On Our Way to Hell?

Ugly blatant attacks on people because of their religion or country of origin hit me directly because as a teacher of extremely bright kids in a port of entry college -- Brooklyn is half a college of recent immigrants -- I rarely don't have students from any of the given places or peoples attacked -- often refugees therefrom. They educate me. Broad scale attacks are as vicious as the anti-Semitism, the token admits of those with African roots, that haunted Yale in my student days and Vassar College as my first teaching position. So lest people forget, our xenophobia is inherently as human as are our wars. Now in this era of WMD inflaming hatreds, bigotries, racisms is the way to ultimate human disaster.

Put yourself in the position of the Iranians today. They had their democratically elected government subverted by the CIA and Brits in the early 1950s:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Mosaddeq

Hussein attacked them with our (Rumsfeld's) blessing. They are hemmed in by nuclear powers that could erupt at any time (Israel, Pakistan, India, the U.S.). Theirs is a minority version of Islam and they face the instabilities of Afghanistan and Iraq with our disrupting American troops hemming them in on either side. One is reminded all too much of WW1 when arrogant pride led to a bloody awful war with the deaths of millions of innocent young men -- the "lost generation" -- and millions of innocent civilians as well -- forgotten now it seems as we replay our similar egomaniacal scenarios with far more at risk.
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
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