Tag Archives: opinionpeace

Here a war, there a war, everywhere a war

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Opinion piece by Mark Turner

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The  U,S. and Russia are conducting military strikes in Syria. The US and Russia may have strategic interests in bombing the crap out of their least favorite parts of Syria.  The scary thing is, the US and Russia are  waging very separate wars in this region.  What could possibly go wrong here?

Other U.S. war theaters include Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Afghanistan.  Except for when we bomb a hospital, we never seem to talk about these wars, or even what our success would look like in these places.  We simply accept the death toll as a cost of our freedom?

Last week, the president announced that US forces shall remain in Afghanistan after he leaves office. Does it bother anybody else, that a generation enters high school never knowing a time when their country was not at war?  Shall our children never know peace?

 

Preaching peace

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Opinion piece by Mark Turner

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In May 2015 Pope Francis said “many powerful people don’t want peace because they live off war.”

As I pointed out in my last post, war has been profitable…

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in Feb 2014, Pope Francis was quoted   “Every day, in the newspapers, we find wars,” he said, “and the deaths seem to be part of a normal day’s tally. We are accustomed to reading these things.” It seems, he added, “as though the spirit of war has taken control of us.”

What at do you think?  Has our perpetual state of war desensitized us to the point that we no longer have a responsibility to even talk about it?  As our U.S. Congress won’t even debate war authorization, shall we, as citizens, just accept an endless state of war?  I advocate peace.

 

Warriors score!

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Opinion post by Mark Turner

Last night, the Golden State Warriors defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers to take a 3 game to 2 advantage in the NBA Finals. Both teams know what they have to do to become champions in the best of 7 series.   It made me wonder about our military wars and warriors.  Do we really have any meaningful metric to measure the success of our heroic warriors? What does winning our war even look like?

Then, the Northrop Gumman ad from the Super Bowl airs.  This ad features an awesome new war machine that looks like a UFO from another world.  I found it truly stunning.

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The ad ends with the ‘Value of Performance’ slide.  It made me wonder if the only real metric that anyone cares about in our war is the ‘value of performance’.  Here is the 2 year stock chart for Northrop Grumman:

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Here is Locheed Martin:

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General Dynamics anyone?

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Judging from these charts,  it would appear that there is a metric for the success of our war.  Please tell me that there are better ways to measure the success of our war than these stupid charts!