ayoamadu

I knew of a mother who folded a flag that was not meant to be folded.

It arrived in a polished wooden box, carried by men whose shoes never touched the mud where her son died. They spoke softly, rehearsed words about honor and sacrifice. But the wind carried a different truth.

Her boy had not died defending a hill that mattered.
He had died protecting a balance sheet.

Far away from the smoke and shattered bones, there were rooms with thick carpets and colder hearts. In those rooms, war was not a tragedy. It was a transaction.

They spoke not of widows but of contracts.
Not of graves but of growth.
Not of blood but of returns.

The bombs that turned cities into dust were not merely weapons; they were products.
The missiles had shareholders.
The tanks had investors.
Even the rubble had a price tag, because someone would later win the contract to rebuild what the bombs destroyed.

War, you see, is the only marketplace where destruction guarantees demand.

I knew of a child who learned the language of sirens before he learned the alphabet. He could tell the difference between the whistle of incoming shells and the hum of drones overhead. His playground was a crater, his lullaby the distant thunder of artillery.

He did not know the men who decided his fate.
He did not know their names, their offices, or their board meetings.
But they knew profit margins.

And so the machinery continued.
Politicians delivered speeches about freedom while signing papers inked with the quiet promise of billions.
News anchors spoke of strategy while stock prices quietly rose in the background.
Analysts debated territory while factories ran day and night manufacturing the next shipment of death.

The soldier believed he was fighting an enemy.
The citizen believed the war was necessary.
But somewhere above them both, someone understood the deeper truth:

War is the most reliable business model ever invented.

Peace is unpredictable.
Peace does not consume ammunition.
Peace does not require trillion-dollar budgets.
Peace is bad for business.

And so fear must be cultivated like a crop.
An enemy must always be waiting just beyond the horizon.
A threat must always be whispered into the public ear.
A new conflict must always be ready to ignite once the old one grows cold.

Because when the cannons stop, the cash flow stops.

I knew of a veteran who returned home with medals on his chest and ghosts in his eyes.
At night he would wake to sounds that were no longer there.
His country thanked him for his service, then quietly left him to fight another war; one that no contract could profit from.

But somewhere, someone celebrated quarterly earnings.
War had been good to them.

The strange thing about war is this: those who suffer it rarely start it, and those who start it rarely suffer it.

The graves are filled with the poor.
The profits are collected by the powerful.

And yet the drums keep beating.
Not because humanity has learned nothing.

But because someone, somewhere, is still making money from the noise.