War, in Its Particulars

Nobody asked but …

I got into a facebook discussion of the Selective Service Act of the FDR era, when suddenly it came to me, in a cohesive sense, that all acts of war are irrational, but connected.  Oh, the things we do for war!  If we want to talk about saving the planet — which in most cases means saving the human biosphere — why don’t we talk about war, the most destructive threat for all of us?  Many thought that FDR’s internment camps were the ultimate in wanton disregard. But what about the conscription of American males, keeping them in a holding pattern for death?   All of these are parts of the same deadly fabric, along with Dresden, Hiroshima, Bataan, the gulag, the stalag, and the final solution. If we do not resist war, in every particular, we are accessories, we are party to war, and we are party to the suicide of the human species.  Why do we diddle and fiddle with things we can hardly change?  Why are we concerned with the weather, and the current environment.  These are things that are driven by the inexorables of the universe.  Our failure is to ignore the things we can change, the imminently insane behavior of unprovoked aggression, the suicidal tendency of the species, our obsession with following the pied piper of war.

Kilgore