And
pray for intervention by peaceful thinker's who are led by a higher calling in life. War is a backwards way of thinking, but it gives the war monger's a chance to play with their new Toys.
It's not so much 'peaceful' thinkers, as rational ones. Before the invention of nuclear weapons -- really, before the 20th Century -- war was, if you calculated the relationship of forces correctly, a rational way to advance the interests of a country's rulers.
When Britain and France fought over who would get Canada -- that was a prize worth fighting for.
When Bismarck tricked the French into going to war, he was acting rationally. Germany profitted handsomely from his victory.
But modern technology has made this calculation void. (And not just nuclear technology, but inventions like barbed wire, modern artillery, the machine gun, aircraft). It's been irrational for the big powers to wage war against each other since the beginning of the 20th Century.
In fact, a man named Norman Angell (is that name significant?) wrote a book in 1910, demonstrating that war between the great powers would bankrupt both of them, and was therefore very unlikely to happen.
(
The Great Illusion , Norman Angell
[You can find it on Amazon. Evidently you're not allowed to link to the book on Amazon ])
Wrong. Nobody sat down and planned WWI -- we 'sleptwalked' into it.
(
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
2014 by Christopher Clark
You can find it on Amazon] )
Hitler was not a stupid man. But it was a bad judgement call for him to invade the Soviet Union -- he thought that Stalin's purges, which decimated the Red Army's officer corps, along with traditional Russian backwardness, would allow a quick win. And his decision to gratuitously declare war on the United States, after Pearl Harbor, was totally crazy. Once again, Germany found herself fighting everyone at once.
Nuclear weapons have so far kept the Big Powers, and the Medium Ones, from going to war with other nuclear-armed powers. (Israel had better use its nukes on Iran pretty soon, before the Iranians get the nuclear weapons they're working on.)
We must hope Mr Kim in Korea is rational. Since the Japanese and the South Koreans could probably put together a nuclear weapon over a long weekend, we may see the start of nuclear war there, if he isn't.
Even very intelligent, coldly rational men like Putin and Xi -- who didn't get to where they are in the environment they're in without being able to calculate risks, and strengths of friends and foes -- can make errors.
Putin made the mistake of believing his military, who were stealing the money intended to modernize their equipment. Let's hope the people in charge of Russian nukes have sold the uranium and plutonium to Iran and Pakistan.
At some point, Mr Xi may decide that the US is so inwardly rotten, our navy so weak, his weapons systems so good -- that's it's worth rolling the dice to recover Taiwan.
So of course, we should pray for peace. (I sacrifice a goat every year to Zeus, asking Him to restrain his son Mars and make him stick to helping the crops grow ... but Mars seems to have neglected that task recently, so he may be planning to get active on his other interest.)
But I know a little bit about history, and so I do what I can to give myself and my family the best odds of escaping the worst consequences of it, when it comes. And I urge other patriots to do the same.
www.biblword.net
