Saturday, August 14, 2010

Wars Breed Hatred

I all too well remember as a child our glee with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our last thought was the hundreds of thousands of civilians being slaughtered. We were at the time killing even more citizens of Tokyo -- a paper and wood city -- with incendiary bombs.

Why are so many of our troops returning to the U.S. as psychological basket cases and committing suicide at a rate higher than our national one? I suspect that guilt at killing innocent people has something to do with this. Most Americans are not by nature murderers, but they have been launched into wars where hate and killing are the game.

The globe cannot afford our traditional military approaches to 'enemies'. We are now engaged in global economic competition which hopefully will not set going yet more killing games. Already we have military regimes here and there that are horrendously abusing their populations for power and profit.

I am glad at long last we sent a representative to the Hiroshima anniversary event -- 65 years late:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-10888571


We could have targeted some location in Japan with few people rather than sizable cities. But wars inspire hate and hate murders people.

May Wikileaks tell it all!

Wikileaks - WikiLeaks
Publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct.

http://wikileaks.org/
--
"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)
--
Ed Kent [blind copies]

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