> the sad reality of the world is sometimes you have to stand and fight. For "democratically elected institutions" (as Nadella put it) and by tacit approval th

> the sad reality of the world is sometimes you have to stand and fight. For "democratically elected institutions" (as Nadella put it) and by tacit approval the wars of aggression and internal repression they perpetrating -- or against the corruption and profiteering in them, that helps create a lot of these sad realities and never seems to make them any better? > It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war. -- Douglas MacArthur It's like when you ask someone who is running around with a knife to drop the knife, and they scream "What? Should I just let anyone do anything to me? Why don't I just stop breathing right now?" Pacifism is a straw man. The issue isn't that the US should unilaterally disarm; but as the world leader in arms racing, and also kinda not slowing even when major opponents topple (also see the cold war), and also a rather sad reality of a track record of murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians, directly or by direct support, it would be nice for the US to have the moral integrity and backbone matching its military capability and economic power rather than inversely proportional to it. > No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments. -- Smedley Butler > The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business - ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed. -- Colonel James G. Burton That's the sad reality of not just the US, but also the US.