War is uncivilzed.
Tony Blair’s claim that we are engaged in “a clash about civilization” not “between” civilizations is profoundly correct… but not how he intended it. In reality it is a clash between different levels of barbarism, believing they are being civilized.
Civilization exists where just laws rein supreme. Laws that are made and enforced by a democratic process, applied equally to all, and most importantly, protective of a certain set of inalienable human rights. Civilization relies on laws not wars to ensure the freedom and security of its inhabitants.
War and terrorism (attacks by the weak) is sheer, unadulterated barbarism. War is hell. When civilizations wage war they automatically forfeit their civility. War by its very nature violates the inalienable human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (not to mention about a dozen other rights) and does so without the due process of law or a civil hearing. Anyone who has witnessed the “collateral damage’ of a dismembered mother, child or fetus will agree with the barbarism of waging war be it with high-tech munitions or improvised explosives. And all this doesn’t even include our distraction from the mass murder of thousands of more innocents in Darfur while we debate the legitimacy of a nuclear armed Iran.
US troops do try to avoid the unnecessary loss of innocent life but in the fog of war, murder happens. So far an estimated 30,000 thousand Iraqis, many of them innocent women and children have been killed since our invasion. Hundreds of thousands wounded, sick or made homeless as a direct result of our war of choice. Those responsible for war crimes at Abu Ghraib prison or the recently disclosed Marine slaughter of innocent Iraqi’s near Haditha (a town in western Iraq) in retaliation for the death of one their own, might be held accountable. But, those who started this war will not. In our ‘civilized’ society we call one person who kills another person a murderer. When one person kills a dozen people we call them a celebrity. But, when one person is responsible for killing thousands…we call him President.
Prime Minister Blair is lucky Gandhi isn’t alive to respond to his comment. During the British occupation of his impoverished nation a western journalist asked Gandhi what he thought about western civilization. Gandhi didn’t pause with his accented answer “I think that would be a good idea!”
When the US uses the law of force instead of the force of law to bring those who murder us to ‘justice’, those on the receiving end of our war making and war threats only see us as uncivilized. War only sets the stage for the next war. Only with the global enforcement of the rule of law do we have the real possibility for global civility. Only when war is outlawed will we be truly civil.
Civilization exists where just laws rein supreme. Laws that are made and enforced by a democratic process, applied equally to all, and most importantly, protective of a certain set of inalienable human rights. Civilization relies on laws not wars to ensure the freedom and security of its inhabitants.
War and terrorism (attacks by the weak) is sheer, unadulterated barbarism. War is hell. When civilizations wage war they automatically forfeit their civility. War by its very nature violates the inalienable human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (not to mention about a dozen other rights) and does so without the due process of law or a civil hearing. Anyone who has witnessed the “collateral damage’ of a dismembered mother, child or fetus will agree with the barbarism of waging war be it with high-tech munitions or improvised explosives. And all this doesn’t even include our distraction from the mass murder of thousands of more innocents in Darfur while we debate the legitimacy of a nuclear armed Iran.
US troops do try to avoid the unnecessary loss of innocent life but in the fog of war, murder happens. So far an estimated 30,000 thousand Iraqis, many of them innocent women and children have been killed since our invasion. Hundreds of thousands wounded, sick or made homeless as a direct result of our war of choice. Those responsible for war crimes at Abu Ghraib prison or the recently disclosed Marine slaughter of innocent Iraqi’s near Haditha (a town in western Iraq) in retaliation for the death of one their own, might be held accountable. But, those who started this war will not. In our ‘civilized’ society we call one person who kills another person a murderer. When one person kills a dozen people we call them a celebrity. But, when one person is responsible for killing thousands…we call him President.
Prime Minister Blair is lucky Gandhi isn’t alive to respond to his comment. During the British occupation of his impoverished nation a western journalist asked Gandhi what he thought about western civilization. Gandhi didn’t pause with his accented answer “I think that would be a good idea!”
When the US uses the law of force instead of the force of law to bring those who murder us to ‘justice’, those on the receiving end of our war making and war threats only see us as uncivilized. War only sets the stage for the next war. Only with the global enforcement of the rule of law do we have the real possibility for global civility. Only when war is outlawed will we be truly civil.
posted by Chuck Woolery at 6:51 PM
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