WAR, What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothing.
Why aren’t we listening to the leaders that we say we admire? Why aren’t we taking wise advice into account when we make decisions about this great country? Martin Luther King and Dwight Eisenhower both counseled against war. For Martin Luther King, it was a warning against a perceived evil, for Dwight Eisenhower, it was a warning against the military industrial complex that sprung up in response to World War II,
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
“we must learn how to compose differences not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.”
Jan. 17, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower
Eisenhower has a fan in his fellow Kansan (previous) Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — who keeps a portrait of the former general in his office at the Pentagon, Bowman says: Speaking at the Eisenhower Library (2010), Gates talked about America’s insatiable appetite for more and more weapons:
“Does the number of warships we have, and are building, really put America at risk, when the U.S. battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined — 11 of which are our partners and allies?
Is it a dire threat that by 2020, the United States will have only 20 times more advanced stealth fighters than China?
These are the kinds of questions Eisenhower asked as commander-in-chief. They are the kinds of questions I believe he would ask today.
In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr:
Many years ago I read an article in Time magazine about human compassion for each other. What I remember most about the article was the term “screams from somewhere else”. The enduring message was that humans will often dismiss a scream from a victim, as long as the scream is coming from “somewhere else”.
This was an important concept that could be applied to almost any human interaction and certainly could be applied to macro human interactions such as war. Almost always, those who make decisions about war do not have to personally, go to war. These decisions makers do not ever send their own children to war (is an eighteen year old an adult or a child?).
AMERICAN TROOPS KILLED
Four Americans — including three service members — were killed in a blast in Afghanistan. Three other American service members were injured when the bomb went off. An official reportedly said the attack targeted a convoy of trucks transporting American service members. NY TIMES
https://mailchi.mp/theneed2know/de7h9ok091?e=5559a60a57
Decades ago, when war was fought over land (literally) and evil dictators shamelessly murdered their own, we had reason -literally- to fight and fight in hand to hand combat. People’s lives were on the line and people needed defenders. These situations are still real today, however, the weapons have changed dramatically. We don’t need a gun and dead people to shut down evil dictators, it is easily done with economic and electronic sanctions. Why do we continue putting “boots on the ground”? Each and every one of those troops is a brother, sister, father, husband, son, daughter, mother, wife, cousin.
We are still, sixty years later, a society that doesn’t hear “screams from somewhere else”.
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