Daddy.
For many young men, putting on a soldier’s uniform is a way to escape the past. The military, well aware of this, often incorporates breaking down and erasing the individual into its training, before building up and shaping them anew. Throughout modern wartime history, this has served as a paid sublimation for therapy, designed for the uneducated and the poor.
The uniform is proof of choice made and goal achieved. It serves as warning not to question the wearer’s values or firm character. His solidity is approved by the military. He belongs to them now, for reasons hidden from us and surrounded by an aura of honor.
The reasons for handing over vital control of one’s own life, abandoning free choice and personal influence over life and thoughts, are likely many, but they all share the numbing abandonment of the self. Still, this selling out of individual responsibility is often painted as a heroic sacrifice.
For the young man feeling lost and without direction in life, this is no sacrifice. Finding a place in society can be hard, and living conditions difficult. The strict discipline, rules, and regulations of the military do not cage him, they free him from life’s difficult choices.
As a natural consequence, this “liberation” ritual is then directed outward toward others, which brings a sense of meaning to it all. People of other nations become new targets, as they and their nations will be liberated. The “operations” are described as humane and inclusive. War is never mentioned.
The military is designed as a lifestyle for the working class, and an economic and political tool morally justified by the rich and powerful. The reasons behind our actions might not always be what we think, or as they seem at first glance. Not without reason, the tax records of the rich and the economic funding of political parties are not public documents.
I once heard a theory attempting to explain the savage behavior of soldiers in Gaza, where children were proven to have been deliberately and systematically shot in the head, schools and hospitals turned into main targets, and refugee camps made of tents blown to pieces.
The theory suggests that for Israelis, as the chosen people, this war is preferably regarded as the final one. Consciously or subconsciously, it stems from a need to be hated by the world, leaving everything known behind, like burning the bridges before the fatal but unavoidable step into the abyss.
Some see no end to this “self-defense,” no matter how much time passes or how many innocent civilians die. Retribution has no expiration date, it always tastes best.
I see individuals and a state that have lost something and are searching for something, yet have nowhere to go. Although it is a behavior they would condemn in any other context, they ensure there is no exit path back to humanity.
The bridges burning are their own.