WAR: Why?

I am quickly approaching my 70th year of life. 

As I do so, I think I am succumbing to the myth that age brings with it a certain wisdom. 

I’m not so sure.  

I’ve never seen any intimate link between age and wisdom.  As a matter of fact, some of the most clueless individuals I have encountered have been somewhat “long in the tooth” as they say.

What I do know is that age brings with it a certain freedom to express one’s opinion openly and with little fear or concern with anyone else's reaction to it.

And so, after such a preface, I ask this question as I look beyond the narrow confines of my office window on this sunny Arizona morning:  why do we human beings ever wage war?

I ask not from a particularly pacifist point of view, but only as an observer of the many wars  -- hot and cold -- which I have witnessed in my lifetime.

I am one of the so-called “baby boomers” born in the aftermath of World War II. 

From my earliest days, both at home and in school, I was told that Americans engaged in that war to save Europe from the Nazis.  

Those goose-stepping barbarians wanted to erect a new world government -- The Third Reich.  It was godless.  It was ruthless.  The Nazis advocated the extermination of the weak and the defenseless.  Nazis were racist fascists who supported a totalitarian dictatorship of centralized government over the individual lives of its citizens.  Nazis conducted biological experiments on the unsuspecting and the unwilling.  Nazis euthanized the mentally ill and psychotic.  

And so, hundred of thousands of Americans and Europeans died on the battlefields of Eastern Europe.  Germany and its Axis allies, Italy and Japan, suffered horrible destruction and devastation.  And the world was introduced to a new age of nuclear weaponry which could level an entire city with just one bomb.

All this to save the world from the barbarism of The Third Reich.

But jump ahead some 75 or so years later, and what do we find?  

American and European culture have become utterly godless.  Self-gratification in all of its expressions and permutations is the new religion.  Abortion, the extermination of the most defenseless -- the unborn, is universally accepted for all reasons or specific cases, but accepted nonetheless.  

Centralized government continues to encroach upon the rights of individual States (in Europe, the individual nation states) and their citizens to determine their way of life.  Euthanasia is fast making inroads into the mindset of popular culture.  And the threat of nuclear weaponry falling into the hands of tyrants and militant radicals is the greatest threat we face.

So, why did we wage a war?  

If the Nazis had only waited and not invaded Poland, they would have succeeded in advancing their godless ideology throughout the world.  In fact, those ideologies have succeeded the Nazis themselves and are more prevalent in the world then even Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito could have imagined?

Then there was the Korean War.  Need I say more especially these days?

Then Vietnam.  Several of my elementary school classmates died in that one.  Just the other day, I bought a small plastic flashlight to keep in the glove compartment of my car.  Stamped into the plastic were the words:  Made in the Republic of Vietnam.  We lost that campaign against Communism pretty spectacularly, would you not agree?  And now, we do business with them to enrich their Communist coffers!

Of course, let’s not forget the Great Cold War that was supposedly being waged all during my youthful days. 

Once again, we built up nuclear arsenals which we were told were powerful enough to destroy all life on earth.  For what, to protect our society from “godless Communism”.  Look around, who really won the Cold War?  

Next, Kuwait.  Then, Iraq. Now, we are still fighting in Afghanistan and have adopted a new cold war existence with Iran, at least until we decide it’s time to sacrifice thousands of more lives against Islamic ideology, Sharia Law, and the establishment of a new caliphate across the globe.

But again, look around and tell me that Islam has not already conquered the cultures of the West, not in a religious sense but in a political and cultural sense for sure!

So, the more and more I think about it, wars aren’t fought over ideologies or ideals.  They are waged because they are profitable to warmongers in government and industry.  

Wars resolve nothing.  Perhaps, what they do accomplish is introduce ideologies among nations, ideologies which slowly but inevitably infect the world with the latest horror which a sinful human race can unleash.

Anyway, that’s the opinion of this almost 70 year old who wonders what the future will hold for the children of generations yet to be born.  Take it or leave it, it's the truth as I see it.

What do you think?  

But be careful, unless you're old and considered useless and ineffectual, you might want to wait to keep your opinion to yourself!