We have seen large two strategies of war in our world  these recent years.  The first seems constructed around ‘stock pile strategy’  which is whoever runs out of weapons of destruction first loses.  Civilians be damned we shall keep the fire burning.   The second is the ‘Peace for Profit’ strategy, currently in practice, which is whoever figures out how to profit from peace over war first wins through an articulated extortion withdrawal.  The profit making win usually and sadly is indifferent to the civilians who have to clean up, rebuild, and mourn the cost of it all .

In our American communities, the closest direct experience we tend to have that resembles the organic cost of war may be the result of a natural gas leak or a catastrophic train derailment, wind, fire or flood, all of which also carry a terrible price, but the disastrous event is usually not intentional.  War is very different in that it is a combination of intentional aggression up against desperate defense.  Intentionality matters. War is always someone’s offense fueled by shaky, anxiety-soaked economies and or ambitious borders using weapons of destruction and distraction to artificially rebuild an economy or empire.  This rebuilding is based on something other than the hard work and justice for the people.  We have domestic tragedies in this country sufficient to warn us off war and the funding of offensive wars.  Our cultures tend to glorify the cost of war as almost an apology to the pain of war.  Our veterans deserve all the help we can give them because as young men and women they were swept up in this vacuum of restraint called war.  We do appreciate their service. And yes, in this country we are mostly on the defense these day due our lifestyle that has learned and continues to learn to appreciate a pattern of life in neighborhoods not traumatized by the random intentional fall of bombs, snipers, fire, and poisoned gas. 

Good is the work of peace, creative justice and restraint.  Good is intentionally not getting used to war but rather attending to the social pressure points of human suffering that can explode with painful volitility  into war.  Justice and Liberty are a hard complicated balance to achieve, but it takes an intention of peace more powerful than the draw of war, which is a discipline we are losing and yet can regain with the work of mutuality and commonweal.