I want to say one other challenge that we face is simply that we must find an alternative to war and bloodshed. Anyone who feels, and there are still a lot of people who feel that way, that war can solve the social problems facing mankind is sleeping through a great revolution. President Kennedy said on one occasion, “Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.” The world must hear this. I pray to God that America will hear this before it is too late, because today we’re fighting a war.
Those are the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoken in 1968 at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. At the time of his death forty years ago today, Dr. King was crusading to end hunger and to end the war in Vietnam. His views on that war caused a great deal of controversy at the time. He was branded “unpatriotic” and was widely criticized, not only by white America, but also by many leaders in the black community. The photo above was taken by Sgt. Curt Cashour of the U.S. Army of two soldiers with the 4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division standing guard at a market in Al Doura in Baghdad. And so it goes…
bookbabie 
Yes!
I imagine war will have a museum to the absurd someday. It is the sickest industry. I can’t wrap my mind around it… guns, too. It all makes me think i live around people who are literally dead, fear infested fear teaching and running the country.
Then they claim to be Christians. ? Or followers of any religion.
I don’t think any soldier likes war. But, the reality of life is there will always be war. The individual beliefs of the soldiers are superseded in service to their nation’s interests. We are as a nation what we are because many were willing to go to war. War cannot be acurately analyzed in the present, nor is it possible to defend from most of our moral perspectives, but there will always be rogue nations who will not cease from their violent paths until they are met with superior force. I think as a nation we have been very cautious and hard to provoke over the course of our short history, but many nations are free because we chose to take action. I personally wish it weren’t so, but I am a realist and a student of human nature and I know we are not getting better. We can make an individual difference in our dealings with those who know us and perhaps delay the cycle, but war will happen again.
Well said Dennis and mansuetude.
Thank you. I read and write with a dictionary in my lap. Many linguistic skills have been lost to thirty years of interpreting slang.
I hope we live to see a day when the disparate power mad factions of the world fuse into one power mad council so that we might still have crooks and evil politicians but at least won’t have different countries shooting at each other and trying to steal each other’s natural resources and trade routes.
War will never go away because there will always be young testosterone driven guys all over the world who will (without much thought and hardly any motive) jump at the chance to be involved in armed conflict.
A sabre rattling politician, without his young dogs of war, is a paper tiger .
The whole warrior cult ignores the misery that so-called “patriots” cause.
Most people do what they think is the right thing, unfortunately they are quite often wrong.