Let's dispense with terms like friendship, love, reciprocity, compassion, joy, rhapsody, innocence and all the trust words, and all the beautiful words, all the words of beautiful smells of good cooking and words that conjure hot summers of lassitude and lazy times with nothing to do between jobs or slow sweet words that spread out like honey on a cutting board. . .
Terms of war:
Genocide, siege, war, massacre.
How about bloody hell.
Let's get our terms straight.
War can be a genocide, a siege and a massacre.
A good example is the war on Gaza.
What is the role of hate in war?
What about that word "hate"?
Do you have to hate the country you are attacking?
Or is it enough just to feel a little scared and indifferent toward its people?
Is the attitude: "Let's just get this over with?" sufficient for going into war?
War crimes: atrocities committed by the other side.
The war in Vietnam (my war), was both genocide and a massacre and a suicide..
Euphemisms for wars are: invasion, conflict, military action, crisis,
boots on the ground, military operation, mission.
Incursion is a good euphemism for invasion.
What about karma? (Use it in a sentence.)
What is the karma of being born in a country at war?
Might we expect a delayed karmic shock wave for all the years that the United States bullied the world?
A war chest: a reserve of funds used for fighting a war.
Conflict and mission and objective used in sentences.
The conflict has escalated into all out war.
Has nation X accomplished its mission or objective?
Best euphemisms for siege: containment, blockade.
Popular American euphemism for invasion (borrowed from the British): "Boots on the ground." The term "boots on the ground" means that you have soldiers (wearing boots), in that location involved in an action.
Boots on the ground used in a sentence: "Sir, it's not enough to bomb them. We need . . ."
Best euphemism for famine and starvation caused by war: food scarcity, extreme hunger with widespread malnutrition. (Usually can only be mitigated when the word famine is used and the rest of the world finds out and intervenes.)
Dirty work. Use in a sentence. "The United States has figured out how to get other countries to do her dirty work."
Ceasefire: a temporary suspension of fighting, typically one during which the warring parties try to talk to each other while strategizing 24 / 7 how to best take advantage of any sign of weakness.
Truce: an agreement between enemies or opponents to stop fighting for a certain time.
"The guerrillas called a three-day truce". Etymology of truce: from OE trues from the plural of trewe, signifying two truths, only later on taking on the sense of a pledge or agreement..
Questions for reflection:
How would a tree define war?
How would a cloud define war?
How would a dog, cat, bird define war?
How would a starving child define war?
How would a child who lost both their parents define war?
How would a parent who lost a child define war?
How would a traumatized veteran missing a leg define war?
Origin of "cold war": Bernard Baruch, a multimillionaire financier and advisor to Democratic presidents, is credited with coining the term "Cold War" in a speech to the South Carolina House of Representatives on April 16, 1947.
Can you take the temperature of a war?
More questions for reflection:
Is war like boiling water on a stove or is it like heating water with a microwave?
Microwave: an electromagnetic wave with a wavelength in the range 0.001-0.3 m, shorter than that of a normal radio wave but longer than those of infrared radiation. Microwaves are used in microwave ovens and in various industrial processes.
Answer: A microwave.
". . . the microwave radiation interacts with the dipole (separated positive and negative charge) of the water molecule. The microwaves turn the water molecules back and forth at approximately the frequency of the microwaves, imparting energy to them." Chaotic energy.
Is war chaotic?
Possible response: War flirts with chaos but very rarely does it descend into chaos. If it descends into chaos it becomes something other than war and requires a different terminology.
