This blog’s name is a warning label; generalizations are never true in a fullest sense of the word. Hopefully, they catch enough of the plate (watch out, baseball metaphor) to be of some value.
Back in college, when I had a paper due Monday morning, I’d sit down at my typewriter Sunday night (you may have heard of typewriters) and write what I called a Billy Graham special. I’d wave my arms a lot and try to sell passionate generalizations as well-researched insight.
Ok, so here’s one of those:
We shouldn’t allow any more little wars.
Watching the violence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, I heard someone say that wars like Viet Nam and Iraq II (two) would never be allowed to dribble on, draining resources, thousands of lives and large chunks of moral energy, if they required a total national commitment like World War II.
I believe that.
When only a few of us have skin in the game—what a cruel phrase, in this situation—it’s too easy to prolong the game.
If it’s mostly the lest powerful who are putting their loved ones’ lives on the line, if we can contract out a good portion of the killing and mayhem, if the devastation can actually begin to get boring, slip out of the big print and onto page two or three, become background noise—I’m now waving my arms—we shouldn’t be going to those kinds of wars.
What do you do with a regional conflict? What about a small time tyrant who's got to be stopped? Good questions. But whatever the answers, it should cost all of us something important, so we think more carefully, watch more closely and act more responsibly.
There is no such thing as minor surgery when it’s happening to you.
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