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| "Still Winning Hearts and Minds" |
There are two photos below and
both are middle Eastern neighborhoods in different countries where families lived ... husbands,
wives, elderly relatives and lots of kids. Both neighborhoods
were destroyed in a show of force by political leaders who called up
ruthless and incessant shelling and bombing against civilians, all the while denying they were doing so. These were political
and tactical decisions to use deadly force to achieve total control of a
populace ... the old 'bombing your way to peace' is still happening with a vengeance.
In the two photos below please identify which bombing was ordered by Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and which one by Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel into the Gaza Strip.
Scores were killed or gravely wounded in each country, mostly women and children. And while you are looking at the photos, let's also go back and remember the USA's ceaseless high altitude carpet bombing of Vietnam in the 60's and 70's. Both Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington determined that of the 3.8 million violent war deaths in Vietnam, two million were civilian.
We don't want to ask ourselves, but were Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon's ultimate decisions to bomb and shell indiscriminately any less deadly that those of other leaders who decide to aggressively bomb and shell knowing the civilian toll will be terrible?
Can you detect any differences between the two photos below from Syria and Gaza? Which one shows Syria's bombing of it's own civilians and which one shows the results of Israeli bombing and shelling of the tiny densely packed sliver of humanity called the Gaza Strip?
Can you see any difference in the destruction of homes or the slaughter of the innocent? Does one photo look more peace-producing than the other?
Do the levels of hatred at work here seem about equal in each photo?
In the two photos below please identify which bombing was ordered by Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and which one by Benjamin Netanyahu from Israel into the Gaza Strip.
Scores were killed or gravely wounded in each country, mostly women and children. And while you are looking at the photos, let's also go back and remember the USA's ceaseless high altitude carpet bombing of Vietnam in the 60's and 70's. Both Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington determined that of the 3.8 million violent war deaths in Vietnam, two million were civilian.
We don't want to ask ourselves, but were Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon's ultimate decisions to bomb and shell indiscriminately any less deadly that those of other leaders who decide to aggressively bomb and shell knowing the civilian toll will be terrible?
Can you detect any differences between the two photos below from Syria and Gaza? Which one shows Syria's bombing of it's own civilians and which one shows the results of Israeli bombing and shelling of the tiny densely packed sliver of humanity called the Gaza Strip?
Can you see any difference in the destruction of homes or the slaughter of the innocent? Does one photo look more peace-producing than the other?
Do the levels of hatred at work here seem about equal in each photo?
Photo One:
Photo Two:
Put down your pencils, end of quiz. For now.
"War remains the decisive human failure."
John Kenneth Galbraith
