Editor
Currently, there are two wars being waged in Gaza and Ukraine. With non-stop news reporting, the tragic and horrific consequences are widely disseminated.
We in Canada are not detached from these conflicts, but we need to stop partisan protests, flag waving and ethnic violence against our newfound enemies. Remember the war is not here.
Not surprisingly, the actual outcomes of wars are often apparently unclear to combatants. There is no just war, simply the claims to justice of those who promote wars. Claims to self-defence, security of the state and its citizens, retribution for some perceived offence, restoration/preservation of territory defining nationhood, and protecting civilization, all abound in fancified propagandistic war rhetoric.
By whose authority we ask does anyone justify a war? Wars are all self-authorized by their initiators/combatants, not by any impartial, independent legitimizing legal/moral body, despite illegitimate attempts to bring God into it. Once war begins, any legal/moral justifications fly out the window along with the long lost distinction between combatants and non-combatants sunk in the euphemistic mire of collateral damages as winning becomes all.
One revenge fuels another equally hateful revenge in an ongoing cycle of all-consuming violence. It's not about how one wins, but whether one defeats the enemy. It’s war that needs re-thinking, not this political battle or that one.
As Canadians, we need to convince both sides that, contrary to emotionally fueled hatred, no one wins, as the vanquished will soon return to wipe the smirk off the face of the short-lived victor and the battles start again.
Putting political/nationalistic ideologies aside, Canadians should promote no war, not one combatant/victor over the other. Our only involvement should be as honest peace brokers, not displaced empathetic combatants yelling and promoting violence against other Canadians in the name of distant battles.
Jim Gough,
Canmore
