Witch hunts, the fear of those who are 'different' and man's inhumanity to
other men and women who have the temerity to disagree with majority opinion
is as old as the Christian Church and may even be older.
Priscilian of Avila was burnt at the stake in or about 385 AD for having a
differenty view of God from the papacy.
At the siege of Beziers during the Albigensian crusade, when the besiegers
realised that the city contained more catholics than cathars, demanded of
the papal representative what should they do in tyhe morrow, received the
following loving, just and Christian reply- 'Kill them all, regardless of
age, sex or order, kill them all for God will know his own when they get to
him'.
Have we progressed much since then? Dresden, Hiroshim, Nagasaki, the Twin
Towers, the Bader-Meinhof Gang, the IRA, the UDA and now our own governments
rather indicate that it is still easier to make war than manage a just peace
as it was in the days of Classical Greece.
Those who do not remeber their history are compelled to repeat it.
Justice demands that the rule of Inrternational Law be appiled to the
murdering terrorists who committed the obscene attack on September 11th.
However simply taking the war option before exhausting the legal process
places us, in whose name this war was comitted, in the same category of
unthinking and unjustified violence as Ben Laden and his men. How many more
fundamentaklist terrorists have we created in the weeks since September
11th? Rather more than we have bargained for, I imagine. Only time will
tell. It is my educated guess that we have simply fuelled and perpetuated
the long cycle ofviolence that is the natural breeding ground for terrorism.
War is only a viable option when all easonable means have been exhausted. In
this instance they were, sadly, never tried.
Best wishes
Tim
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