Veteran's Day, 2005

Today we are supposed to honor veterans, those people who have served in the military, in war and in peace.
I would very much like to honor veterans: Let's have no more of them.
It is very much past time to rethink entirely the whole concept of government, that supposed objective agency of force.
Unfortunately government has become the primary agency of initiatory force.
As I write, the United States government, the George W. Bush administration, is engaged in a war of aggression.
So far, more than 2,000 men and women in uniform have been killed -- just from the U.S. forces.
Untold thousands of others have also been killed.
The horrors and fears and scars, physical and emotional, will remain for years and decades to come.
What governments do best is kill -- best but not always efficiently.
In the first Gulf War, more than half of the U.S. casualties were caused by "friendly fire."
During the Bill Clinton administration, the federal government attacked the women and children in a religious compound, using a weapon banned from international warfare, and some four score women and children were killed.
Haven't we had enough of mass killing, of mass destruction?
It is time, it is way past time to rethink the whole concept of government.
Let's have no more veterans. Let's have no more wars.