Jeremy Strozer www.jeremystrozer.

com

WAR: Why I Write

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and I learned the same lesson which altered out lives in similar, although individually relevant, ways. FDR was Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the age of 31, under the Administration of President Wilson. He was in this role during U.S. involvement in World War I. During his tenure in this role he took a trip to the Western Front in France, where he was shown very recent battlefields, as well as had the path he had just walked bombarded by German artillery. He came away from that experience highly energized by the awesome power and majesty of War. Yet, in the late 1930s, as the world was descending into potentially another global existential conflict, he is quoted as saying:

I have seen war. I have seen war on the land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping, exhausted men come out of the line the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.1
This quote was pulled from Commander In Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and their War by Eric Larrabee (Simon & Schuster 1987). Larrabee goes on to write: It must be admitted that at the time, he expressed no such sentiments. There is nothing in the accounts he sent home to suggest anything but exultation and pride in the prowess of Allied arms one more among the many indications that the Roosevelt who had survived his crippling illness, mastered the national political scene, and uneasily observed the advancing worldwide clash of conflict was not the same Roosevelt as the assistant secretary. Even after Pearl Harbor, he remembered to refer to the field of battle as ugly. What the younger man looked at with an appetite for experience in its fullness, the older man looked back on with revulsion, or should the possibility be entirely discounted that abomination for wars evil is not inconsistent with a sense of its awesomeness.2 Although I have never, and will never, serve as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, have not seen a fresh battlefield or had a path I just walked bombarded with artillery, I too have seen the remnants of war. I was inspired to go into international affairs because of the Civil War in The Former Yugoslavia. I travelled vast swaths of the planet touring battlefields, museums, libraries, and government ministries attempting to understand military history and the use of military force in foreign policy. I have seen and met children and adults who lost limbs and loved ones from unexploded bombs left over from wars long-since forgotten by everyone else. I worked to reduce the possibility of conflict between the worlds most powerful countries, as well as and stem the flow of the worlds most dangerous weapons.

1 2

Text as delivered, in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, Vol. III, p. 380. Larrabee p. 33.

1 Copyright Jeremy Strozer 2014

Jeremy Strozer www.jeremystrozer.com Through a maturation process that included a physical disability (although not to the degree of FDRs) and having a son I both anticipate and fear may one day be called upon to fight and possibly die for his country, I now write emotional first-person historical fiction to help people enjoy learning to avoid the wanton waste of war. This work is all done because of my personal affinity for the awesomeness of war combined with an utter inability to comprehend why it exists. I simply cannot understand war, no matter how much I study it. I can read about it, I can write about it, I can teach it, I can wax poetically on strategy, operations, tactics, military history, world-renown strategists and practitioners, and even the ancient to modern weapon systems used, but I fail to grasp what WAR actually means, other than simply one word: WASTE WAR is a waste of humanity, of resources, of energy, and ideas. WAR is bereft of value. I am not advocating that a country never fight, or that some wars are not worth fighting. Roosevelt was right to bring the United States into World War II. I continue to question why we entered World War I, and how the world may be different had we not made that choice. What I am saying is that any decision to go to war has to be measured against its real and total cost. Few political leaders in the position to make decisions about the use of force sincerely address the holistic costs of war. They often latch on to a public anger or prime the pump of some hatred of The Enemy in order to unify their side toward conflict. I write emotionally charged first-person accounts of WAR in order to draw people into the fact that all WAR is fought by individuals, at a human level, with each individual personally suffering through the trials, triumphs, agonies and defeats caused by decisions made by other humans for purposes that are never worth the value of what is paid. I recently finished a book about World War I, the war that later President Roosevelt witnessed before he had to lead our country through World War II. This book summed up WAR in exactly the terms I try to help everyone comprehend. Here I will share them with you: Wars are and always have been paradoxical and deeply ironic phenomena that frequently change what people want to preserve, promote what people want to prevent and demolish what people want to protect.3 I would love to rekindle a local, national, and international conversation on the utility, futility, and military-industrial propensity toward WAR before the next one has the chance to claim lives and cause suffering in ways very few humans have yet imagined.

The Beauty and The Sorrow, Peter Englund

2 Copyright Jeremy Strozer 2014

Jeremy Strozer www.jeremystrozer.com The next WAR will be fought with new technology used in ways far more destructive than anything weve seen before, and can possibly imagine now. Every war, particularly those of the last 150 years, opens the field to improvements in the means by which death is administered, and the range from which it can be accomplished. These means are traceable to technologies and ideas that existed before the WAR, but were not married-up until the circumstances and the need presented themselves. We are in possession of every material means by which to wreak havoc and let slip the utter annihilation of humanity many times over in ways that would make the perpetrators of mass genocides in the past look tame. May we learn to understand the true cost of WAR. May we debate the merits of WAR. May we learn to weed out the politicians in any country who advocate WAR. And, may we be able to avoid WAR. That is why I write!

Jeremy Strozer, 2014

3 Copyright Jeremy Strozer 2014