Preparing for war: Are we ready?

ESR Professor of Peace and Justice Studies Lonnie Valentine shares a reflection on the importance - and timeliness - of conscientious objection to war:

With the love of war growing strong, what will follow after the attack on Syria, the “Mother of All Bombs” dropped on Afghanistan, and now the threats directed at North Korea?  As with all previous war-making, this US administration sees how the people praise war.  Presidents going to war show strength. Is it so that every US President must have his own war?  Is our government now preparing to do what Mark Anthony exclaims in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar: “Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war” (Act 3, Scene 1)?  Unlike us, Mark Anthony was regretting that this would be the cry heard as the Roman Empire descended into civil war.  He says:

“Blood and destruction shall be so in use 
And dreadful objects so familiar 
That mothers shall but smile when they behold 
Their infants quarter'd (i.e. cut to pieces) with the hands of war.”

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra 

And so it came to pass that Mark Anthony entered the Roman civil war. However, he faced the one who would become Caesar Augustus. Anthony lost the war and fled to Egypt with his queen, Cleopatra. Reaching the shore, they committed suicide together.

                                                                      

Real child soldier, US Civil War

And so what of those of us who seek a better way?  Many young people have been drenched in war propaganda and think it could be grand.  My spouse, Genevieve, is the piano accompanist to a middle school choir. One girl was wearing a sash and Genevieve asked what it meant.  The girl replied, “I am a diplomat. I and the other diplomats will gather to make war.” With Genevieve's horror discussion ensued, but the young ones replied: “Peace is boring; war is fun.”

Of the many things that we can do to prepare for war, here is one option for consideration: Quakers and others seeking peace and pursing it need to teach our own young people about the option of conscientious objection to war.