I Will Not Celebrate
On war, freedom and the blindfold we keep.
Previously published April 4 , 2025. Sharpened May 24, 2026
I will not celebrate
I am not a veteran. Yet I have spent more time on the battlefield than most vets. What I am sharing here I did not borrow from a newspaper.
I will never celebrate Veterans Day, not worship or contribute to the hypocrisy that sustains the barely hidden truth that we all complacently accept for fact.
The use of force is not to protect our freedom, it is to protect our privileges.
I will support those broken and betrayed souls who have fallen victim to this cruel deception, but I will not lend my voice to the hypocrisy. I will never glorify the veteran, the military, or any institution that perpetuates systemic violence.
Call freedom by its true name: privilege and injustice. Then fighting becomes irony. Young men are convinced to go to war, risking their lives for what they believe to be a noble cause. That is a lie.
We never killed a communist
I've never witnessed a soldier kill a communist; instead, I've seen them kill poor people who are just trying to improve their lives and find happiness. And we killed many children in the process.
Since last year over 50.000 Palestinians have been killed. Something often called genocide. Most of them civilians. Most of them poor. Many of them children. I guarantee you, all of them just desiring to live a better life. I am not interested in the political argument around it. I only have one line of reference: on one side, children have shoes, go to school, drink clean water. On the other, they don't.
Killing a human is no easy task. Our culture is designed to desensitize us to this act, teaching us to suppress our emotions to make it possible.
To kill another human, you must first kill a part of yourself.
You can keep the blindfold
During my time in Uganda, I observed how children are trained to become killers. One day they are told they will do the target practice blindfolded. When the blindfold is removed they realized the targets were human. Possibly even people they know.
This switches off the emotional security system that tells us 'this is wrong'. The numbing process begins. In the west we start with console games and we end up in underground in Arizona killing real people miles away. Same process.
In the west the blindfold is called freedom.
So what is left when the blindfold is removed?
The veteran’s despair.
Returning home from an unjust war (and they are all unjust), most veterans realize they have been manipulated by propaganda. This realization is devastating. Now do you still wonder why so many of them commit suicide or find their ways to addiction?
So tomorrow, will you keep your blindfold?
Desertion
At a young age, I refused to serve in the military. I grew up among people who had survived two world wars. There was no argument.
I remember listening to Boris Vian's song "Le Déserteur," and I knew I was not here to kill people. I was sentenced to two years in military prison, I chose to desert, leaving my country behind. It created chaos in my life, but it also forged the core of my being:
I never do what goes against my soul’s deepest truth and that is called freedom.
I never carried a gun, yet I have spent more time in war zones than most veterans. For over two decades, I worked to bring relief to civilians in distress across numerous conflict areas. I thrived on adrenaline, collected my fair share of PTSD. I’ve been held at gunpoint, detained, jailed, interrogated, and witnessed death countless times. But mostly what I saw was despair, torture, and rape.
Trust me when I say, nothing good ever comes from a gun.
In the years it took to tame my PTSD and adrenaline addiction, one principle guided my recovery: I was always on the right side of the gun, which meant never holding it.
I can't imagine how I would have healed if I had been responsible for any part of the violence I witnessed.
WAR
A few years ago, on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, I saw a giant billboard advertising for a new movie. It just said one thing: WAR. And nobody blinked. If it had said SEX, there would have been public outrage.
We censor intimacy, but not brutality.
The vast majority of the world's guns are produced by the five members of the UN Security Council, with the USA in heading the game.
We battle terrorists we once trained. Overthrow dictators we installed. Sell weapons on both sides preaching for peace. Drop bombs from drones on countries we've never set foot in, guided from air-conditioned offices, as a 9 to 5 job. We arm nations that turn those weapons on civilians. We look the other way.
And then act surprised and offended when the violence boomerangs back to us, safe in our cocoon of privileges.
Addiction
We revere violence. It’s our collective addiction.
And it has consequences beyond the battlefield. The more we numb ourselves, the more we accept the unacceptable. We stay in dead-end jobs. Medicate with caffeine to wake, alcohol to sleep. Indulge in hollow relationships. Treat health and self care as inconvenient. We avoid questions. We avoid truth.
The more we numb, the less we feel.
The less we feel, the more violence helps to break through our numbness.
A vicious cycle of devastating consequences.
Breaking free from addiction would mean checking out from the system that wants us numb. It would free us from the cycle of violence. Make space for something better.
We can return to the core of what makes us human. Not heroism. Not dominance. Kindness. Empathy. Love.
That is what it takes to build a world that is worth living in.
Make love, not war.
I chose desertion.
I chose to not carry a gun.
I chose kindness, empathy, love.
I will make the same choice again tomorrow.
But I will not celebrate.
PS: “Change Your Story, Change The World” is a storytelling endeavor that looks deeply into the psyche that creates the stories we live by.
Because the stories we tell are the reality we live.