I'm old enough to remember the deadly wars. This is why this is sickening

Most likely it’s the old peacenik in me but I simply cannot celebrate the mass killing and injuring of children, women and men.

Not by any state, regime, army, cause, leader, group or ideology. Not in the name of “freedom”, “liberation”, “god”, “defence”, “civilisation” or “history”.

I am old enough to remember Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Iraq and countless other campaigns of killing.

I have also been around long enough to know that very little positive or long-lasting in terms of peace or planetary well-being resulted from those campaigns.

It’s also probably the Irishness in me that has rejected the assertion that you can bomb, shoot and maim your way to peace. I grew up with sickening doses of them and their lethal consequences, many of which are still with us today.

As sure as night follows day, they inevitably only lead to direct and indirect pain, misery, death and destruction. Even for those planning and executing the killing.

It also comes as no surprise that I have nothing but contempt for those who glorify and celebrate killing (most especially through the blood of others), no matter what real or hypothetical justifications they conjure up to rationalise it (and, inevitably, themselves).

We have become skilled in searching for “their” original sin in order to justify our continuing sins.

The “let’s do it to them before they do it to us” brigade sickens me to the pit of my stomach. Once again, I am reminded of a poster we did at the height of the Irish “Troubles” – “Peace, Everyone is for it. Dying for it. Killing for it”.

Yet again we were brutally reminded of the human consequences of this bloodlust by the February 28th US missile strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab in Iran, killing 175, most of them children. Unavoidable collateral damage they intoned.

This event now joins the litany of war atrocities currently catalogued on a daily basis across the region.

From Moscow to Tehran, from Tel Aviv to Washington, Beirut to Yemen and across whole swathes of the Middle East (and beyond), killing remains big business, in fact mega business. A bonanza of bonanzas – order books are bursting, stocks are soaring and profits are truly mega.

After 10 years of continuous growth, the world’s “defence industry” is now estimated to be worth 3 trillion US dollars and rising.

Despite this, there is no shortage of “experts”, analysts and lobbyists urging (bullying) Europeans into spending even more. Their mantra – we should emulate the GDP percentage arms spend of those masters of war, the Russians, the Americans, the Israelis.

Even bigger bombs, ships and aircraft; more lethal drones and missiles, yet more generals, boots on the ground, more sorties and slaughtering. Then peace will surely follow this time.

Sharpen the lethality of our armaments not that of our diplomacy. Let’s finish this, once and for all, they chant.

That countries should build their own defences appropriate to their own needs and preferences is cast aside in favour of chasing after the agendas and strategies of autocrats, militarists and their apologists is simple madness.

But what is presently on full public display is not just hardcore militarisation but also its accompanying culture. We now have war as “entertainment” videos or as “fun”; analytical reporting as “treason”, openly racist war strategies and the unashamed espousal of assassinations, executions and torture.

On the ground war crimes matched by ideological or mental war crimes. And now, chillingly, we have war as a speculative betting activity.

Autocrats are (and have always been) what they are, autocrats. We know fully what to expect from Putin, Netanyahu, Kim Jong Un, former Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, Trump and their ilk. No one can credibly claim ignorance of them and the results of their crimes.

The regimes and agendas they spawn offer nothing but pain and misery for people and planet.

For the rest of us, a stark question presents itself – what does it mean to be human in these circumstances, what might our duty be? Do we just look away (as many of our leaders have chosen to do on, for example, Israel’s genocide in Gaza) or claim its too complex or difficult to confront?

Should we seek to appease the autocrats, justify or “rationalise” their agendas, do their bidding (Ian Borg springs to mind)?

Or do we alternatively stand alongside leaders such as Pedro Sanchez of Spain and loudly assert No to War and its network of enablers, apologists and militarists. No to its evil and evil doers.

On Palm Sunday, Pope Leo offered some guidance on the matter. He argued that we should reject the praying of those who wage war as their hands are full of blood.

As we mark Eastertime, let us, at least ensure that we do not collude in their bloodlust.