War and Killing

We've been having a discussion down lower in the blog about war and
killing and the causes of war. And I sort of want to talk about that
at more length.

The way I feel is that violence begets violence. This was the
prohpesy Chronos was given when he slayed his father. That story, one
of the oldest moral tales, tells us that when we call violence on one,
we call violence on ourselves. Chronos was in turn slayed by Zeus.

I feel that us going into Iraq was one of those moments where we could
have taken the high road. The cycle of violence stops when someone
refuses to participate in the violence. I think that we live in the
greatest country in the world and should be held to a higher standard.
We should be taking the moral high ground, not the immoral low.

The anonymous poster is right, sometimes killing is ineveitable.
World War II was ineveitable. Violence begets violence because
sometimes the only thing that will stop violence is more violence.
World War II was one of those situations. Hitler was power-mad and
made a grab for all of his surrounding neighbors. I don't want to
compare George Bush to Hitler. A lot of people have, I don't think
that's fair. Hitler was crazy and brilliant, I think George Bush is
genuine and ignorant. The similarities come in the fact they both
feel they are doing the right thing deep down inside, when in fact,
attacking a foreign soveriegn nation that poses no immediate threat to
you is barbaric.

Germany was invading it's neighbors. It needed to be stopped.
America, in my opinion, should have stepped in sooner, but popular
support for the war wasn't there. Pearl Harbor, like September 11th,
2001, galvanized support in the country for a cause.

In World War II, the cause was to stop the aggresion of evil
countries. For 9/11, the cause was to stop the aggression of evil
men. The problem is that these men had no political ties to a nation.
Yet what we invaded a nation. Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein was evil,
but he was no threat. Saddam Hussein was evil, but he had nothing to
do with 9/11. Saddam Hussein was evil, but he did not have Weapons of
Mass Destruction. Saddam was evil, but not so evil that Reagan wasn't
his friend during the '80s. Saddam Hussein was evil, but that's no
reason to invade a sovereign nation, no matter how much we disagree
with their politics or not. It is reason to work with him and try
educating him politically to the error of his ways, and to educate the
people to change their government.

There is such a thing as a bloodless revolution. These revolutions
are a good thing. The Ukraine. Bolivia. Venezuela. There are
others, but if the people were educated enough to know exactly what
they need to make a better country, they will rise up. The revolution
in America wasn't bloodless. But we could have another revolution and
it could be bloodless. We could fight this revolution with our minds
and with our deeds. Our country was built on the idea that if the
government became to corrupt we could always start over. We could
always change our government. Maybe we're reaching that point. In
order to become a more perfect country, we need to move more towards
taking care of ourselves and others than fighting with them.

I guess I've rambled on long enough. My original point was this:
Violence causes more violence. It's common sense proven since the
dawn of time. Occupying Iraq is causing more violence. Not less.

Let's just treat each other better, be they Iraqi's, Muslims, Sunni's,
Shiites, Mormons, Catholics, Protestants, Russians, Communists, Black,
White, Pro-Choice, Christian Conservative or whatever.

We're all just people. Human beings that can live, and love, and just
be. If we're given the chance. Let's try not to kill each other with
what little time we have on this Earth.