Re: [RC] [RC] WARNING - POLITICAL delete at will! - Heidi Smith
Well put, Shelley. For me, war isn't about personal safety,
either--but it is about a lot of the other things that Scott quoted in his John
Stuart Mill quote, and that you have also articulated here. War is not
something to undertake lightly, but beyond even the context of our current world
situation, I always wonder about folks who claim they have no principles or
philosophies that are worth defending. I'd hate to war over something
petty, but I'd hate even worse to not have anything for which I'd stand up and
fight.
My dad is one of the ones who faced being drafted in WWII, and he had an
older brother in the military and a younger brother that claimed to be a
CO. Dad also had a wife and daughter at the time (no, not me--I came
later), and was nearly graduated from theological seminary--and the military
felt that they would rather have the new graduates take the local churches
and have more mature men go as military chaplains, so he ended up not being
asked to serve. But he says that he wrestled with this question, and it
came down to this--if he witnessed a friend or family member lying in the road,
and a tank about to run over that friend or family member, and he had a bazooka,
what would he do with it? And he said that he realized that he would shoot
the tank with the bazooka. And given that, he surmised that yes, there was
reason to go to war against somebody like Hitler, who was running over entire
populations with his military machine.
Saddam is not unlike Hitler, and given the more sophisticated military
weapons of today and the speed with which war can be made, I sincerely hope that
we don't let Saddam get into the position of strength that we allowed Hitler to
attain by our unwillingness to join in the fight. I am not keen to live in
a world where I have to kowtow to a dictator, nor where I would have to grow a
garden and eat my horses to survive.
Subject: Re: [RC] [RC] WARNING -
POLITICAL delete at will!
So what would you do if you were told you had to give up your house
and everything you own and know? The meaning behind the quote, is
if you have nothing to fight for, then what do you have to live
for? Everyone has something they are willing to fight for, whether
it being what they believe in, their family, or physical
possessions. War is not an individual fight so the concept of what
it is all about is sometimes not fully understood by each
individual.
Shelley
For some people, the unwillingness to
wage war has nothing to do with personal safety.
Cindy
----- Original Message -----
War
is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that
nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for
which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than
his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance
of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better
men than
himself.
John Stuart Mill
:o) Scott
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