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"We got off the train. Tall, strong hard-muscled
Americans. Our drill instructors taught us how to march,
and how to crawl through machine gun fire. They taught
us how to rip out the enemy's throat and how to fire bullets
into his brain. Some of these trainees would actually
come home like Trumbo's Johnny. Others would die crying
for their girlfriends or mothers, mouths clogged with
blood and snow, eyes frozen open. All of this would change
us. Not for just awhile, but for the rest of our lives.
War does that. Gets inside. Doesn't want to leave. I carry
it. A discovery, a wound, a challenge. A face that cries
for mercy in the world where more than forty armed conflicts
are raging." "One cannot subdue a man by holding back his hands.
Lasting peace comes not from force." "No passion so effectually robs the mind of all
its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." "War is not nice." "In time of war the first casualty is truth." "No one wins a war. It is true, there are degrees
of loss, but no one wins." "If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your
friends. You talk to your enemies." "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for
war." "I know not with what weapons World War III will
be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks
and stones." "I think that people want peace so much that one
of these days government had better get out of their way
and let them have it.” "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million
bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new
homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top
of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its
hands and purity of its heart. "There never was a good war or a bad peace." "Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate
our allies." "Where is the justice of political power if it executes
the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself
marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and
pillaging the very hills?" " Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put
an end to mankind." " The ultimate weakness of violence is that it
is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks
to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies
it. You may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the
lie, nor establish the truth. You may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate, nor establish love. Returning
violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper
darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness
cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate
cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world
today [is] my own government. ...[F]or the sake of the
hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I
cannot be silent." "It is well that war is so terrible--we would grow
too fond of it." "You're not to be so blind with patriotism that
you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who
does it or says it." "War is only a cowardly escape from the problems
of peace." "The picture of the world’s greatest superpower
killing or seriously injuring 1,000 noncombatants a week,
while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission
on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a
pretty one." "If we let people see that kind of thing, there
would never again be any war." "Every major horror of history was committed in
the name of an altruistic motive." "You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." "I cannot believe that war is the best solution.
No one won the last war and no one will win the next." "War, like children’s fights, are meaningless,
pitiless, and contemptible." "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it." "For Christians, the historic peace churches and
well-established groups within various denominations have
been working diligently to develop resources and models
for ministries of reconciliation. A relatively new and
promising initiative among Christian ethicists, theologians,
and experts in conflict resolution has produced an alternative
to pacifism and just war theory: the just peacemaking
paradigm. In this paradigm the focus shifts to initiatives
that can help prevent war and foster peace. Working during
the 1990s, the scholars and activists developed ten key
practices and detailed guidelines for peacemaking: "War is fear cloaked in courage." |
Jump To Quote By: Berrigan, Philip Westmoreland, William For Further Reading: Charles Kimball, "When Religion Becomes Evil," p. 183-184 Religious Statements on Nuclear Weapons "The whole world must summon the moral courage and technical
means to say no to nuclear conflict; no to weapons of mass destruction;
no to an arms race which robs the poor and the vulnerable; and
no to the moral danger of a nuclear age which places before humankind
indefensible choices of constant terror or surrender."
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