Reply #6: This is heartbreaking--and infuriating! I think it bothers me more than [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

ANYTHING--more even than the torture and death that the Bushites have inflicted. It is the damage to the SOULS of our young people, on both sides, on all sides of this UNNECESSARY war, this war OF CHOICE, that most tests my non-violent philosophy and my conviction (on most days) that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Co. should not be executed for war crimes, and should not be jailed, but should be made to pay recompense in money and service (for instance, emptying bedpans at Veterans' hospitals), and that "truth and reconciliation" must be our mode, not revenge. It is the only way we can deal with their horror without perpetuating it in the world.

The demoralization and despair of our young people that Bush and Blair have deliberately caused is very close to being unforgivable. Whatever carnage they have perpetrated--tens of thousands of innocents slaughtered--is past. But the young people on all sides are the future. And many of them have been made desperate, suicidal, insane, their souls torn asunder, by the blood they have been ordered to spill, and by the defensive actions they have been compelled to take, in this wholly UNNECESSARY, greed-driven war! As Shakespeare's play "MacBeth" brilliantly reveals, the stain of it cannot be washed off, and murder leads to murder leads to murder--as it has in Iraq with civil war--until all are knee deep in blood, and insanity reigns.

That any politician or leader would DELIBERATELY generate war--without absolutely no need to do so, and with malice aforethought--is the worst crime that any human being can commit. And it's not so much death--which occurs in just wars, as well as unjust ones--it's horrible toll of the human psyche which has trouble recovering from any war, and CANNOT recover from unjust war. Ask the Germans of WW II. Ask Vietnam vets. The pain in unendurable. That is what Bush and Blair have done to the future. And they have no excuse. None! They can't even say they were sucked in (as in Vietnam). They can't plead compulsion (as the Germans in WW II). They freely chose this inflict this horror on the youngest, most vulnerable adults in our society--the poor, who sign up for military service to get an education or a job--and the young men and children of Iraq, who feel compelled by honor to defend their country or their community.

Angry as I am, I don't want Mussolini's fate, or Hitler's fate, for these leaders. We must stop the bloodlust here, now, forever--or humanity will incinerate itself and that will be that. The human species will turn out to be evolution's worst mistake--and the universe will go on without us, and maybe create intelligence somewhere else, that is better and smarter than we are. Peace, my friends. Peace now. And to Jason Chelsea's loved ones, peace now. Peace and love. May your unbearable pain teach us peace.