Webster Alum Shares Experiences
in Iraq and Afghanistan

Gennaro Buonocore speaks at graduation ceremonies.

Gennaro Buonocore earned a bachelor's degree from the European Business School in London and a master's degree in finance from Webster University's London campus. The recipient of Webster's 2005 School of Business and Technology's Outstanding Alumnus Award, Buonocore has enjoyed great success as an investment banker. He is the chairman of Maitland Primrose Group, the media group that owns Moving Pictures Magazine. Buonocore is an Italian national with permanent residency status in the United States. A member of the International Roster of the United Nations Volunteers, he began volunteering to Italy's institutional peace-keeping efforts in 2003. In August of 2005, Italy deployed Buonocore to Iraq as part of the Antica Babilonia mission where he helped in the humanitarian and coalition support effort by the Military Corps of the Italian Red Cross. Subsequently, Buonocore went to Afghanistan where he served in the same role but under the flag of Parsa, a legendary non-governmental organization dedicated to the economic and academic development of the Afghanistan. Buonocore is expected to be called up for another Iraqi tour in late 2006. This essay represents his reactions to what he saw and experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as his deeper thoughts about war and human nature.

Who was the first one to invent those horrendous weapons? How cruel and heartless he must have been. Albius Tibullus' ancient prose could not be more true: Quis fuit , horrendos primus qui protulit enses, quam ferus et vere ferreus ille fuit.

Webster alumnus Gennaro Buonocore is outfitted with a bullet-proof vest as he leaves a school in An-Nasirihya in southern Iraq to return to the barracks.

In August 2005 I left my adoptive home, the USA, to go and serve for the Military Corps of the Italian Red Cross in Iraq. I left with a deeply troubled mind. I was leaving to uphold a peace I believed in, yet I knew that our peace was just a myth bearing the scars of human history -- the greatest myth of all, with its full weight of eternal contradiction. The only myth that drives all of the world's forces in its eternal quest and, at the same time, the most elusive, false and misperceived mirage in human existence.

My soul was troubled but certain that by going I was doing the right thing.

It was definitely the right decision. Iraq profoundly changed me. In the short time I was there, I was humbled by its paradoxical mix of charred flesh and purity, of overbearing chaos and sublime poetry. I have now come back by far more appreciative of what I have. I have drunk the dregs of war and come back from it with unexpected inner peace. I have witnessed misery and injustice and I return with a deep sense of self-love.

I left knowing that I was going to be a peace-keeper in a world wrecked by what I believed was the final showdown between radical extremism and western rule and democracy. I was wrong. Yet I feel much better about myself, my life, my world.

A massive conflict does exist, its combatants can be clearly identified: the secular against the religious, the have-nots against those who have, the pure against the promiscuous, tradition against progress, starvation against gluttony, spirituality against materialism, feudalism against imposed democracy.

This sublime conflict constantly reminded me of an ancient Somali proverb:

"Me and my nation against the world. Me and my clan against my nation. Me and my family against the clan. Me and my brother against the family. Me against my brother."

I now add: Me against myself.

That familiar internal struggle I have finally witnessed on the field, greatly magnified to embrace the world, amplified to the extreme to bring all of us to the edge of the abyss. Those that I called extremists are just like us, they have mothers, fathers, siblings, wives, children of their own. The great difference is that they have little more to lose, their life becomes a symbol of their defeat and it is better to sacrifice it for what they believe is their final glorious act to cleanse an unjust world.

Death is their way out of anonymity to the stardom: martyrdom as an ultimate act of defiance. Light against darkness. Most of them do not fear death. They have seen enough of it to believe it is just a glorious path to final peace.

We have to learn from it and understand that true peace can only be received.

Peace cannot be given. It cannot be enforced. The struggle for peace is counterproductive because it has always ended up creating other unstable forms of balance and ultimately more wars. History is the witness.

Peace might be deserved but it is surely not given nor won. Iraq definitely taught me that there cannot be outer peace without first achieving inner peace. Our "war" becomes to find peace and balance within ourselves and then within our own society to finally be able to donate it to the global family. How can we help solve other people's conflicts and dilemmas if our own go unresolved and keep raging within our souls?

I realized we are a profoundly fearful society. We are afraid to lose. How can we love if we are afraid? How can we make peace if we do not love?

Flavius Vagatius Renatus' motto: "Qui desiderat pacem praeparet bellum" (Those who wish peace should prepare for war) could have not been more wrong. It still reigns ubiquitous on the regimental insignia of some of my comrades, yet it could not be more anachronistic. Preparing for war might mean victory, but victory does not mean peace. Not even pacifism can lead to peace.

My friends have asked me to recount a few episodes that I believe important to describe the situation. I have two curiously connected stories. On our way to An-Nasiriyah, I noticed two little children walking, holding hands, on the side of the dusty road. They were no more than three and four years old respectively. Poorly dressed and incredibly dirty, with big smiling eyes, they were singing and showing off their new tiny red backpacks probably donated by the Italian Civil Affairs battalion. They looked so happy and serene, in sharp contrast with the monstrous metallic shapes of our Centauro tanks.

I suddenly felt very worried for the well being of these two little cubs and I asked an interpreter who these kids might be. He told me they were Bedouin children walking their daily five kilometers (one way) to the closest school, which happens to have no running water, nor electricity. My thought flew to my own children. They would never be allowed to walk that kind of distance to school despite living in one of the most affluent and crime-free areas of the USA.

Full of parental concerns I asked the interpreter whether their parents were afraid of child molesters. He looked at me puzzled and asked me what a child molester was.

Their parents, he added, were fine with it. The kids were too light to trigger the anti-personnel land mines because, even if they stepped on one, their weight would not be enough to push down the cap and spark the explosion. Tiny angels flying over death with their smiles and their little new red backpacks.

In April 2006, I found myself yet on another quest, this time in Kabul, Afghanistan. I call it quest because I believe that most westerners end up doing humanitarian work in war-ravaged areas for their own souls. What better magnifying lens for our soul than poor, ravaged, raped Afghanistan.

I had to think very hard when asked what I thought of the Afghans. Initially, nothing more had come to my mind other than they are peaceful people who have a terrible love of war. Then I thought that, actually, all humans love war. Rhetoric teaches us that modern wars are fought in the name of peace, yet we have to admit war is truly fought for war's own sake. Those who admit this terrible love for conflict are the beings we should rely on to fully penetrate this timeless force in human development.

Again, how could I fully love peace without fully embracing war? How could I develop any clear understanding of destruction by relying on theories from history books, crude statistics and socio-analytical case studies?

The Afghans taught me of a typical human condition: that of being constantly passionate about human conflict. Their story tells of the world's love for the Gods of war, for the eternal myths of insatiable horror and renewed hopes. Such myths display their lack of human dimension with their full use of cruelty, devastation, rape and annihilation and their full benign aspects when peace can finally blossom. A myth so inhuman, yet pursued by human beings with continuous occurrence. How lucky I was to spend time in Kabul!

I have finally learned that there is no war without myths, no war without Gods.

We all seem to need Gods as we need friends and as, more importantly, we need enemies.

The eternal desire for the existence of an enemy is the sublime symbol of human inherent fear. Freedom from fear is not achieved by embracing love, but by celebrating destruction.

Destroying the enemy is the expression of the desire to overcome such fear with a spectacular show of consistency and power — the ultimate power to decide between life and death, the power to transfer your own fear onto another. Once all enemies have been identified, war can finally start.

The Afghans need enemies because they deeply believe that peace mollifies the soul. Life is better, more intense and great when it is short and lived with the full waves of a passion that only the sublime clash of love and hate can create. In Afghanistan the dust you breathe reminds you of the millions corpses that have been buried underneath. You can never fully bury the dead.

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