Borders & Bloodshed
VIETNAM BLICKY: THE SHAME OF WAR.
The doot, doot, doot of the machine gun echoed through the shooting range as spent metal shell casings clattered onto the concrete floor.
“Shoot it again, Black Rambo,” my Vietnamese tour guide gleefully said with a grin.
The recoil jolted my shoulders back, and I stepped away from the weapon, uneasy.
“Powerful gun, right?” he asked. I nodded, imagining the devastation these bullets had inflicted during the Vietnam War - American and Vietnamese lives extinguished in their wake.
“Yeah, let’s move on with the tour,” I replied, eager to leave behind the imagined horrors.
“You’re a big guy, are you military?” my guide inquired.
“No, I’m a regular corporate stiff, and I’m curious to learn about what took place here. I’ve been walking around the city and I saw a lot of disfigured bodies.”
Moments later, we found ourselves in front of the War Remnants Museum, staring at golden letters that read: “Exhibition House of American War Crimes and Aggression.”
Outside, the courtyard was filled with seized American tanks, aircraft, and long-range missile launchers from the war. The military relics transported me back to a period of history that had been largely glossed over in my American education.
“Well, today you’re going to learn about what your soldiers did here,” the guide shared as we entered the museum.
Inside, I encountered graphic depictions of the war: photographs of dismembered bodies, narratives of the chemical devastation wrought by Agent Orange, and stories of prisoners’ brutal treatment.
The shame grew as I walked through the exhibits, not only as an American but as a human being. I was not prepared for the visuals that I saw, the words that I read, or the shame that I felt in being born an American.
To witness the cost of war tactics that were deployed against citizens and captured soldiers. To empathize with the evidence of what soldiers undertook to decimate villages and large swaths of jungle with the herbicide, Agent Purple.
To see the American government support and aid in the generational crippling of bodies in a bloody civil war was a hard truth to ingest.
I could not unsee the effects of war - the disfigured bodies, poisoned ecosystems, and ruined futures.
Exhibit after exhibit, there were moving and graphic images that showcased the brutality of the results of the United States' involvement in the region.
The States were leveraging the latest chemical technology of the time, with complete disregard for the long-standing impacts of the toxin on its soldiers and the citizens, which was a heinous reminder of the brutality of warfare.
Shell-shocked, I exited the experience four hours later to return to my hotel. As I crossed a busy intersection outside the museum, I saw a man crawling on disfigured limbs, a living testament to the generational scars of war.
Shame crushed me - for my ignorance of history, for my complicity as a citizen of a warring nation, and for my inability to offer help.
As I put one foot in front of the other to cross the busy intersection, I remembered a moment during a tour when the guide was explaining how the Vietcong soldiers would dig narrow and short holes to prevent the taller and wider American soldiers from maneuvering through their web of tunnels.
“I shoot you!” he cheerfully said as he snuck up behind me with a gun finger pointed at my backside.
A former Vietnamese soldier himself, I can still hear the enjoyment in his tone as he popped out of that spider hole behind me to reenact what would have likely happened to me decades prior if I were an American serviceman.
“I surrender, I’m a man of peace,” I said with my hands raised.
“But not your country, they love war,” he said as I helped him out of the hole in the ground.
He was right. War, I realized, is not merely a clash of nations but a violent estrangement of humanity from its shared values. The sacred texts I had studied in the Torah echoed in my mind.
"Do not seek revenge or bear grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18) felt like a rebuke, a call to confront the estrangement that perpetuates such tragedies.
The shame of Vietnam’s war crimes echoes the ancient pain of Abraham’s fractured family - a reminder that estrangement, whether between nations or relatives, leaves scars across generations.
I returned to the hotel and fell into a rabbit hole of discovery about the human cost of war and America’s involvement in warmongering over the last two centuries. Unbound by the limitations of the U.S. internet, I read hours of material well into the early morning of the next day.
Occasionally scribbling notes on the hotel notepad, I formulated a historical timeline of events and cross-referenced them with my knowledge of biblical history. One of the most published texts of all time, the Torah, is filled with brutal war stories.
I was searching for connections between the sacred texts, history, and current events to soothe my shame and ignorance.
The shame I carried from the museum in Vietnam wasn’t just about the past; it was a looking glass reflecting how America still casts its influence from the skies to the shadows.
That reach, once cloaked in ideals, now stretches thin, revealing the tattered fabric of our superhero costume.
MR. FANTASTIC: THE DEMONSTRATIVE POWER OF OVERREACH.
The U.S. military-industrial complex stretches across the globe, a testament to America’s unparalleled reach. Yet this reach comes at a cost: global resentment, internal division, and endless wars. Like a mythical superpower, the U.S. is both revered and reviled, its power a source of both security and carnage.
The marquee division of Uncle Sam’s arsenal is the U.S. Navy, which is what separates the United States from other top militaries. Its eleven nuclear submarines stealthily traverse the planet undetected in a position of readiness to deploy missiles at all times.
To globally demonstrate its dominance, the U.S. invests in and innovates weapons across every domain: in the air, under the sea, and on land.
The nation aims to provide and deliver social proof to other nations of its world-class military prowess. The country is drawn to conflict the way the human body needs air to survive. The economy depends on it, wealthy families profit from it, and our freedoms are defended by it.
However, as we have seen in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and now the Middle East, the harmony of our democratic republic can be jeopardized by the volatile appetite of its superpower for destruction. We sacrifice an abundance of our dollars, our unity, and our needs at the sacrificial altar of war.
While we lie to ourselves to believe that we are operating in a cunning, noble, and honorable manner, in the eyes of the rest of the world, we carry ourselves sloppily, ignobly, and disgrace the sovereignty of nations with the completion of every overt and covert military operation.
Like Mr. Fantastic, America stretches to solve every global crisis, but our limbs have become spaghetti and are now fraying.
We pity the ill-fated situation of others, when we should be ashamed of our complacency and powerlessness, as we send more young fighters to the frontlines of modern war at the behest of authoritative and haughty decision makers.
May those who seek peace and aim for a ceasefire that fosters life among opposing peoples reveal themselves and rise to power.
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). True power lies not in domination but in the ability to foster peace.
In our pursuit of dominance, we’ve lost sight of dignity, confusing might with morality, and forgetting that true power promotes connection to foster understanding, rather than erecting barricades.
Our military overreach may dominate borders, but the deeper war lies closer to the heart, between two brothers exiled by ego and estrangement, within the unresolved fracture of Abraham’s family.
ISHMAEL & ISSAC: THE LEGACY OF FAMILIAL ESTRANGEMENT.
The Abraham Accords were a series of bilateral agreements to bring together the generational rift amongst the Semitic Peoples of the Jewish and Arab worlds by establishing full diplomatic relations between the historically combatant groups.
Four thousand years before the Abraham Accords began to formulate peace between the modern governments, the Biblical namesake of the declaration, the Prophet Abraham, fathered sons by two women named Hagar and Sarah.
The family also reflects the continued conflict that we see unfolding in the Middle East across Jewish, Islamic, and Christian-aligned governments today.
The linkages across Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac reflect the three main monotheistic faiths to which billions of humans have aligned their hearts, minds, and daily actions.
The family of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, fractured and estranged, is a microcosm of the conflicts that continue to divide humanity.
In the Torah and the Quran, Abraham fathers two sons: Ishmael with Hagar, his Egyptian maidservant, and Isaac thirteen years later with Sarah, his wife.
The jealousy and power dynamics between the mothers fracture the family, leading to the banishment of Hagar and Ishmael.
According to sacred texts, Abraham and Sarah left modern-day Iraq and purchased Hagar, a princess, in Egypt before heading north to Palestine.
The couple trafficked Hagar in hopes of fulfilling a prophecy that their offspring would be the fathers of many nations. The decisions that this polyamorous couple made in the desert continue to cause disarray and chaos in the region today.
Sarah was unable to produce an heir in her old age, and she encouraged Abraham to have a child with the younger Hagar, with the intent of providing security for their bloodline. The eldest child, Ishmael, was born, and Sarah despised him.
Sarah's fortunes turned, and she bore Issac. The brothers from different mothers were getting along until the women turned on one another.
Noticing that their younger son, Issac, would not be the rightful heir, Sarah leveraged her power to banish Hagar and Ishmael to the desert to fend for themselves.
It’s in this act of abandonment and dissolution that their family became fractured and estranged. Therein begat the lineage of the Bedouin peoples, and the future home of the most sacred place in Islam, Mecca, was sprung, as an angel appeared to a thirsty and desperate Islamic Madonna and child in the desert.
This estrangement gave rise to two lineages: Ishmael’s descendants, who are tied to the Prophet Muhammad and gave rise to the Islamic faith, and Isaac’s descendants, who are tied to Moses and Jesus, and gave rise to Judaism and Christianity.
Both sacred texts emphasize the shared bond between the brothers, but the fracture - and the conflicting claims over land and legacy - have fueled millennia of bloodshed amongst the Semitic brethren despite the texts' call for reconciliation:
“And let not those of virtue among you and wealth swear not to give aid to their relatives and the needy and the emigrants for the cause of Allah, and let them pardon and overlook. Would you not like that Allah should forgive you? And Allah is Forgiving and Merciful” (Quran 24:22).
Fast-forward to modern times, and the Abraham Accords attempt to reconcile these deep divides. But can ancient wounds be healed without addressing the root causes of estrangement?
The breakdown of Abraham’s household birthed nations, but also centuries of division, displacement, and war. In the modern Middle East, those ancient wounds are not only remembered, they are relived generation after generation, from Mecca to the rubble of Gaza.
NAKBAH WARS: THE WEIGHT OF HISTORICAL AUTHORITY.
“Ah, I heard you refer to the Nakbah. You have studied history, I know it.” Michael exclaimed with a raised finger.
“I can only imagine that after what was taking place in the world, for the final stamp of the post World War II era to be that Jewish people from all over Europe would leave their towns to overtake Palestinian-occupied land,” I continued as we clinked glasses and began to share our life experiences in the uptown bar.
Michael, a Jordanian, and I had just completed a three-day course at Columbia University.
Michael worked for the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, and I worked for a technology company that sponsored me to attend the behavioral science course alongside other curious minds from around the world.
Michael shared that he had derived his name from his Christian upbringing in Jordan. We bonded over shared experiences and differences across religion, race, and authority in the States and abroad. Michael, a practicing Christian, living in an Arab nation, and I, a proud Black Caribbean-American living in a white nation.
We identified with each other's struggles, and both took on a somber tone as we discussed the often grave impacts of absolute power aligning against a group of people, ultimately leading to their destruction throughout history.
In 1948, the Nakbah displaced over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, a scar that still festers today. The creation of Israel’s borders mirrored colonial practices, with foreign powers imposing boundaries that disregarded the region’s shared history of interconnected community, diverse cultures, and religious practice.
Like the Transatlantic Trade and the Trail of Tears, the Nakbah is yet another pithy descriptor to encapsulate the degradation, displacement, and murder of a group of people.
The genocidal playbook is the same. Authority figures, armed with weapons and treaties, acted as gods - deciding the fates of millions without their consent. This modern tragedy reflects ancient struggles over power, authority, and land.
Sacred texts remind us of a shared history and a call to take action through empathetic kindness:
“And spend in the way of Allah and do not throw yourselves with your own hands into destruction. And do good; indeed, Allah loves the doers of good.” (Quran 2:195).
Who enabled these governments with the divine authority to reestablish borders and demarcations where the intermingling of faiths and communities had previously coexisted? Who empowered those outsiders to make such authoritative decisions for faraway lands and tribes?
The Nakbah showed us what happens when external powers redraw maps with imperial authority and no ancestral memory.
Nowhere is this distortion more evident than in the modern policies of Bibi Netanyahu, whose rule wields scarcity like a weapon and righteousness like a shield, exploiting scarcity not as a tragedy to be remedied, but as a tactic of control to prolong war.
BIBI TO THE RIGHT: CONTROLLING SCARCITY & CONFLICT.
Benjamin Netanyahu has expanded his scarcity model, and he has not known peace.
Scarcity of land, scarcity of food, scarcity of rights, and scarcity of justice. His government continues to press on and annihilate its Arab brothers in the West Bank and Gaza.
While their stated objective is to end the control of the Islamic militant group, Hamas, the net of their carnage has destroyed the lives of countless civilians and children.
Hamas sought to derail the progress of the Abraham Accords, and on October 7, Hamas struck and enacted its Jericho Wall plan. An assault that I wholly condemn and am saddened by those who were unjustly murdered in cold blood. Plans that had been years in the making, but the Israeli government’s ego and focus on illegal land settlements disarmed them from remaining steadfast in defense.
This attack only strengthened the alliance between Israel and America.
Two right-wing governments allied in retaliatory responses against Islam. Issac’s sons, Jacob and Esau, were against their uncle Ishmael. Jews and Christians allied against their Islamic brethren.
America’s conservative government and courts embrace a roadmap aligned with Netanyahu’s hardline vision that has the potential to have a nuclear impact on our young democracy.
Stateside, the conservative party has also enabled a scarcity model. Scarcity of justice, scarcity of rights, and scarcity of land were also applied similarly to millions of indigenous Native Americans whose land was seized as the nation expanded its territory.
I imagine the horrors that the victims of 10/7 felt through the erased narratives of the Natives who were massacred by the thousands. Bulldozing the land and murdering the inhabitants is the hallmark calling card of young America. It’s a blueprint that the Israeli government is architecting on the world stage today.
These acts aren’t an aberration; they’re foundational to America’s origin story and the ideals it continues to affiliate itself with.
Our capitalist model engenders artificial scarcity, manipulating people, markets, and military might.
Netanyahu’s record of illegal land seizure policies has entrenched divisions, creating a zero-sum game. His policies have inflamed a system defined by deprivation of land, rights, and justice. The Torah’s principles of justice and compassion seem distant when applied to this harsh reality. Yet they remain vital:
“You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19).
Scarcity is a tool of control - one that breeds resentment and perpetuates conflict. Peace requires an abundance of empathy, resources, and justice.
Although essential among peaceful neighbors, Bibi’s thirty-year reign of government has been void of all three. Bibi is no anomaly; he’s another symbol of right-wing authoritarian ego, power, and control, reflected from Trump to Putin.
When scarcity is systematized and grief is politicized, violence becomes an enduring tradition used to justify bulldozers, checkpoints, raids, and bullets, even as the starving clamor for aid.
From the hills of Appalachia to the olive groves of Palestine, history teaches us how quickly the personal can become tribal, and the tribal can become deadly.
HATFIELDS & MCCOYS: MEDIA AND EGO PROFITEERING FROM CONFLICT.
Closer to home, the Hatfield-McCoy feud epitomizes how estrangement, ego, vengeance, and media narratives perpetuate cycles of violence. These Civil War-era families turned border disputes into decades of bloodshed.
The more affluent Hatfields overtook and attacked the McCoys on the border between Kentucky and West Virginia. The Hatfields were Confederates, and the McCoys were Unionists. Together, the families would go back and forth, ambushing and killing each other, but also intermarrying.
The nation became so enthralled with this battle between families that newspapers reported and fueled the fighting.
A captivated nation and a sensationalized media only fueled the feud, much as modern news outlets polarize opinions and exacerbate conflicts to profiteer from the ego of maniacal feuds.
The Hatfields and McCoys were families torn apart by ego and the tensions of social change - a dynamic mirrored in today’s geopolitical landscape. Leaders cling to narratives that justify war, unwilling to relinquish power or admit fault, and prey on ill-informed minds to stir up a frenzy of partisan support, while seemingly forgetting the sacred text’s command:
“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.” (1 John 4:20-21).
The Hatfield-McCoy feud wasn’t just a family drama; it was a mirror reflecting how ego, media, and vengeance feed off one another to perpetuate division.
But the cost of such feuds isn’t measured in headlines or flowers left on tombstones alone; it’s felt in what never had a chance to bloom: peace, potential, and unity.
COSTS OF BACCANAL: MOTIVATIONS FOR RECONCILIATORY JUSTICE, PEACE, LOVE.
Estrangement is costly. Not just in lives lost, the futures forfeited, but in the opportunities squandered to build a more harmonious world. Humanity stands at a crossroads. Climate change, artificial intelligence, gene editing, nuclear energy, quantum breakthroughs, and geopolitical crises demand unity, yet war, division, and ego persist, keeping us estranged from one another.
This is a story of separation. Of families torn apart, nations at war, and faiths alienated from one another. A narrative of shame, ego, and unchecked authority. Neighboring iconoclasts locked in combat, each vowed to erase the other, while generations await the truces and reckonings needed to heal what divides us.
We are living in a time of profound grief. Mourning not only the fallen, but the dreams and hopes of those who have passed. And yet, grief can be a unifying force. In our sorrow, there is solidarity. If we allow it, grief can open our hearts wide enough to hold both memory and possibility.
United in grief, I write with a broken heart. Understanding that my words are no match for the systems that perpetuate division, and there may be no quick solution, but we can still raise our voices together, mourn together, and demand redress together.
What are these global crises bringing to the forefront of our collective consciousness? What illusions must we surrender to be awakened? Perhaps in our surrender, we find love. Maybe the invitation is to fall, not in deeper despair, but into each other, finding common ground in our shared vulnerability.
George Orwell once warned, “Who controls the past, controls the future, and who controls the present, controls the past.”
The question we face now is whether we can reclaim the present moment from propaganda and power, and use it to shape a new future rooted in truth and diplomacy, rather than domination and devastation.
Yes, Uncle Sam will continue to arm the world while pretending to save it. Yes, the empire still dresses in the language of peace while trading in devastation. But we are also on the cusp of something else: the possibility of a new consciousness.
We are developing technologies that can either destroy us or liberate us. These modern tools may be nuclear, genetic, or digital, but so too are the everlasting instruments of justice, healing, and communion.
The question remains, will we have the courage to confront the past honestly, reconcile our differences mindfully, and boldly pave a new path toward peace?
Sacred texts and ancestral memory remind us that we share a common root. Justice and empathy are not optional; they are critical for the healing of our wounds and the survival of the species.
Converging on one shared truth, the sacred texts align on love being the ultimate commandment. To honor that, we must seek accurate information, tell honest history, find common ground, support ceasefire demands, build interfaith solidarity, and actively work to reconcile what has been broken.
“Seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14).
This is how estrangement becomes history, how grief becomes wisdom, how love becomes law. Our motivation must come from a shared recognition that our fates are intertwined.
Without reconciliation, the cycles of violence will doom us. Without cooperation, our species may not survive. We must learn to operate in peace, not as a lofty dream, but as a daily discipline, or risk our collective demise.
This is a power struggle against evil and malicious intention, yes. And history is often penned by the winners. But love writes a longer story. Let us etch our shared legacy in the language of love, so that we all may win. So that we can reduce the wails of suffering, heal from our addiction to limited resources, and co-create a future where justice, joy, and dignity are not expectations held only for the few, but are the birthrights of every person welcomed to this planet.
If we are to become more than the sum of our grief, we must use memory not to weaponize, but to humanize. Only then can love write a more moving story, one not of empire and estrangement, but of healing and hope.
Meditating on the benediction of the Prophet Jesus, I am reminded, “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28).