Biafra: All is not fair in war! Bar. Amakaeze replies Olakunle

Dear Mr Olakunle, all is not fair in war. There are rules of engagement, and when those rules are broken, there are consequences. You must have heard of the Nuremberg trials as a law student. Now let me refresh your memory, in case you are having selective amnesia.

After the second world war, a trial was conducted for twenty two major Nazi war criminals. They were charged for war crimes and crimes against humanity. War crimes defined as violations of the internationally agreed upon rules for waging war. Crimes against humanity defined as murder, extermination, enslavement and other inhumane acts committed against a CIVILIAN population before or during the war. Twelve of them received the capital punishment. That was 22years before the Nigerian civil war. If all is fair in war, why the outrage on Assad's usage of chemical weapon against his own people?

It is not fair when you bomb markets, schools, churches. It is not fair when you round up  defenceless civilian population in Asaba and murder them in cold blood, in front of their wives and children. It is not fair when you carry out an organized extermination of a people on a mass scale even before the war. It is not fair when you shoot  Biafran soldiers who were returning home when the war has already ended and the "No victor no vanquish" hogwash proclaimed.

You said Igbos should "lick its wound and begin a realistic healing process".  After the second world war, there was a Marshall plan for countries of Europe ravaged by the war, including Germany, the loser of the war. In the case of Nigeria, the three Rs propounded by the Federal Government which included reconstruction was done in places unaffected by the war. So in your words, the reconstruction and rehabilitation should be our duty. That's very thoughtful of you. Any wonder the causes of the war are still with us 50years after.

You said we should stop the "victim posturing and pity party". That is the height of insensitivity. You don't tell me how to cry and how to mourn my dead. What we did is an appeal to the future, to always remember. Using the words of Elie Wiesel, a holocaust survivor, it is necessary " to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again".

Perhaps, the greatest flaw with your writings is your inability to tolerate dissent, your habit of equating disagreement with enmity. Whatever you dish out is the truth. You call your truth sacred, and by so doing, you take it to the realm of the divine, and you foreclose every rational enquiry. Any dissenting opinion and the person is labelled a moron, or an idiot. Mr Olakunle, you don't have a monopoly of truth, and nothing is absolute, including the truth. The truths of today can become the errors of tomorrow.  It is by challenging the conventional "Thou shall nots" that new truths are discovered and old truths become lies. That is how humanity grow. Like  Richard Feynman wrote, I will rather have questions that cannot be answered than have answers that cannot be questioned.

Your Anatomy of War is not the truth, and there is nothing sacred about it.