June 15, 2008


IMPEACH BUSH


IMPEACH CHENEY


WAR IS A GREAT EVIL

We often like to describe battles and wars in heroic terms. We use terms like "glory" and "honor" and "sacrifice." But the reality is that war is a great evil. It should be avoided if possible. There have been times, I believe, that war was necessary. The war against Hitler and the Axis powers is the best example. War has often been used as a geopolitical tool, though. It has been used to make money for war profiteers. It has sacrificed life unnecessarily and perhaps deprived us of people who might have made great advances in human progress. The war in Iraq is an example of war that is purely evil. It was not necessary. Its destructive effects will endure for generations. This article by Chris Hedges at www.alternet.org:

American Marines and soldiers have become socialized to atrocity. The killing project is not described in these terms to a distant public. The politicians still speak in the abstract terms of glory, honor, and heroism, in the necessity of improving the world, in lofty phrases of political and spiritual renewal. Those who kill large numbers of people always claim it as a virtue. The campaign to rid the world of terror is expressed within the confines of this rhetoric, as if once all terrorists are destroyed evil itself will vanish.

The reality behind the myth, however, is very different. The reality and the ideal tragically clash when soldiers and Marines return home. These combat veterans are often alienated from the world around them, a world that still believes in the myth of war and the virtues of the nation. They confront the grave, existential crisis of all who go through combat and understand that we have no monopoly on virtue, that in war we become as barbaric and savage as those we oppose.