My name is xxxxxxx, I'm a veteran of the first gulf war, a great full recovered alcoholic and a baby killer. I've learned a few things in the years that I have lived with that.
The reason for wars is incompetence. "Violence is the last refuge of the..." But we can NOT pretend that we are competent or that there is always another solution to a problem. Quite often, in fact, it comes down to an 18 year old with a gun, standing on the rubble of a destroyed village. The rest of the world was incompetent. No one else could find a solution.
What is shocking to me is how far the chain of incompetence leads back from the killing to the nice suburbs where the soldiers where raised.
I look at it this way: Our engineers have failed to develop alternative fuel vehicles with anywhere near as much performance as the current fossil fueled versions. If it were possible to buy one that had as much power and range while costing less to operate, everyone would have. That incompetence kills children in Iraq just as surly as I did when I was there during the first gulf war.
We have shown ourselves to be incompetent when it comes to convincing people that they should take the bus or make some other small sacrifice to decrease fuel consumption and save the lives of people with oil under their sand. Instead we sent that soldier to the Gulf to protect our supply. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
We allowed the death of less than 3000 people in the 9/11 attack to influence our thinking despite the fact that about 60,000 people die every single year in cars. Planes, trains and just about everything other than automobiles are safer than cars. But the people of the US are unable to convince themselves to take the bus, and incompetent to resist the manipulation of a President from the Oil industry to send our boys to war.
Here is an idea that I doubt you will accept, but if you investigate it further, perhaps you will come to the same conclusion I have: Despite "Three Mile Island" and "Chernobyl" our power from oil has done more damage and killed far, far more people than nuclear power ever has, or ever would if it were used as a replacement. Go look up the actual death toll from Chernobyl and compare it to the number of deaths attributed to smog in the US alone. Look at the pictures of the villagers who still live a few miles from the breached reactor. See the pictures of trees growing and dear grazing outside the melt down. The oil industry has been lying to you about it for years now. Agree or disagree, but take the time to think logically about it. People in this congregation have a better chance, but few people are competent to do so.
And even more than that: We have shown incompetence in understanding how what we buy and eat consumes fossil fuels. People love bananas. They have an "interesting" shape and people love to stick them in their mouths. But the local farmers are incompetent: They can't grow them as cheaply here, so we ship them thousands of miles on fossil fueled, unregulated, tramp steamers all the way from the banana republics. Putting a banana in your mouth is like suck... Is playing into the hands of the oil barons. The same is true of ANY items that is not locally grown and produced.
There is a family of 5 in Pasadena CA that grow the bulk of their own food on their own 1/5th acre suburban lot. Pathtofreedom.com But they and I have proven ourselves incompetent at convincing the rest of the Southern California to follow suite.
We have been unable to look at the "man in the mirror" and to "let it begin with me" or to "let he, among you, who is without sin, throw the first stone." We blame the government, the leaders, the hummer owners, and all the rest of the idiots we see around us.
I killed children in Iraq in 1992. And I ate a banana just the other day.