Con­front Your Enne­mies, Avoid Them When You Can

The morn­ing I turned 18, I skipped school.

I woke up at 7 am as usual and turned on the radio. I got dressed to the sound of Nir­vana and bitched. A lot. I grabbed my bag, my ID’s and the notice I was send a few months ago and that I had tried to for­get and slammed the door.

I ran down the stairs and lighted up my first cig­a­rette of the day in the street. The morn­ing was cold as I waited for the bus.

My first day in adult­hood and I was going to play with weapons. Fuck.

A few months ago, I had received the dreaded notice. I was called for a day of national ser­vice. No way to escape : the attes­ta­tion I would get at the end of the day would be required every time I’d take an exam (includ­ing my high school exam I was going to take in a few months), reg­is­ter for uni­ver­sity, take my driver’s license etc. Call it an admin­is­tra­tive sanction.

A one year manda­tory mil­i­tary ser­vice for men only since the French Rev­o­lu­tion was the rule. But peace­time mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion has finally been sus­pended in 1996 and was replaced by new com­pul­sory “day of intro­duc­tion to defense and the French armed forces”. It was to be car­ried out by all males and females born in 1983 and after. I was born in early 1983. Unfortunately.

I got off the bus and walked towards the bar­racks. I showed a piece of ID to the orderly who was stand­ing by the huge metal door and he let me in. Behind the doors were about a hun­dred peo­ple, all my age, anx­iously smok­ing cig­a­rettes and mak­ing small talk.

Ten min­utes later, we were all sum­moned by what seem to be a sergeant-major (who had writ­ten his rank on a nametag for dum­mies like me) and sent to var­i­ous build­ing, escorted by a sergeant. First class of the day : the mean­ing and duties of cit­i­zen­ship. Then, a French test to check whether we all can read and write. The sec­ond class of the day intro­duce us to the his­tory of French army and its “suc­cess” : peace­keep­ing, free peo­ple all around the world blah­blah­blah. I closed my eyes and I remem­ber the other side of the story : 1947, Indochina. 1954 to 1962, the bloody Alger­ian war. All the decol­o­niza­tion wars and the French army, try­ing to patch up a empire bound to col­lapse. Repres­sion. Tor­ture. His­tory is some­times hard to watch. But this is how we spend $46,2 bil­lion per year: on guns and badly shaped aircraft-carriers.

After a cou­ple of hours, we were allowed to go out for a smoke. Remem­ber, it’s France : smok­ing is fine. I breathed the cold air and pre­pared myself for the sec­ond part of the day.

But we weren’t to go back inside the build­ing that quickly : first, we had to visit the bar­racks and have “fun” with some weapons. Woohoo, exactly what I felt like doing on a nice day like that. I hold the gun in my hand. Arm con­trol. Non-proliferation. I heard the sergeant speak­ing but his words didn’t make any sense. Once again. His­tory. Six nuclear tests in the South Pacific in 1996. The Rainbow-Warrior bombed. Some­thing didn’t sound right.

Videos, slide films, pam­phlets were danc­ing before my eyes. The day finally ended. We exited the build­ing one by one, stopped at the door by another army offi­cial who was hold­ing a stack of forms. “Wanna come back to learn more ?” “We need peo­ple like you !” “Think about it, school will be fin­ish in a few months, do you want a job right-away ?”. I politely declined. Me, join­ing the army ? Over my dead body.

I wasn’t raised as a patriot. Would I defend my coun­try if needed ? Unlikely. Call me a cow­ard if you want, but I’m still strug­gling with the def­i­n­i­tion of a nation. What would I fight for ? For my loved ones I think. I’d fight against an ide­ol­ogy I truly don’t believe in and if this ide­ol­ogy is threat­en­ing my basic human rights. I’d fight to change the world. But not with weapons. Not this kind, any­way. A war of words, maybe.

Why do we fight today ? Because they attacked us first. Civil war. Bio­log­i­cal war. Because we want to pro­tect our val­ues. Holy war and war gods. Because they have the bomb and they’re not sup­posed to. Pre­ven­tive war, atomic war. Because they tor­ture. War crimes. Because we have weapons to sell. Eco­nomic war. War of attri­tion. Phony war. War games.

The war lords are demand­ing but they call the shots. They know that what’s legit­i­mate today might not be tomor­row. Nonethe­less, casus belli or not, here they come. The colo­nial empires were lost but they stick around. All it takes is pro­pa­ganda after all.

And I see them on CNN, 24/7 cov­er­age. The other side of the food chain. They’re my age and they signed for it. Can­non fod­der sent back home when bro­ken. I feel for them cause it could have been me.

Clean war(s) ? Not quite.

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