Wendell Berry Quotes on War
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Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.
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The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.
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To imply by the word 'terrorism' that this sort of terror is the work exclusively of 'terrorists' is misleading. The 'legitimate' warfare of technologically advanced nations likewise is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents.The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in 'terrorism,' and the willingness to do so, as in 'war,' is not a source of comfort.
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If you know even as little history as I do, it is hard not to doubt the efficacy of modern war as a solution to any problem except that of retribution-the 'justice' of exchanging one damage for another.
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National defense through war always involves some degree of national defeat. This paradox has been with us from the very beginning of our republic. Militarization in defense of freedom reduces the freedom of the defenders. There is a fundamental inconsistency between war and freedom.
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In a modern war, fought with modern weapons and on the modern scale, neither side can limit to 'the enemy' the damage that it does. These wars damage the world. We know enough by now to know that you cannot damage a part of the world without damaging all of it. Modern war has not only made it impossible to kill 'combatants' without killing 'noncombatants,' it has made it impossible to damage your enemy without damaging yourself.
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Our century of war, militarism, and political terror has produced great-and successful-advocates of true peace, among whom Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., are the paramount examples. The considerable success that they achieved testifies to the presence, in the midst of violence, of an authentic and powerful desire for peace and, more important, of the proven will to make the necessary sacrifices.
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Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in 'justice' or in affirmation of 'rights' or in defense of 'peace' do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.
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It is useless to try to adjudicate a long-standing animosity by asking who started it or who is the most wrong. The only sufficient answer is to give up the animosity and try forgiveness, to try to love our enemies and to talk to them and (if we pray) to pray for them. If we can't do any of that, then we must begin again by trying to imagine our enemies' children who, like our children, are in mortal danger because of enmity that they did not cause.
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Small creatures die because larger creatures are hungry. How superior to this human confusion of greed and creed, blood and fire.