On the Verge of Peace

America seems always to be walking nervously, on shaky legs, along the ledge of war. Wherever we turn as a nation there are, at any given time, the possibilities of war.
by Charlie Leck

What say you about Egypt? Syria? Shall we involve our troops? [Troop is such an impersonal noun isn’t it? It is a man – that troop – or perhaps just a boy or a young woman.]

There seems always the temptation to get involved. Some presidents – perhaps most of them – have been unable to avoid the entanglements of war. When I look at my life time alone, no president has been free of its draw; not Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

Does that not seem remarkable to you? Incredible, perhaps? Throughout my life-time the nation has been almost constantly at war (even when we tried calling them other things, like police actions). There have only been some short periods of lull when it seemed our nation was not engaged in war. And even in those years there was the constant, tense and formidable threat of war.

The fool says...
...the United Nations has certainly done no good in the matter. The wise man counters that it would have been immensely worse – these last hundred years – without the U.N. to broker peace.

Let the United Nations make decisions about Syria and Egypt! We should not be unilaterally deciding to send weapons and/or troops into any of these engagements or places of disruption. These are not decisions for Senator John McCain to make – nor for President Obama, for that matter. Let the nations of the world decide what is right and just amongst nations and within nations.

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