169 / War

I read three newspapers every morning. One of them is the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Thursday, June 17th edition of the Chronicle was just full of "war." No surprise, of course. Our world is supersaturated with wars of all kinds.

We have the traditional wars in foreign lands: in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Kyrgyzstan.

We have the "war on drugs," the "war on poverty," and now, as efforts are mounted to stop the BP oil well blowout (please don't call it an oil "spill"), the "National Incident Commander" in charge of the response to the blowout, who dresses in a military uniform, says it's really a "war" out there:

"This is a war, it's an insidious war, because it's attacking, you know, four states one at a time, and it comes from different directions depending on the weather."

I would like to suggest that we reject the "war" metaphor as our chosen description of how human societies can deal with difficult problems.

When you really think about it, war just doesn't "work."