4/22 DN-R Op-Ed: "'Domicide' Is a War Crime"

Let woe and waste of warfare cease, 

that useful labor yet may build
its homes with love and laughter filled.
God give your wayward children peace!
- William M. Vories "Let there Be Light"

Today’s bloody wars result in countless numbers of innocent men, women and children being incinerated, dismembered, buried alive under rubble and horribly maimed for life. 

Accompanying this trauma is the wholesale destruction of buildings and infrastructure belonging to the victims of war--homes, schools, hospitals, places of worship and other structures vital to their life and their future.

I call this destruction “domicide," a word coined from domicile, a word for a residence, a dwelling, a home. We humans are highly dependent on such physical spaces for shelter and warmth, as secure places vital for our care and survival.

So for God’s sake and for humanity’s sake all who claim to be pro-life need to do everything possible to avoid inflicting harm not only to our human neighbors around the world but also to the physical structures they depend on for their wellbeing.

I find it interesting that Jesus spent most of his adult life as an apprentice of Joseph, identified as a carpenter, though the Greek word used is more accurately translated "craftsman" or “builder." In other words, he was likely a skilled mason and construction worker, working with the most common building material in his community, stone. So it is understandable that Jesus frequently uses foundation stones and cornerstones as metaphors, as at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where he notes that those who hear and practice his teachings are like wise builders who build their house on a solid rock foundation. He also laments the tragedy of the Jewish temple one day being demolished to the point that "not one stone remains on another," a sign of unimaginable tragedy.

Every domicile represents the work of artisans who have spent untold numbers of hours in their creation, among them architects, excavators, masons, plumbers, electricians, painters and landscapers, to mention a few. Out of respect to those who have designed, prized and made their home in these blessed spaces, we should declare it a mortal sin to even think of destroying them. These are not just houses, but homes where, as one unknown author has written, "love resides, friends always belong, and laughter never ends." 

Or at least until war rears its ugly head, and war makers and munitions manufacturers satisfy their appetite for the profit that can be gained from it.

In our seemingly safe local community we’ve been spared the direct effects of war, at least  since General Sheridan terrorized the population by setting fire to hundreds of mills and barns up and down the Shenandoah Valley over a century and a half ago. But even then, in spite of repeated battles in the area that resulted in the brutal deaths of hundreds of Union and Confederate soldiers, most homes, schools, churches, villages and their civilian inhabitants survived, and many pre-Civil War buildings and other infrastructure remain intact today.

Today's wars are unimaginably more destructive, wreaking untold havoc in densely populated areas like Gaza, Lebanon and Iran which have been pounded with incessant barrages of huge 1000-to 2000-pound bombs. According to US intelligence estimates more than 29,000 of these have been dropped on Gaza alone, with 40-45% of these not being precise military targets. This is by definition a war crime and a violation of any definition of a “just war,” and is equivalent to the destructive power of the nuclear bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki eighty years ago. And as a result, millions of Gazan, Lebanese and Iranian men, women and children have been rendered homeless and are forced to live in tents or in whatever temporary shelter they can find.

Isn’t it time to make all forms of “domicide” a war crime? Destroying homes and other human habitat in seconds that have taken years to build is an exceptionally cruel and wasteful form of barbarism and insanity. 

And it is way past time to denounce war itself as the world's worst ever crime against humanity.