A Letter to High School Teachers
And Americans… My God, Please Stop These Wars.
“The Nazis entered this war under the rather childish delusion that they were going to bomb everyone else, and nobody was going to bomb them. At Rotterdam, London, Warsaw, and half a hundred other places, they put their rather naive theory into operation. They sowed the wind, and now they are going to reap the whirlwind.”
– British Air Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris
I ask you for a moment to close your eyes and return in time to your last graduation ceremony. Early June your students sitting in neat columns, perfect rows. The sun shining down on their caps and gowns, the smiling faces of the families in the crowd. Their faces youth filled and excited for the adventure of life ahead of them. The majors they’ve shined their fledgling intellectual flashlights on and chosen as a path forward for success. Some more bright than others. Some brilliant, shining to the world the beauty of the hard work you and your peers have poured into them, our nations’ greatest asset.
Some of them, their brilliance has been just waiting under the surface to escape the social shackles that have kept them small and shadowed. Think about the ones that if given the chance, will cure the cancer that took your mother too soon. The ones that with just the right guidance and a little bit of luck, may one day call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home. Think about the shy ones, just waiting for a place to belong and the ones that will be masters of working with their hands. All brilliant and shining in their own special way. All just waiting for their lives to begin.
Now repeat for the last three years. Take in all of that potential, all of that opportunity for a better world crafted by the minds you’ve molded, the hands you’ve taught. I want you to specifically focus your attention on the boys in those chairs, just barely able to shave. Their faces, notice their eyes bright and kind, their smiles grinning wide. Clean and smelling perfumed like whatever aerosolized canned shit they’re spraying on themselves now. A picture of the infinite boundless energy of youth primed to take part in this great human experiment in self-governance.
Now imagine those boys, the tall ones, the short ones, the strong and the meek. The ones too shy to ever have a date to a dance. Imagine those faces, a window to their soul… broken and filthy. Their eyes hollowed out with a thousand yard stare. Too much I’ve seen that I’ll never forget, those eyes silently speak. Their cheeks sunken in from a lack of calories, their noses as broken as their souls. Those pristine faces scarred by shrapnel and infection, covered in mud, the dried dirt caked into the far too premature stress wrinkles. Their clothes, filthy uniforms, more mud colored than camouflage, torn and tattered. The knees and crotches of their pants torn out, bloody bandages over wounds that will never truly heal. The lasting damage a moral injury marked on their soul that will make itself known in the stress filled moments in their lives. They lash out at those they love because “You could never get it! You could never understand what it was like over there!” they’ll scream as their hearts race and they hold back tears. In thirty years those tears will flow in rivers when those moments creep back into in their lives. They’ll break down at weddings in sobbing tears, their brothers in arms holding them because only they truly understand what it was like over there. Imagine those eyes in the dark of night, wide awake, the nightmares worse than being exhausted. “I’d rather not sleep than go back there in my dreams.”
The bottle of whiskey, an American tradition, makes the nights manageable and days barely bearable. Shaking and scared with a pistol in their hand, drunk and wanting to die, too afraid to pull the trigger because what if hell is real? But maybe it’s better than here? They’ll ask themselves. A lake of fire is more preferable than the hell of seeing your friends die night after night in your dreams.
This is war. This is the awful reality of the most human of actions. To become an animal, to live as an animal, all the trappings of humanity removed from the soul. Just Man, the animal covered in mud and filth, taking life as it comes. “Better that mother fucker than me,” they’ll think to themselves as they watch a boy from the other side a bit younger than them expire. Maybe they rifle through his pockets and find a picture of him in his mothers’ arms. Unintelligible foreign letters tell of a mother’s love for her baby boy, wishing him safe passage home. These words, unrecognizable to the eyes now reading it, but the message is clear in the depths of your proud graduates’ soul. “That could’ve been me, that could’ve been me.” His eyes will well up with tears, his jaw will quiver, his body will shake, his heart will die a little bit more, his soul will sink deeper into the depths of this hell as he wishes upon any listening star to hug his mother once more. Thats all I ever wanted over there, to hug my mother once more. “That could’ve been me, that could’ve been me,”will run through his mind. As his brothers arrive, he’ll wipe away the tears and bury that hurt, that pain, that sorrow deep down in a box at the bottom of his soul. This isn’t a place for the weak. They’ll all light a cigarette, most will throw in a chew, anything to help calm the nerves. One will try to crack a joke and give the dead a smoke, anything to break the miserable tension, some will laugh, and all will acknowledge the business of the day is killing.
And that’s something you could never understand. You didn’t teach them this, you couldn’t comprehend the abattoir of death our politicians threw them into. How could you? You didn’t go fight. That wasn’t for you. I did, I asked to join the Infantry and be sent into combat. While you studied education, I studied war first hand, all of its terrible awful glory. I know more about this subject than you. You guided them as best you could. You didn’t take the veteran teacher seriously when he warned you about this, only, he knows more about this subject than you. He’s the one who you all agreed in the teachers’ lounge had seen too much. And yet here they’ll be, the pride of your efforts, years of graduating classes stabbing men to death, shooting them at close range, blowing human beings into parts and pieces. The worst parts of war movies, the brutal video games you think are harmless, all for our boys to experience first hand in the most vivid of ways and all before they turn twenty-one. These boys will move from nightmare to nightmare until they’re killed, grievously wounded, or lucky enough to get sent home with a million dollar wound, or missing limbs. And all of this before they turn twenty-one. This is war. It’s brutal, it’s awful, it steals your soul. And it’s not for the weak. It doesn’t matter that little Johnny is a sweet-hearted, kind kid who wouldn’t hurt a soul. It’ll make him a monster and an animal. He’ll kill, he’ll destroy, he’ll burn villages because we asked him to. We sent him here. Our government decided that The Donbas region, Israel, Taiwan, regime change in Iran or Russia was worth it, was worth his life, was worth his soul. All of this before he turns twenty-one.
Now I want you to picture Hamburg in ’43, Dresden and Tokyo in ’45 the sickening atomic horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Cities bombed and burned into oblivion, devoid of people, entirely lacking life. Once bustling streets filled with beautiful buildings turned to rubble. If this war continues on its path you can replace those names with New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Austin and Seattle. We will be forced to confront the childish notion that we have held for decades, That we could bomb everyone else and nobody was going to bomb us. For decades we have sown the wind across the world with our actions and our support, our drone bombings and clandestine operations and I fear that one day we shall also reap the whirlwind. This time the whirlwind will come in the form of Thermonuclear fire. They’ll set the world alight and kill us all for the foolish notion of winning a nuclear war. They’ll burn it all down and be pleased with the ashes, at least Putin is out of power. But what comes next for the surviving few? An Earth resembling Hell, the living will envy the dead and the dead will pity the living. Please God don’t bring these wars home.
I’ll never tell you who to vote for, it goes against all the principles of human liberty I stand for. But I’ll tell you what it’s like to live in hell. To become an animal, perfectly ok with brutality and violence. I’ll tell you what it’s like to hear your friends dying, to see coffins draped in your nations flag, bearing your brothers’ bodies home. Because it’s hell, it’s hell on earth. And I wish it would stop. My God, please stop these wars. I’ll never tell you who to vote for, but who is asking to stop these wars? My God, please vote for them, vote for the party Red, Blue, Purple, or Green, who cares what they call themselves, just vote to stop these wars. I heard a Senator say “We’re killing Russians and it’s the best money we’ve ever spent.” It broke my heart. Well Senator Graham won’t be the one shooting Russian boys in the face, stabbing a bayonet into their belly, and screaming as he fights them hand to hand moving from house to house or trench line to trench line. But he’ll send your sons, your daughters, your students and more. When this war breaks out, they’ll draft your kids then they’ll hide their children away in cushy jobs in a Defense Department office, as your students get torn to shreds. My God, who’s asking to stop these wars?
Now ask yourself, what if by some fate of chance, you woke up tomorrow and inhabited the body of a Russian or Ukrainian school teacher… would this message be more meaningful? Would it be more real if all those boys were actually dead, dying, and trapped in trenches? Those boys dying in those fields, burning alive in those tanks and trucks, they have mothers and fathers, families and children. Their lives matter just as much as your precious students’ lives. Please, for God’s sake, vote to end these wars. Please God don’t send them there.
I’m writing this to you, the reader, because maybe I’ve seen too much. Maybe I know what those awful moments feel like, maybe I know what it’s like to stare at the enemies’ dead and not feel a twitch in my heart or soul. To be cold, cold as ice on brutally hot day. To not care about life or death, brutality or violence. Maybe I didn’t listen in class and maybe I didn’t pay attention enough, but I know one thing. War, its terrible its brutal its awful. And it has to stop. I know more about this subject than you. You could never get it, you could never understand what it’s like over there…
Please God, don’t send them there. Please God don’t bring it here.
Adam Zaffuto
Sgt. United States Army Infantry
1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division
Iraq, Afghanistan