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General Discussion / Re: A question
« on: February 16, 2014, 12:17:37 pm »There's that old saying: "A general sacrifices soldiers. A pacifist sacrifices civilians."Yeah, that's a good way to try and downplay that the general sacrifices civilians just as happily as they do soldiers, and often for less reason. Don't mistake the recognition that all violence is a sign of failure as a sign of pacifism. Dealing with failure is as much a part of life as anything.
War has never brought good. At its best, it has removed a block -- the failure of some party to act as a decent human being -- to good action. All too often it doesn't manage that. It is occasionally necessary, when failure abounds on all sides of a conflict (As strife notes, there are few responses to a failure of the magnitude of naked force besides naked force in response), but it never brings benefit, only the potential for benefit, and then only at great cost. War is never "worth" it, because at its best it is a consequence of failure, not the purchase of some beneficial thing. Its cost goes toward paying a debt, not buying a good.
For all the political motivation a soldier can provide dead in a ditch, they can provide a thousand times more alive and working toward the prevention of violence through other means. That their lives are spent in such a way is no good thing. That the failure of the rest of our societies require it is a goddamn tragedy.
There's respect and condolence to those that shoulder that burden of failure, most of the time. S'just a damned shame they're out there, paying that price, being burnt up as sacrifice instead of helping to bring benefit (not to say the latter doesn't happen as well, of course, but it is rarely, if ever, to equal degrees.).
