No war is winnable. No war has ever been won even when obliteration of one side has been completed. How can this be? By what logic can one say wars are impossible to win? The answer is that loss is the loss of conscious life. When conscious life is forcibly extinguished, regardless of the reason, evil is done.

Cain killed Abel and that was clearly seen as evil, the product of spontaneous rage. Germany was defeated twice in wars that were generally regarded as somehow good.But even if one performs moral calculus and moves in the direction of Jeremy Bentham, the numbers destroyed in these wars are substantial enough to render these wars evil in themselves.

Evolution or capitulation

My thesis is that freedom is choice and that choice has distinguished human life and may even exist far down the evolutionary ladder. Choices span worst to best. War has always been a choice. Its causes lie in the choice of selfish and greedy ways, the temptation to gang up and inflict hurt and harm, and in the historical record which is a shameful parade of conflict and war.

You would think the ugly vision of Trump's strong arm performances would enlighten persons of responsibility, like GOP Senators, to the need for moderation and reason. But history kicks in. The flow of money into the pockets of these Senators flows through the coffers of the war complex.

Proof positive

Afghanistan is a living sign of how idiotic war is as a solution to anything.

War is a choice. There is nothing necessary about it. Fighting is a choice. Hurting is a choice.Merely because it has been a massive presence forever does not mean it needs to continue.

It is a sickness like all of the diseases and plagues of the past. The reasons for war cannot fill a thimble. And the values that arise from the celebration of war are like a poisonous cloud over us all. The proof lies in the aftermaths for the families of the dead, the suicides of survivors and in the endless cycle of revenge that is almost a mandate for the small-minded who run such things.

Posturing shame

Then we have the specter of Nikki Haley at the UN. Here we have a reasonable effort mandated by all nations made a mockery by the world's most powerful nation. America is being made a fool daily by such onerous actions.

Consensus

The consensus to move from the binary thinking that enables war in the first place to a triadic commitment to finding solution s outside the box is growing. Most recent wars are understood to have been absurd. Nonviolent confrontation requires massively more courage than armed conflict and is 1000 times more effective.
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