I was a crew chief on Blackhawks, in an air assault company. Our job was to fly the infantry troops around and put them where they needed to be. A lot of the time, we would fly through the hills north of [Camp] Bondsteel. When we went that way, we usually flew over a mass grave. One morning, Serb gunmen showed up in a little Albanian village in the hills. They drove everyone out of their homes, forced them to dig their own graves, and then murdered them. Men, women and children. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, grandparents.
There was a little memorial with flowers.
Whenever someone starts talking about maybe voting is useless and perhaps other means are necessary to take back our country, I think of Kosovo. That EXACT rhetoric was part and parcel with the disintegration of the Balkans. The rhetoric I see people casually bandying about, we need to confront them everywhere and they deserve no peace, this is the rhetoric and the justification the Serbs used on their way to killing a quarter of a million people in the Balkans. Their former neighbors; often literally.
It’s worth considering whether all those who killed people in Kosovo started with killing in mind, or were they merely trying to right the wrongs that the other side had perpetrated against them? Civilization is a millimeters thin veneer on top an ocean of violence a billion years of evolution deep. If you think it’s acceptable to use violence for political gain, or if you fantasize for revolution, you’re a monster.
Revolution is not what you think it is. Revolution is civil war. Civil war is driving your neighbors from their homes and forcing them to dig their own graves. It is leaving your grandmother behind because she cannot move fast enough to escape the gunmen; and they won’t stop. Yes, there are monsters in places of power, but you are not absolved of your obligations to humanity because of it. That others have foresworn theirs is no excuse. You fetishize misery you cannot fathom. You are in good company, we are all monsters in civilized clothes; do not be insulted or ashamed.
Endeavor to be more.
Again.
Please.
John Chmelir (@JohnChmelir), Twitter (part of a 20-tweet thread), 2018-10-20.
April 4, 2021
QotD: Revolution and civil war
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