[blogfocus saturday] of war and the human condition

Our 9th blogger this evening

The escalating war – Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran …

This particular series of wars across the east are deeply worrying because to many, they are just the trial run, the practice run, before the real thing. Britain is already mobilizing, issuing bio-ID and gasmasks, which is quite a departure because Britain has traditionally been caught flat-footed.

1 Many truisms spring from war and many analogies can be made. Bryan Appleyard opens fire with the analogy to end all analogies:

When - if - Blair stands down and when - if - Brown succeeds, I forecast British politics will mirror Iraq's. The Shias - Brownists - having gained power, they will do all they can to suppress the Sunnis - Blairists. The Sunnis, meanwhile, will launch a fantastically brutal insurgency, the main weapon of which will be Blair's insistence that the entire New Labour projected was, from its inception, crippled by Brown's vengeful bitterness.

2 Vox Day maintains that a country needs to be at one with all its constituent parts before even contemplating conflict:

Finally, if the national unity is not there, then don't go to war! This has been known since Sun Tzu was writing about the Moral Law and the importance of harmony between the ruler and the ruled. If the ruler does not have the confidence of the ruled, he will likely lose his war. And blame for it will lie with the ruler, not the ruled.

3 International Political Will takes issue with the anti-war lobby but for reasons not immediately apparent:

The anti-war camp claims to own the moral high ground, to care about human life, to respect the rights of people, and asserts that war obliterates all those in the name of power and money. But in the same breath, they call for American troops to come home. Are Americans so callous that they are willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of Iraqis just because they aren’t falling in line with the pre-designated ‘plan?’ Are Americans so heartless as to only care about American soldiers’ lives, and not at all for Iraqis? Do Americans only value that which is red, white and capitalist – and care nothing for the brown, Muslim and other? America got itself into this war based on lies and misinformation, aided by propaganda spewed by the allegedly “liberal media.”

Eleven more bloggers plus the Mystery Blogger here.