The War On Terror Is Older Than We Think

'Night and Fog' is a thirty minute
documentary film released in 1956
on the horrors of the Nazi death camps.
It was made by Alain Resnais.

It is a film that was much admired
in it's time, the style of it
has been much copied since.

I have seen it, twice.

Every time you see news footage
of natural disasters and wars
in high density urban settings,
where the camera lingers
over where life is no longer present
those images copy the images
of Auschwitz and Mejdanek
that Alain Resnais filmed.

But I feel appalled that never delved
into the origins of the film's title.

It was the title of the 1941 Nazi policy
which was the original 'War on Terror'.
The forced removal of political opponents
who when they were arrested lost all recourse
to the due process in law that they had before
under the Geneva Convention, as the Nazi State,
prosecuted their war the length and breadth of Europe.

The Recipe For War

Take a region with several weak governments,
who are covertly co-dependent on each other.
Add to it a strong international armaments industry,
and out all of the above form several rebel factions
who consistently disagree with one other.
Blend so they constantly catch against each others
local values, in a self-tightening Gordian knot.
Finally spice it up with some late
and fatally weak shuffle diplomacy.
Then wait for the inevitable natural disaster
where the weakest die and next weakest
flee as refugees across the nearest border.

Apply The Red Cross,  Doctors Without Borders
and other charities as sticking plasters
over the whole sorry mess and make promises
/pledge lots of money. But take no further action.

Putting The 'War' Into 'Awareness'

In Pakistan Afghanistan and Iraq
do they wonder where their country went,

in the target-rich environment?
When before the faith and the land
was simply what they had?

Where once their silence
for their being the sites of proxy wars worked for them
now there are only wails of grief
as what was once sent as relief 
turns to acts of torture.