Say ‘no’ to war
If by this time humanity has not had enough of war, when will we have had enough?
Putin’s brutal assault on Ukraine has made the senseless horror of war front and center for the western world. It has awakened our sense of tribalism.
We see the Ukrainians as one of us, with shared DNA. The people appear indistinguishable from us, and the cities look like our cities.
The last time we were faced with a similar situation was World War II and we only joined that war because of an attack on us by a non-European power.
In the 1930s, both the United States and Britain refrained from targeting civilians in wartime bombings regarding such actions as savage and ruthless.
Before the war began, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain made a parliamentary speech declaring that it was “against international law to bomb civilians as such and to make deliberate attacks on the civilian population.”
The American State Department made a similar statement in 1937 condemning the Japanese bombing of Chinese cities, “Any general bombing of an extensive area wherein there resides a large population engaged in peaceful pursuits is unwarranted and contrary to the principles of law and humanity.”
President Franklin Roosevelt said, calling civilian bombing “inhuman barbarism.” None the less, at that wars end, vast areas of Europe and Japan lay in ruins from mass bombing, with civilian dead in the millions.
So much for not bombing civilians. Since that time, it has become common practice by all combatants to strike civilians.
By their very nature, nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, able to destroy entire cities at a stroke.
If they were used in a war, it would be a disaster that would very likely destroy civilization if not humanity.
While we are wasting lives and environment, climate change continues. Is this path of insane destruction where we want to go?
What does that say about our regard for our children?
Jerry Bloomer, Burlington
This article originally appeared on The Hawk Eye: Letters to the Editor: Say ‘no’ to war
