WARRIORS ARE NOT A
GAME INVENTED BY
SCHOOL TEACHERS & PLAYED BY
CHILDREN
The warrior is a veteran, a man who was trained to kill,
a man who has taken the life of another human being.
Children can not learn about warriors and killing on the basketball
court or the football field. Killing is the warrior's job. The warrior
is first stripped of the belief that life is too sacred to erase;
he is then taught the details of exactly how to kill people.
He is forced to practice it over and over and over and over until
it is automatic, regardless of how scared he may be. Even if his
heart is pounding or if he is scared senseless, the warrior can
still load, fire, and erase the life of the human being identified
as the enemy. He kills, if not for himself, for the man next to
him—a trained killer like him—and for the society that
has required his service as a killer.
Everyone who is trained to kill has lost something of himself and
must find a way to control the imbalance that results. The military
calls that control "self-discipline." Without it we would
have millions of Timothy McVeigh's eliminating their perceived enemies
with the lethal skills that were given to them with the approval
of the rest of society.
We demand the warrior be disciplined and control himself but when
he returns we treat him terribly. We turn him into a "token
of luck" for our entertainment and leisure time. He becomes
our half-time clown.
For those who have taken a life in a war and dealt with death,
this discipline is a life-long struggle that is never truly resolved.
They see the dead and relive the killings in their dreams. The soldier
who kills another soldier comes home and one day realizes that there
is a family somewhere in the world—in its own home—lacking
a cherished family member. There are children who no longer have
a father or a brother—women without their husbands with whom
they dreamt of growing old.
That soldier who took a life may look at his own child when he
gets home, perhaps even years later, hug that child, and think about
another child whose daddy he killed. How easy it would be for his
child to be the fatherless one! That soldier trying to become a
human being again will not know what to say to anyone on this earth
about this feeling. He will wonder if anybody understands what he
is feeling—if anyone can. He may be able to share this feeling
only with another veteran, yet feel ashamed at reminding that man
of what he too is struggling to deal with.
Do you think that this soldier, warrior, and veteran, will turn
to the high school or professional sports teams "warriors"
and be able speak to them about what a warrior is? Do you think
they will understand him? They claim to honor him, but how could
they understand if he went to their "warrior" office with
the "warrior" name and logo on the wall and spoke to them
about what a warrior truly is? What would they think if he called
them on the phone and started to talk to them about warriors? Do
they honor the warrior? Would they understand him? I think they
would be scared; later they would laugh him off as a maniac.
How can they possibly understand the warrior who exists only in
their world of make-believe, only as their token of luck, only as
their one-dimensional mascot and cheerleader? The taking of a life
is an extreme measure; it is a hell. It is not a ball game of pretend
"warriors." It is trivialized by playing "warriors"
in a basketball or any ball game. The real warrior is abandoned
into silence. He falls upon the discipline that was inculcated in
him but he falls alone. Many men forever fight this never-resolved
battle.
Teaching young men to play "warrior" in a high school
ball game is a cruel trick on the young man who does not understand
that being a warrior means to be stripped of his own humanity in
order to kill, accept the loss of conscience and morality, and kill
upon command. How does he return to a society that thinks a basketball
"warrior" honors the veteran who has killed in the name
of his nation, his society, his community? How can a veteran find
understanding or acceptance from those who can only pretend to be
what they are not and those who turn him into their token of luck?
Listen to the Vietnam War Veterans; listen to how they were received
when they returned to this country. Society does not know the agent
of death that is a warrior; it does not possess the skills nor the
knowledge to reintegrate these men into society. Society asked him
to kill on its behalf; what can society do to return the warrior
to his rightful place as a caring, compassionate member of a family
and community? Turn him into a mascot? These men need to be brought
back into the Circle of Life.
Do these men become football "warriors" and feel welcomed
and reintegrated into life as it was meant to be lived? Can they
find spiritual peace and understanding from the community as they
watch a high school football game of want-to-be-warriors passing
a ball and knocking each other down?
Who of the high school or the college or professional sports teams
takes the time to listen to the warrior, the veteran they claim
to honor? When does this so-called honor become reality? Or is the
"honor" of becoming a sports team mascot a lie, another
way the warrior is abandoned for doing exactly what society demanded
he do yet unable to live up to the myth society has created about
him? He will be silent and he will protect society's innocent by
allowing society to mock him, regardless of the pain it brings.
When does the high school football "warrior" coach take
his team to the veterans' MIA ceremony or the ceremony of the readings
of the list of Killed In Action? When does he take his players to
a pow wow to see how warriors are truly honored by their communities?
When do the warrior's high school alumni rent a room, invite the
veterans, feed and honor them and listen to their stories of a child
shot by accident or out of fear by the warrior? When do they hear
about arms blown off a man who walked down a road not knowing mines
were there? Who will listen to the warrior's scramble for words
that describe an incoming napalm strike on a village? Who hears
the break in his voice?
Who will sit and listen to the story of a man in a wheelchair who
cannot go up and down his own street because the town doesn't even
care enough to make a sidewalk level and clear for a purple heart
veteran whose legs were blown off? Unable to become a reintegrated
member of the community, he is doomed to the darkness of a house
where no one visits.
This warrior is a hunter with death and blood on his hands and
real horror to relive in his dreams. He is the ignored and too often
the wounded, walking suicide-to-be. He is the man with visions that
he cannot, but wants to, leave behind.
A warrior is not a child with a basketball or a football playing
a game for entertainment in front of cheerleaders and crowds of
parents.
-Matthew Richter
editorial assistance, Alice Huffman
September 28, 2001
