I am troubled by the Invictus Games. Not just the strange ways the Latin participle ‘invictus’ gets used, but by the normalisation of the warrior spirit. The propaganda around the Games makes war seem good.
In a world where it has become part of the culture to thank every member of the military for their ‘service’, and the Invictus Games seems set to increase such thoughtless commentary even more, I know I need to be precise in my criticism.
War is the way of the world. And the world is divided into nation states. I would be crass indeed not to recognise these realities and fail to acknowledge the sacrifices that the military make to keep our nation safe.
I respect individual sailors, soldiers and airmen for their choice and for their part in my freedom. I am in awe of the peace-keeping that Australian forces do around the world. I recognise that much of the activity of the Australian Army in Afghanistan was building schools and hospitals, surely a good legacy.
But war is a sub-optimal activity for humanity. Partly because the nation-state is an imperfect institution – nations both create conditions for our flourishing and also create artificial divisions between human beings – and mainly because the aggression and killing war involves means that we should not consider war the final best way of relating that human beings can find. We live in a fallen world, and war is a symptom of our sinfulness and not of our glory as human beings.
Much of the lethal activity of war is sly. Drones fly invisible above their targets, and ‘clinically’ murder only the targets. Insurgents, who consider themselves patriots, leave death-dealing devices on roadsides. Proxy wars are fought in countries like Syria between the US and Russia, condemning millions of children to a half-life in refugee camps.
I look forward to a world in which nations are superseded by a common humanity and war has given way to peace, where swords are beaten into ploughshares, and the trillions of dollars we spend on armaments are diverted to the benefit of humanity.
This is why I think we should take care with the language we use, and the language we accept, around the Invictus Games. The fighting spirit that restores the wounded to purposeful lives is to be admired. The positive attitudes to disability the Games foster are to be encouraged. We should applaud the new appliances which improve the lives of those living with disability. The contributions the participants made through their service in the armed forces are to be commended.
But any implication that war itself is unambiguously good needs to be challenged. Let us ‘normalise’ disability, by all means. But let us not ‘normalise’ the fact of war. Let us in all ways and in all circumstances question its place in our common life, and decry the death, destruction and waste it brings. Let us aspire to a world without war, a world without the need for warriors, a world where we embrace, not fight, our fellow human beings.
Mind Journeys 
Your post has made me aware of the cynicism I have about world affairs. Your post is a breath of fresh air and hope!
I couldn’t agree more, Ted. I wish I could trace the author of the comment “if the governments of this world spent half their defence budgets on cultural exchange programmes then there would be no wars.” In keeping with your concerns about how we speak of the Invictus Games, I have a problem with the language used at events such as Anzac Day, because our words too often convey a sense of ‘war is good’. It’s not, and it never has been.