War is a conflict involving the organized use of weapons and physical force by states or other large-scale groups. Warring parties usually hold territory, which they can win or lose; and each has a leading person or organization which can surrender, or collapse, thus ending the war. Wars are usually a series of campaigns between two opposing sides involving a dispute over sovereignty, territory, resources, religion, or ideology. A war to liberate an occupied country is called a "war of liberation"; a war between internal factions within a state is a civil war. Until the end of World War II, participants usually issued formal declarations of war.
•"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers…. Each one owes infinitely more to the human..."
Sunday, May 1, 2011 4:35PM / Standard Entry
“All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers…. Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”
Published on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 by Vancouver Sun
If We Want Peace, We're Going to Have to Learn to Say No
by Daphne Bramham
We live in a world where young men and women are trained as soldiers to kill, whether they're Canadian, American, Israeli, Palestinian or Taliban.
Mairead Maguire speaks in Jerusalem earlier this year. 'The world is so dangerous now' she told The Sun's Daphne Bramham, 'that ... we have to start to disarm our own minds and look at the fact that there are always alternatives to violence.' (Photo/Agence France-Presse) Killing goes against everything we're taught from childhood about love and compassion. It goes against every religious doctrine and moral code.
It's small wonder, says Irish Nobel peace laureate Mairead Maguire, that so many come back from war "sick at heart."
Some of those soldiers never reconcile the fundamental contradiction between the job of killing and the belief that it's wrong. There are telling, but rarely noted statistics. Depending on which country's...