War Mongering

Watching the movie, "Ground Truth," last night with about fifteen others who had responded to Moveon.org's invitation, my anger was mixed with so much sadness.

Anger at the killing machine our military has become. I am not naive enough to have thought that the purpose of troops was anything other than to kill. But when we were told in the film that during World War II the soldiers, many of them plucked from our cities, towns and villages, were hesitant to kill, the military brass had to do something. So the training procedures were updated to make our troops more blood thirsty.

Anger at Congress for giving the president carte blanche, motivated mainly by saving their own political hides. Even now, after all the evidence that is in, many of them still can't find the courage to say enough.

Anger at the lack of support for the injured, to the extent that if the disability was not directly caused by combat -- say stress based -- certain benefits are denied.

Sadness for the young lives snuffed out whether by death or disability.

Given my many years of parsing the scriptures -- "those who live by the sword will die by the sword" -- I have concluded that war accomplishes nothing. It only further poisons the well.