-Caveat Lector- >From www.harrybrowne2000.net/ > What is war? > > by Harry Browne > > The politicians' stirring phrases are meant to keep our eyes > averted from the reality of war -- to make us imagine heroic > young men marching in parades, winning glorious battles, and > bringing peace and democracy to the world. > > But war is something quite different from that. > > It is your children or your grandchildren dying before they're > even fully adults, or being maimed or mentally scarred for life. > It is your brothers and sisters being taught to kill other people > -- and to hate people who are just like themselves and who don't > want to kill anyone either. It is your children seeing their > buddies' limbs blown off their bodies. > > It is hundreds of thousands of human beings dying years before > their time. It is millions of people separated forever from the > ones they loved. > > It is the destruction of homes for which people worked for > decades. It is the end of careers that meant as much to others as > your career means to you. > > It is the imposition of heavy taxes on you and on other Americans > and on people in other countries -- taxes that remain long after > the war is over. It is the suppression of free speech and the > jailing of people who criticize the government. > > It is the imposition of slavery by forcing young men to serve in > the military. > > It is goading the public to hate foreign people and races -- > whether Arabs or Japanese or Cubans. It is numbing our > sensibilities to cruelties inflicted on foreigners. > > It is cheering at the news of foreign pilots killed in their > planes, of young men blown to bits while trapped inside tanks, of > sailors drowned at sea. > > Other tragedies inevitably trail in the wake of war. Politicians > lie even more than usual. Secrecy and cover-ups become the rule > rather than the exception. The press become even less reliable. > > War is genocide, torture, cruelty, propaganda, dishonesty, and > slavery. > > War is the worst obscenity government can inflict upon its > subjects. It makes every other political crime -- corruption, > bribery, favoritism, vote-buying, graft, dishonesty -- seem > petty. > > Government's Role > > If government has a role to play in foreign affairs, it isn't to > win wars, to assure that the right people run foreign countries, > to protect innocent foreigners from guilty aggressors, or to make > the world safe for democracy -- or even a safer place at all. > > If government has a role, it can be only to keep us out of wars > -- to make sure no one will ever attack us, to make certain you > can live your life in peace, to assure you the freedom to ignore > who is right and who is wrong in foreign conflicts. > > The only reason for military power is to discourage attackers, > and -- if they come anyway -- to repel them at our borders. Such > things as stationing troops in far-off lands, meddling in foreign > disputes, and sending our children to foreign countries as > "peacekeepers" only encourage war. > > To make America safer and to assure that we stay at peace, we > don't need to put more weapons in the hands of government > employees, or to reform military purchasing methods, or to make > more treaties with other governments, or to increase the military > budget. > > In fact, we need just the opposite of these things. We need to > make it as hard as possible for politicians to involve us in war. > And we need to create a defense system that relies as little as > possible on the normal workings of government. > > # # # > > [From Why Government Doesn't Work, pages 144-145. > Copies available for purchase online at > http://www.liamworks.com/wgdw/] > > > If there isn't a Momentum 2000 menu of the left side of this > page, click here to go to Harry Browne's home page. A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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