Tragedy of War

In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace, their lives lose all value. We deny personal responsibility when we plant landmines and, days or years later, a stranger to us — often a child – is crippled or killed. From a great distance, we launch bombs or missiles with almost total impunity, and never want to know the number or identity of the victims.

JIMMY CARTER, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2002

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.    Dwight D. Eisenhower 

“War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; 

but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, 

nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. 

I love only that which they defend.” 

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ― George Orwell, 1984

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.   WILLIAM WESTMORELAND, Time magazine, Apr. 5, 1982

Come you masters of war

You that build all the guns

You that build the death planes

You that build the big bombs

You that hide behind walls

You that hide behind desks....

I think you will find

When your death takes its toll

All the money you made

Will never buy back your soul

BOB DYLAN, "Masters of War"

In war, truth is the first casualty.  AESCHYLUS

Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,

That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world;

For my enemy is dead, a man as divine as myself is dead,

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -- I draw near,

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.

WALT WHITMAN, Reconciliation