ALTERNATIVE TO WAR IS NOT PEACE, BUT� The refrain of war supporters, in every war, is "Well, what would you do instead?", whenever they are confronted by opponents. The typical responses to this challenge fall into three general camps:
1) Woolly liberals who favour 'talking' and negotiation as a universal panacea 2) Principled Pacifism, which has the benefits, at least, of intellectual consistency; or 3) Emotivism, arguing "It's wrong!" and simply leaving it at that. I would argue that their opposition to the horrors of war, the casual sophistries and the easy brutalities it brings forth from our masters, is perfectly justifiable. Currently, we live in a world of permanent warfare, not a decade of the last century passed without British soldiers being at war somewhere in the world, and not a year passes in which some section of our world community is not being ravaged by a war. In a society in which groups of capitalists must try and hold onto their property to the exclusion of rival groups, it becomes essential to have military forces in order to achieve this. Of course, if people have military forces, they are going to be prepared to use them. Wars in the past century have been uniformly fought over access to trade routes, natural resources, and geo-strategic influence. It would seem to be so in this century, with Osama Bin Laden bent on throwing the U.S. out of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, and America, obviously, wants to stay, and wants to continue exerting control over the regions natural resources (including the elusive Caspian Oilfields). War will continue so long as these conditions of competition continue to exist, and so the only practical alternative to war is not just peace, but the common and democratic ownership of the worlds resources by the entire human race, administered in our own interest. The murderous chaos of capitalism cries out to be replaced by a sane society. That is the answer to the warmongers' question. http://communities.msn.com/realworldsocialism __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com
