thứ, nào thực phẩm giầu dinh dưỡng, nào áo choàng lông thú, nào giầy da… Mới đây, chẳng hạn một bà hoàng nước kia mặc áo lông thú diện trong yến tiệc đã bị công chúng tẩy chay, vì như vậy là cách mà bà ta cổ xúy cho việc săn bắt động vật hoang dã. Có một bị kịch đau đớn thay, đi săn thú hoang đã vậy, nhưng khi con người đi săn con người mới thực sự thu về những khoản lợi kếch sù. Đi săn thú thì chỉ thu được thịt và da, nhưng săn người thu được vô vàn chiến lợi phẩm, những người đàn bà góa của đối phương trở thành nô lệ tình dục cho mình, đàn ông trở thành nô lệ, được khai thác đến tận chân răng như ở trại Auschwitz của Đức Quốc xã, rồi còn thu được cả những biên giới và lãnh thổ, bến cảng và thành phố…

Văn hào Victor Hugo đã từng miêu tả sự bội thu của chiến tranh trong tác phẩm “Những người khốn khổ”. Khi trận Waterloo kết thúc với những chiến binh chết như rạ lấp đầy cả thung lũng và những cánh đồng. Đó là một mất mát thê lương. Nhưng người ta thấy một Tê-nác-điê hoan hỉ đang bò trên những xác chết để lượm lặt đồng hồ, ví, và những gì quí báu dính trên người. Trời ơi, nếu đó là cánh đồng cỏ để nuôi ngựa, hay đồng lúa để gặt hái, thì cách gì những lượm cỏ hay lúa có thể mọc thành những chiếc ví đầy tiền hay một chiếc đồng hồ quả quít hoặc một chiếc nhẫn cưới đây? Rõ ràng chiến tranh với các chiến binh tử trận và người nhà của họ là một mất mát, nhưng với Tê-nác-điê hay nhiều kẻ khác, chiến tranh là những vụ đại thu hoạch, một vụ gặt siêu lợi nhuận trên những cái xác.

Trước chiến tranh xảy ra, thường có hai phe : chủ chiến và chủ hòa. Phe chủ hòa không muốn dân tộc rơi vào cảnh binh đao khói lửa chết chóc và ly tán, nên ra sức ngăn cản bánh xe của chiến tranh, Trái lại, phe chủ chiến cố tình dồn đẩy cả dân tộc vào cuộc chiến vì theo họ, cuộc chiến đem lại lợi ích cho dân tộc, nào các vùng đất lãnh thổ, nào thị trường mở ra, nào đối phương khuất phục, nào vinh quang tột cùng của chiến thắng, nào cái gọi là danh dự sẽ dược bảo toàn và nâng cao. Nhưng có một điều phe chủ chiến không bao giờ nói ra, đó là lợi ích cho gia tộc, bè phái, hay cá nhân họ.

Chiến tranh rất nhiều khi đó là sự xuất cảng mâu thuẫn ra bên ngoài. Khi một quốc gia lục đục, mâu thuẫn, cạnh tranh, và đang đổ nát, nó tìm cách xuất khẩu mâu thuẫn ra ngoài bằng cách lấy cớ tiến hành một cuộc chiến xâm lăng nào đó. Khi chiến tranh xảy ra, mọi nhân lực, tài lực đổ dồn cho tiền tuyến, mọi mối ưu tư của quốc gia cũng dồn vào đấy, và thế là người ta quên đi những mâu thuẫn trong nội bộ. Rồi cuộc chiến có thắng hay hòa, hoặc không ra hòa không ra thắng, thì biến cố nội bộ cũng đã trôi qua hoặc được thay thế bằng những giải quyết hiện tượng bên ngoài, kẻ chủ chiến liền sở đắc những lợi ích về duy trì quyền lực của mình.

Tại sao sự hòa giải lại thất bại đẩy nhiều dân tộc hay thế giới bước vào chiến tranh? Bởi vì, như chúng ta đã bàn, cái khó vượt qua nhất của con người là bản năng hám lợi. Con người cá nhân nếu chỉ theo đuổi dục vọng ích kỷ cho mình sẽ làm hại người khác. Còn một nhóm người hay dân tộc nào đó tìm cách vụ lợi cho mình, họ sẽ không đến bàn hòa giải bằng tâm hồn hòa bình hai bên đều có lợi, mà đến bàn hòa giải với thái độ cửa trên muốn hòa đàn trên thế thắng để được ưu tiên. Thì đó chính là nguyên nhân âm ỉ của mọi cuộc hòa giải thất bại sẽ mở cửa cho chiến tranh khai hỏa.

Thời đại mới với những vũ khí tối tân giết người hàng loạt được sáng chế, càng nguy hiểm nếu con người không biết hòa giải để dừng bước trước mọi cuộc chiến tranh. Phương châm hòa giải của thời đại mới là win – win, tức cả hai đều thắng hay đều có lợi. Mong rằng, chúng ta không nên bước đến bàn hòa giải bằng bản năng săn mồi, thái độ đó đã cổ lỗ lắm rồi, mà chúng ta hãy cùng bước tới bàn hòa giải bằng một thiện chí tự giác, để cả hai phía, hai dân tộc, hai tư tưởng tồn tại được sống trong bình an. Paul Đức 29/5/2015

Paul Nguyễn Hoàng Đức

12. WAR - THE FAILURE OF RECONCILIATION

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