Recently I heard two of the best comments yet on the war. The first is below:
It occurred to me that the war is very much like that Star Trek episode. Captain Kirk's Star Trek. Do you remember the one where these 2 planets are at war, but they fought the
war with computer simulations. the computrers would list the death tolls. Then the people would line up in extermination rooms. It was all socivilized. That seems to be what we are trying to make war these days, civilized. We haven't resorted to computers and extermination rooms yet, but they may not be far away. We talk of "acceptable losses". We use "smart" bombs and "smart" missles to hit only the "bad" buildings and kill only the "bad" men. We make rules that say you are only allowed to kill people in certain ways. It is okay to kill someone as long as you don't use "mass destruction". And don't show there faces afterward. We don't want to disturb the people back home who are watching, clicking between the war and reruns of Friends. We convince ourselves that it is okay to destroy buildings, some of which are peoples homes because afterall we are going to build new ones when we are through. All these efforts made to civilize and sanitize.
Captain Kirk had it right. Take away the civilization and the sanitization. Show war for what it really is. Maybe then diplomacy would have a better chance!
