"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman
Letter to Mayor Calhoun of Atlanta and others
September 12, 1864
I was remembering an essay that I wrote for my grade 10 history final, in which I discussed the famous quote, "war is hell" and in doing research came up with the quote posted above instead.
You'd be blind not to see the irony in the quotation. Written by one of the most famous American generals of all time, it holds as much relevance and truth today as it did 140 years ago. Only now, the United States are the aggressors; they demand nuclear disarmament while they themselves threaten other countries.
All this has been repeated countless times recently. With the world at the brink of war and it is time for Americans, especially the 88% who support invading Iraq to take a closer look at what is really going on.
My initial reaction to the 9-11 attacks was shock, sadness. When I heard al-Qaeda's reasons for the attacks, I then thought...they actually have some legitimate gripes. While I think that violence is NEVER the answer, the United States' collective ethnocentricism has gone on for long enough.
To quote from John Le Carré's article again:
The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.
God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.
Care for a few pointers? George W. Bush, 1978-84: senior executive, Arbusto Energy/Bush Exploration, an oil company; 1986-90: senior executive of the Harken oil company. Dick Cheney, 1995-2000: chief executive of the Halliburton oil company. Condoleezza Rice, 1991-2000: senior executive with the Chevron oil company, which named an oil tanker after her. And so on. But none of these trifling associations affects the integrity of God’s work.
To sum it up, the world has realized that the Great American Way is NOT the only way of doing things, and they are fighting back. I don't think that this looming war is about oil as it is about power: the United States playing the big bully in the schoolyard, terrorizing all who are smaller and supposedly weaker than them. Now the children have banded together and the bullies are scared. So they threaten war. But there are no good wars and there is no such thing as bad peace, to paraphrase another great American, Benjamin Franklin. So the Bushies say, "if you aren't with us, you're against us". Go ahead and call me a terrorist, but I truly believe that to wage war on Iraq would be a heinous crime, and those who wage that war truly do "deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out."
Disclaimer/Post Script: Those of you who know me well know that the world really has to be balancing precariously on the verge of the apocalypse to make me write such a politically charged post such as this one. So before you press the button to flame me, remember the great commandment, Love One Another. Remember, this is my opinion; my blog on MY domain that's paid for by MY hard earned money..flames are not welcome here and any comments may be deleted. Now, back to your regularly scheduled Z o r bl o g stupidity. :smile
