[MR] Mark Twain's War Prayer

[Rupert Gaddy]

Ok this is I hope my last off topic post, but I had to respond.

Twains poem does make one stop and think, I certainly have used it as an
antiwar poem in the  70's.

I should also point out however that Twain did fight in the Civil War, even
though he could have paid someone else to do it. There are times that war is
indeed the lesser of the evils.

Let me give you another quote from that same war, everyone knows Sherman
said that "War is Hell", but how many know the quote by Robert E Lee on the
subject?

"It is well that war is so terrible.  We should grow too fond of it."
Robert E. Lee Battle of Fredericksburg, 13 December 1862.

I wonder if the "surgical strikes" and limited collateral damage of
"civilized" wars the past 50 or so years has made people forget what war can
be, and thus more willing to engage in it, or to risk it. I wonder if
sparing the civilian population, (which produces the materials and food for
its army) had decreased the horror and hell of war so that it is now
acceptable since the majority of the suffering and hell is confined, at
least first hand, to only the military.

Certainly the sight of civilians jumping to their deaths to avoid flames,
the site of buried fire trucks and 400 missing and dead firefighters and
policemen, not to mention the small body parts being removed from the
wreckage of the WTC has struck a cord far more deeply than the deaths at the
Pentagon, horrible as they were.

What does one do when the enemy refuses to listen to reasoning, to threats,
to economic sanctions, even to being bought off?  Indeed, even when one
might wish otherwise, sometime the choice is to introduce the other side to
hell; to avoid be dragged there yourself.

Perhaps Twain would write today:

 Yes God, be on our side, for it is just, and we do not seek to kill all
that do not see You and Your will in exactly our way. For we will temper
justice with mercy just as You do when we deal with our enemies. For this
and many other reasons, though we are far from perfect ourselves, and have
made horrible mistakes in the past, let us defeat this evil.

Rupert