Veterans Day

The war to end all wars ended today in 1918. Forty million casualties resulted.
“The philosopher Bertrand Russell said, ‘All this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country's pride.”(MPR,”Writers Almanac” for today)

World War I lasted four years. The war in Iraq will have lasted four years in March. There have been, by one estimate, over 650,000 deaths so far, a rate more than double the 2,000,000 estimated deaths attributed to Saddam Hussein between 1979 and 2003.

President Bush says that we need to fight the terrorists over there rather than at home. How do we keep them over there? A wall? TSA? Is it like putting a dead rat on the highway and all the flies will be attracted to it, and the rest of the world will be fly free? How did the 1600 suspected terrorists in 200 cells that the British are tracking get to the British Isle? Weren’t the British fighting them over there also? Does the war only protect the US from terrorists coming here?

Or are Bush and Cheney”… living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart…”?

We are creating terrorists faster than we can kill them.