The First Casualty of War (Warning: graphic)

"It took me quite a long time to realize this, because the spectacle, fire and blood of war is so distracting, but the true violence of war does not occur on the battlefield, but in the homeland.

The carnage of conflict is only an effect of the core violence which supports war, which is the military enslavement of domestic citizens through the draft – and even more importantly, the direct theft of their money which pays for the war.

Without the money to fund a war – and pay the soldiers, whether they are drafted or not – war is impossible. The actual violence of the battlefield is a mere effect of the threatened violence at home. If citizens could not be forced to pay for the war – either in the present in the form of taxes, or in the future through deficit financing – then the carnage of the battlefield could never possibly occur.

We can only point guns at foreign enemies because we first point guns at domestic citizens.

Without taxation, there can be no war.

Without governments, there can be no taxation.

Thus governments are the first cause of war.

The truth of the matter, I believe, is that deep down we know that if we pull out this one single thread – that coercion against citizens is the root of war – we know that many other threads will also come unraveled.

If we recognize the violence that is at the root of war – domestic violence, not foreign violence – then we stare at the core and ugly truth at the root of our society, and most of our collective moral aspirations.

The core and ugly truth at the root of our society is that we really, really like using violence to get things done. In fact, it is more than a mere aesthetic or personal preference – we define the use of violence as a moral necessity within our society.

How should we educate children? Why, we must force their parents – and everyone else – to pay for their education at gunpoint!

How should we help the poor? Why, we must force others in society to pay for their support at gunpoint!

How should we heal the sick? Why, we must force everyone to pay for their medical care at gunpoint!

Now, it may be the case that we have exhausted all other possibilities and ways of dealing with these complex and challenging problems, and that we have been forced to fall back on coercion, punishment and control as regretful necessities, and we are constantly looking for ways to reduce the use of violence in our solutions for these problems.

However, that is not the case, either empirically or rationally."

[link to freedomainradio.com]

The Real Cause of War

[link to www.youtube.com]

You know it sounds to me that he is suffering from having actually been there as a soldier and questioning in retrospect that actions of things that could not have been prevented.

Sometimes "rolling hand grenades into children's rooms" is unpreventable. Civilian casualties are a fact of war.

You simply have to move on with life. Focus is a choice. We can focus on negative events in our life that we couldn't prevent, or we can focus on the good aspects of life. A beer. Sailing, kayaking, whatever. Or focus on the fact that children in war zones wind up dead. Illegal killing and accidental killings in combat are NOT the same thing. One is a premeditated act, and the other is an unplanned accident for which we are not accountable.

"Your focus determines your reality"

Qui-Gon Jihn, Star Wars

May God Forgive Us All!!

"Keep your mind on the here and now"

Qui-Gon Jihn, Star Wars

______________________


Not past unpreventable accidents. That's not why we are here.

Catch yourself drifting into regret, and go for a walk. Admire the weather. Architecture of nice neighborhoods as you walk. The trees. The birds.

Or anything. Everything is a distraction from the past. You simply have to be self aware and catch yourself drifting mentally on negative thoughts. Catch it, then refocus onto something positive.

there will always be war as long as man exists. Utopia
will never be achieved. Myself, I will never be nieve
enough to believe that war will stop. It is horrible
that people have to die for needless gains but it is
the way it will always be.

"The first casualty of war is...Truth." Hiram Johnson.

May God have mercy on all the rest of the casualties and judgment on those who perpetuate it.

Great thread..

Flying a flag on Memorial Day does nothing to honor the dead. PEACE will honor them, that way their death will not be in vain.

"They died because we are ruled by sociopaths."

MORON ALERT!!!

+infinity

Sir, you are correct!

My goal is World Peace. I will achieve it.

I will not tire, I will not falter, I will not stop until I wake Myself up to the FACT that the first-person perspective of the Universe, that is, My point of view, is the correct one. That means that there is Only One I, Only One Me, Only One Self.

I, Me, My Self = Triune God.

Wake up and see that I am the Responsible One for all this killing. I am the Responsible One for all of the stultifying ideologies. I am the Responsible One for propagating the wars and political scheming.

I am My Brother and Sister that I send off to war. I am My Brother and Sister that die. And, being that there is Only One I, I, then, am the killer of My Brother and Sister.

*hangs head in deep shame of the crimes and pain I have committed against My Self*

The only way to World Peace is waking up and knowing that I am the Responsible One for the Universe. It is My Creation. Being the Paradox that I am, I will continue to destroy My Creation until I wake up.

Yes good point. All soldiers are paid killers. Always have been and always will be. I'd like to make sure that ours are the best. Because there will always be aggressors like Gingus Khan just waiting for a resource rich nation to lower its sword first. As long as there are humans, there will be a need for trained soldiers.

For instance, Chamberlain had your sentiment and it took Churchill so many years to right the world after so many people had died needlessly. Wishing we can all get along doesn't make it so. Sometimes it takes the threat of war to stave it off. Sometimes it takes killing all of the aggressors, including their children to give the next generation the opportunity to have a lasting peace. Freedon isn't free. And that's not just a cliche.

I'd bet that most if not all peace-nicks eat some form of animal; steak, burger, eggs, jello (yes jello) but have no idea how it makes its way to their plate. These are the same people that hold candles and sing hymms hoping the violence will stop. For one week, I'd like to have open season on criminals. Shoot them on sight. Then we'd have a century of peace. Instead we warehouse them with cable tv, 3 great meals and sex change operations. Argh! When will we get back to eye for and eye justice.

Dreaming of peace is for children. War is a fact of life. Let the adults do their job.

OP is a delusional douche, unicorn glitter spreading, group hug loving,drum circle enthusiast,naive fuckstick. Why don't you put on your Birkenstocks jump in your Prius and drive to Canada and seek citizenship there? They have unfortunately gone the peacenik PC Care Bear route in the last 30 years so they'll welcome your ass. Scouts out!

"There's always a bigger fish."
Qui-Gon Jihn, Star Wars

Yum, fish...

:)

.






I love bombing the sh*t out of other countries! Hell Yeah!!!

USA! USA! USA! USA!








.

I pity this small, infantile mind that can do nothing but shake his tiny fist and curse.

Wars have only brought Humanity Pain, Suffering and lost Liberty...

:snakesarrows:

"Another record! Put one on the board for Goldfish"

"You have a gift, save the ones you can."


Senior Chief Randall, The Guardian

The Problem - Part 1 of 2

[link to www.youtube.com]

Real Solutions - Part 2 of 2

[link to www.youtube.com]

A Handout for Statists

Me: Tell me, do you think that violence is wrong?

Statist: Yes, violence is wrong except in self-defense.

Me: Agreed, except in self-defense. So tell me, how do you think that problems should be solved, if we should not use violence?

Statist: Well, I think that people should become more active in government, and that governments should do ABC, X, Y and Z.

Me: But how do you reconcile your objection to violence with your support of government programs, since government programs are paid for through taxation, which is coercive?

Statist: Huh? What are you talking about? Taxation is not coercive.

Me: Taxation is coercive, since if you do not pay your taxes, you are kidnapped at gunpoint and thrown in jail where if you try to escape, you are shot.

Statist: But this is a democracy/republic, where we choose our own governments.

Me: Being offered a choice between two violent alternatives is not the same as being free to choose. If a store owner gets to choose which Mafia gang he pays 'protection' money to, can it be really argued that he is making a 'free' choice? If a woman can choose between two potential husbands but will be forced to marry one of them can she said to be really 'choosing' marriage? People can only freely choose governments, if they have the choice not to choose governments.

Statist: Well there is a 'social contract,' that binds people to their governments.

Me: There is no such thing as a 'social contract.' Unless they have been granted power of attorney, people cannot justly sign contracts on behalf of others. If one man has the power to unilaterally impose his will on another and call it a 'contract,' then logically a man can steal from a woman and call it 'charity.'

Statist: But I accept the social contract and so do you if you drive on the roads.

Me: First of all, your choice to honour a contract does not give you the right to force me to honour it. You can choose to buy a house, but you cannot justly force me to pay for it. If you forge my signature, I am not bound to honour the contract and I have never agreed to a 'social contract' of any kind. Secondly, it is true that I use government services, but that is irrelevant to the central moral question of coercion. If a slave accepts a meal from his master, is he condoning slavery?

Statist: I suppose not. But still, you implicitly accept the social contract by continuing to live in a country, as Socrates argued.

Me: Can I justly create a 'social contract' that allows me to rob anyone who lives in my neighborhood and say that if people continue to live in 'my' neighborhood, they are expressly consenting to my new social contract?

Statist: Well, no, but we are talking about governments, not individuals . . . .

Me: Is the government not composed of individuals? Is 'the government' not just a label for a group of individuals who claim the moral right to initiate force against others a right they define as evil for those they use violence against? If you take away all the individuals who compose 'the government,' do you still have a government?

Statist: I suppose not. But that is beside the point you say that taxation is coercive, but I have paid taxes my entire life, and I have never had a gun pointed at my head.

Me: Sure, and a prisoner is not shot if he does not try to escape. If a slave conforms to his master's wishes because of the threat of violence, the situation is utterly immoral. Does the Mafia have to actually burn your shop down for the threat to be violent?

Statist: No. However, I do not accept the premise that the government uses force to extract taxation from citizens.

Me: All right - is there anything that the government does that you disagree with? Do you agree, for instance, with the invasion of Iraq? [Keep asking until you find some program the statist finds abhorrent.]

Statist: Now, I think that the invasion of Iraq was morally wrong.

Me: Why?

Statist: Because Iraq had done nothing to threaten the US.

Me: Right, so it is an initiation of force, not self-defense. Now you do realize that the war in Iraq is only possible because you pay your taxes.

Statist: To some degree, of course.

Me: If the war in Iraq is morally wrong, but it is only possible because you pay your taxes and your taxes are not extracted from you through force then you are voluntarily funding and enabling that which you call evil. Can you explain that to me?

Statist: I pay my taxes because I'm a citizen of this country. If I disagree with the war, then I should run for office and try to stop it.

Me: All right, if you were against child abuse, would you voluntarily fund a group dedicated to abusing children?

Statist: Of course not!

Me: And if you did claim to be against child abuse, and you voluntarily funded a group dedicated to abusing children, and I said that you should stop doing that, and you replied that you would not but that if someone did oppose this abusive group, they should try to infiltrate this group, take control of it, and somehow stop it from abusing children, would that make any sense at all?

Statist: I guess not.

Me: If you were against the war in Iraq, but volunteered for it and agreed to fight without a salary, and spent your own money to cover all your expenses, do you understand that your position would be utterly incomprehensible? You would claim to be against something and then expend enormous amounts of time, effort, money and resources supporting it?

Statist: Yes, that would make little sense.

Me: Thus do you see that your position that the war in Iraq is a moral evil, but that you are voluntarily funding it through your taxes, makes no sense at all? If the war in Iraq is a moral evil, but is only enabled through your voluntary funding, then continuing to fund it is to openly admit that it is not a moral evil. If you are forced to fund the war in Iraq, you can maintain that it is a moral evil, because it is the initiation of the use of force. However, the taxation that is also the initiation of the use of force against you must also be a moral evil, because you are forced to fund the initiation of force against others. Thus either taxation is coercion, or you are the worst form of moral hypocrite, by voluntarily supporting that which you call evil. Does that make sense?

Statist: I can certainly see that position.

Me: Can you find any logical flaws in my position?

Statist: No, but I still think that you are wrong.

[link to www.strike-the-root.com]

Misfortunate accidental killings are not a justification for military politics.

The war on terror is justified. Especially when you consider the hidden reasons for it, and I don't mean the spread of radical religion. I mean the security procedures and reduced freedoms and at some point in the future a system in place designed to punish people for every minor violation which may be decades away, or maybe not.


Accidents happen. Children die in war and it does not determine military philosophy.

And while I often disagree with our country's leadership, the war on terror is justified. As was removing Saddam from power. He killed thousands of his own people, young boys

Divine justice if you ask me.

See above post.......

You seem well and truly brainwashed, or your morals are completely in the toilet...

Our fathers and grandfathers fought world war two so aggressors couldn't just simply invade countries, kill the people and steel their shit......