But we are thinking not just of the children who are living beneath the bombs.

From "Peaceableness Toward Enemies, 1991."

This latest war has been justified on a number of grounds: that it was a war to liberate Kuwait; that it was a war to defend ‘the civilized world’ against a dangerous maniac; that it was a war to preserve peace; that it was a war to inaugurate a ‘new world order’; that it was a war to defend The American Way of Life; that it was a war to defend our supply of cheap oil. These justifications are not satisfactory, even when one supposes that they are sincerely believed.

...

This war was said to be ‘about peace.’ So have they all been said to be. This was another in our series of wars ‘to end war.’ But peace is not the result of war, any more than love is the result of hate or generosity the result of greed. As a war in defense of peace, this one in the Middle East has failed, as all its predecessors have done. Like all its predecessors, it was the result of the failure, on the part of all of its participants, to be peaceable.

...

A war against the world is helplessly a war against the people of the world. Against everybody. The innocent. The children. Increasingly, as modern militarism builds and brawls over the face of the planet, people of ordinary decency are thinking of the children. What about the children? we ask as our leaders casually acknowledge the inevitability of ‘some civilian casualties’—or ‘collateral casualties,’ as they put it. But we are thinking not just of the children who are living beneath the bombs. We are thinking, too, of our own children to whom someone must explain that some people—including some of ‘our’ people—look on the deaths of children as an acceptable cost of victory.

...

The essential point is the ancient one: that to be peaceable is, by definition, to be peaceable in time of conflict. Peaceableness is not the amity that exists between people who agree, nor is it the exhaustion or jubilation that follows war. It is not passive. It is the ability to act to resolve conflict without violence. In the face of conflict, the peaceable person may find several solutions, the violent person only one.

...

Finally, if we want to be at peace, we will have to waste less, spend less, use less, want less, need less. 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.


WENDELL BERRY