I continue to marvel over this whole Internet thing. It's not like I have just discovered it, I was an early adopter – but the wonder of it is undiminished. I'm hoping our corporate government won't kill off the spirit of it in its frenzied obsession with commerce and control. Like so many others, the Internet has opened new windows onto the world for me. Many of the most interesting people I know are people I have met online. Take Haydn Reiss for example.
Haydn has been making documentary films for nearly 20 years, beginning with "William Stafford & Robert Bly: A Literary Friendship" in 1994. His award-winning film, "Rumi: Poet of the Heart" has aired nationally on PBS and has been screened in festivals around the world.
Haydn's latest film, Every War Has Two Losers, is based on the work of National Book Award-winning poet and World War II conscientious objector William Stafford (1914-1993). Every War Has Two Losers will soon air on PBS stations across the country (click here for a schedule). This beautifully crafted film offers a profoundly thoughtful look at Stafford's message and its relevance for our times.
The film explores Stafford's life and work through the prism of an impressive series of gifted writers and poets who either knew or admired him, conjuring a poetic vision of peace, beauty and serenity juxtaposed against the hellish backdrop of war.
Haydn clearly undertook this work because William Stafford's antiwar views were so close to his own. I undertook this diary for the same reason. With this film, Haydn, through the poetry of William Stafford, perfectly expresses my own pro-peace/antiwar philosophy with great clarity and sublime sensitivity.
"The title essentially challenges all those who think wars can be won," Reiss says. "It's the recognition that once you have death and destruction on either side, humanity has already lost."
Exactly so.
"On a battlefield, the flies don't care who wins."
William Stafford journal entry, January 31, 1986
Like me, Stafford accepted that conflict is to be expected but rejected the notion that war is inevitable. There are other ways of dealing with conflict after all, and as I have observed before, there must be some reason we have these enormous brains.
At the Un-National Monument Along the Canadian Border
This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.
Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed — or were killed — on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.
William Stafford
The only heroic thing is the sky.
Haydn's film incorporates stunning video footage and still images from wars past and present, and begins, oh so appropriately, with President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961 warning to the American people about the dangers posed by the military-industrial complex.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Eisenhower's warning to America after eight years as President, 1961
As I have often opined, the fact that we ignored Eisenhower's warning is a pity beyond measure. The price of that failure, in terms of human suffering, is unbearable to contemplate.
William Stafford grew up hearing horror stories of WWI from relatives and others who had served in that conflict, and developed an early sense that war was not the answer.
Drafted during WWII out of the University of Kansas, Stafford declared himself a conscientious objector and wrote on his induction papers, "I will not engage in war in any form."
In my own writing, I often ask people to rethink things, or to re-examine some closely held belief because it is so important to take note of where our thoughts and ideas come from and how honestly they have been attained. In a culture so wrapped in denial, bathed in bullshit and steeped in propaganda as our own, it is of utmost importance that people question the common wisdom and their own basic assumptions...and learn to think for themselves.
"This is a film asking you to think for yourself," Reiss says. "Really take an inventory of the beliefs you carry around. Stafford says you should analyze what you've been telling yourself."
Right on Haydn...and right on William Stafford.
"It would be very satisfying to think," says Reiss, "that after viewing the film you would ask yourself, at a deep level, what you really believe about war. And the follow-up question of ‘How did I come to believe that?’ "
If there is anything capable of getting people to ask themselves, at a deep level, what they really believe about war, it is work like this. I will always be grateful to people like Haydn Reiss, William Stafford and all the other poets, writers, musicians, artists and ordinary citizens who do anything at all, great or small, to advance the causes of peace, compassion and human decency.
Every War Has Two Losers is as gentle and contemplative as its muse, William Stafford, and ends with one of his quotes: "Here's how to count the people ready to do right: one. One." Fade to black. "One."
DVDs of Every War Has Two Losers can be purchased here. Proceeds help support the continued outreach to bring Every War Has Two Losers to audiences throughout the world.