INTRODUCTION

We are now on Day #3 of this 7-day series of war poems which will culminate on November 11th. On Day #1, I already gave a pithy intro to the series. You can still consult that intro if you would like to understand more about it. I also presented a double-sonnet entitled “Another Side of War” which examined the bellicose nature of the belligerent, divisive Left-Right paradigm in politics. On Day #2, I presented another double-sonnet, entitled “Make Yourself a No-One”. It opened up how to respond when your government wages war against its own population by introducing a digital “Bitte Ihre Unterlagen!” (“Papers, please!”) society. Today, on Day #3, I present a poem entitled “When Wars Become a Warcrime”, which deals with the terrible toll that warring takes on its combatants who so easily become dehumanized merely by being in a “theatre” in which anything goes, regardless of any conventions. Before presenting the poem further below, here are some words of reference.

My fascination with the dark underbelly of warmongering grew by default when the USA began its mendacious and illegal 2003 war against Iraq, starting with the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign, supposedly as some kind of retribution for 9/11. One after the other, I discovered terrible misdeeds which were taking place “over there”. Carpet bombings designed to send Iraq “back to the stone age”, wanton plundering, multiple extrajudicial killings, mass bombings of civilians (including women and children, despite assurances of so-called “precision bombing”), huge misappropriations of weapons and funds, groups of ravaging soldiers as gangs going out at night to seek out Iraqi families that they could torment in their homes then rape and kill, widespread gratuitous torture, and so much more. After I started writing about it all, people in the forces, even people of higher rank, began to contact me and tell me about their own disillusionments, misgivings and experiences. It is an interesting thing that when a war is set in motion by politicians and intelligence agencies already on a mendacious, dishonourable basis, it somehow gives all those subsequently waging it carte blanche to behave in any dishonourable way they want, and superiors will turn a blind eye. This is what happened in Iraq. Vast amounts of money (cash) and weaponry sent over there were disappearing into God knows what. Important archeological artefacts were being plundered and sold on the black market. Extrajudicial killings, rapings, and gratuitous torturings of Iraqis were rampant. Anyone who investigated all that was on a hiding to nothing and would risk their own lives for doing so.

One of those investigators was Colonel Theodore (Ted) Westhusing. He was sent out to Iraq to investigate the massive fraud which was taking place, especially by the dreaded “contractors”. Colonel Westhusing lectured in philosophy and English at the West Point Military Academy and was one of those old-fashioned soldiers who believed that there should be honour in war. He even wrote a 200-page paper entitled “A Beguiling Military Virtue: Honor”. After becoming embroiled in intense investigations into military corruption in Iraq, having found many instances of it, he was found dead at Camp Dublin on June 5th 2005, allegedly of suicide. Only the most gullible of people, or the most implicated, believed without a doubt that it was a suicide. On the website, “Fallen Heroes Memorial”, where one can leave comments about someone who has died in war, the page for Col. Westhusing filled up with comments from those who knew him, or who knew of him, who were incredulous that he could have committed suicide. One says:

“To the Theodore Westhusing Family: I cannot begin to express my sadness, my total dismay, when I read about the loss of such an admirable man. His death is a loss to not only to his family and this country but to the world. From what I read in the LA Times, Colonel Westhusing was intelligent, inquiring, decent, honorable, incorruptible, and very strong. Observing corruption first hand would dishearten, even dismay such a man, but would not destroy him. Forgive me if this causes you any more pain, but his described character and the cause of death do not appear in any conceivable way compatible. I am hopeful a full, unbiased investigation occurs to assure the facts are disclosed, be they what has already been said or different. Colonel Westhusing and all those who loved and admired him deserve this. Our country deserves this”.

Another writes:

“One hot, dusty day in June, Col. Ted Westhusing was found dead in a trailer at a military base near the Baghdad airport, a single gunshot wound to the head. The Army would conclude that he committed suicide with his service pistol. At the time, he was the highest-ranking officer to die in Iraq. The Army closed its case. But the questions surrounding Westhusing’s death continue.”

https://www.fallenheroesmemorial.com/oif/profiles/westhusingtheodores.html

Three years later in 2008, the Texas Observer (which had earlier written a piece accepting the suicide verdict but reckoning that his discoveries of the endemic corruption had driven him to it) wrote an article asking the question “Was Col. Ted Westhusing’s death in Iraq something more sinister than suicide?” https://www.texasobserver.org/2682-a-death-reconsidered-was-col-ted-westhusings-death-in-iraq-something-more-sinister-than-suicide .

Even the Wikipedia article about him stated:

“The New York Times/Los Angeles Times reporter T. Christian Miller reported on the possibility that he was murdered by defense contractors who feared he would become a whistle-blower against their alleged fraudulent activity throughout the Iraq War” (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_S._Westhusing ).

Whether he killed himself because of his total despair at finding such massive corruption in that military environment and being stonewalled and helpless to do anything about it, or whether he was “suicided” (executed to make it look like a suicide, which most discerning folks suspect)… the reality is that he was effectively “taken out” because he was an honourable man operating in the midst of extreme evil which he found hard to take. It is to this situation that I was referring in the third to last verse in the poem I present below.

One other reference in the poem below (verse 6) is to the characacter, Yeager Pollack (played by the excellent method actor, Elias Koteas) in the harrowing and astonishingly realistic year 2000 war film, “Harrison’s Flowers”. The very first scene of the film shows Pollack with an ordinary US city backdrop giving a soliloquy directly to camera about the toll that war takes on its participants. Here is the 45-second clip:

Now here is the poem, in which the last line delivers the knockout punch (let the reader understand):

How easily and glibly we glorify all war,
disguising it in “pomp and circumstance”.
Forgetting what we all have been put here for,
we spice war up with “valour” and “romance”.

When wars become (for most who fight) a warcrime,
that’s why there’s just so much P.T.S.D.
Most soldiers commit heinous acts in wartime
in plunder, rape, unfettered savagery.

It’s hard to live with what you did to young’uns
or families you wiped out on a roll.
You cruised the streets at night with guys and big guns;
later you wondered if you’d lost your soul.

So now you’re up in arms that I should speak so.
You think it’s like the films shown on TV;
just patriotic lads playing at the hero,
“defending freedom and democracy”.

When you know just how they played it in Fallujah
or in the Falklands war out on Goose Green,
to pre-empt what the enemy will do to yuh,
when you think that what you do will not be seen.

As Yeager Pollack said before a movie
depicting all war’s horrors at the front,
“There’re 2 types of people in this world”, see;
“those who’ve been to war — those who haven’t”.

It bends you, twists you, warps you, sends you crazy
when you have to kill, destroy, smash down and maim;
and not care who you force to push up daisies,
to satisfy the brass who’ve staked their claim.

A conspiracy which is silent and unspoken
means you’ll never hear the truth from those who’ve fought
allegedly for freedom, though it kills them
in ways within by which it never ought.

For wars are never fought for what’s asserted
by the grandees sipping sherry on their lawns,
which boys believed who’re face down, dead and dirtied,
at which the grandee shrugs, and turns, and yawns.

If anyone speaks up ’bout the corruptions
which multiply in any place of war —
about the plunder and the executions —
they’ll take one in the head and hit the floor.

But don’t let me knock down your rank illusions
about the “glory” of the battlefront.
Hold onto them despite my crass intrusions.
You’ll do so anyway if you’re a ‘grunt’.

Peace is just the space between two warrings,
for war’s good business, much invested there.
There never will be peace on earth with no strings
until there’s no more spiritual warfare.

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[Tomorrow, November 8th, Day #4 of the 7-day series, there will be a poem which takes Matthew 24:6 as its starting point to show the place of war in the cosmos. The title will be: “The Cosmic Struggle”].

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© Copyright, Alan Morrison, 2025
[The copyright on my works is merely to protect them from any wanton plagiarism which could result in undesirable changes (as has actually happened!). Readers are free to reproduce my work, so long as it is in the same format and with the exact same content and its origin is acknowledged]

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