Dear EJ,

I fear that our world can become so obsessed with
the problems of hatred and aggression that it will allow
peace and love to be regarded as soft and weak. Yet
our survival depends on their dominance otherwise
Stephen Vincent Benet's prophecy will come true:

"Oh where are you coming from soldier,
gaunt soldier
with weapons beyond any reach of my mind
with weapons so deadly
the world must grow older
and die in its tracks if it does not turn kind."

Christopher Marlowe had this to say:

"...Accursed be he that first invented war,
They knew not, ah, they knew not simple men,
How those were hit by pelting cannon shot,
Stand staggering like a quivering aspen leaf."

(Tamburlaine the Great. Act 2, Sc.iv.)

In a nuclear war however, there will be nobody standing
and, there will be no leaves remaining to quiver.

John Dryden said it equally well when in, "Alexander's
Feast," he wrote:

"War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honour but an empty bubble,
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying,
If all the world be worth the winning,
Think, oh think, it worth enjoying."

HI EJ,

Re Hiroshima etc.:

As you say, as ye sow, so shall ye reap. In mid-1945, it was assumed that the war in the East might take another two or three years, at around half a million casualties (mostly civilians in China) per month. The bombs saved millions.

I knew a gentle old bloke thirty odd years ago. It turned out that he had been an English POW in a Japanese coal-mine at the time of the explosions. He grew very animated remembering his slave-labour days, and the flash that, he implied, saved him.

Yes, the Russians had swept through Manchuria and were about to invade Japan from the West. Yes, the use of the Bomb thus had a complex political side. With hindsight, what might have happened in the region if the Bomb hadn't been used and if Japan had been partitioned like Germany ?

Dresden ? Guernica. As ye sow ....

We can't undo history, no matter how much we regret or castigate it. We should learn from it, of course. It seems, for example, that (at least until now) everybody has learnt that there can never be a reason to use the Bomb. Hopefully, one day, the Japanese will come to learn that there was never a good reason to enslave hundreds of thousands of women for the lusts of their men (and dispose of them once they had reached a use-by date). Come to think of it, there's something very primitive, almost sub-human, about that need to degrade the 'Other' so much.

Joe

Foxy's post seems to duck and weave around the questions of right and wrong which are at the core of all warfare. Countries get attacked by aggressors bent on mass murder. It has happened to countries whose people we really, really don't want to see exterminated. Especially our own country. Stuff about counterposing hate with love has never been known to stop them. Letting them do it is throwing their victims under the bus - an appalling betrayal. Do we betray them or don't we? Do we meekly welcome armed invaders or not?

By their own deeds the Japs demonstrated repeatedly that they were bent on pouring over borders to commit mass murder. So did the Huns. It is specious to try to balance Allied atrocities against enemy atrocities or to cop out by claiming that war itself is an atrocity - the atrocity is LAUNCHING war.

I think Foxy's pacifism seems to be demonstrating what I have claimed - that pacifists and warriors are joined at the hip. Working in concert they are a deadly agent of species extinction.

Regardless of how anyone feels about 18C, I don't understand how people think that acceptance can be legislated. You can make as many laws against vilification and discrimination as you want but you cannot legislate people's feelings.
All laws like 18c do is divide people and create a "them and us" mentality that is causing a bigger rift between between cultures than ever existed 50 years ago.
The only way to promote tolerance is for people not to be allowed to segregate or have access to services based on race or culture. Acceptance comes from understanding that in the end, the vast majority of people, regardless of culture, have the same basic needs and desires.
People who judge others based on racial grounds are the ones who have a problem, not the recipients of their comments. We shouldn't let the target of those comments turn it into their problem by encouraging recognition of any such comments.