Professor Richard Hayes Phillips on war

[m.standridge]

from his Lyric Poetry Website, whereon one can also find other poetry--and some extremely interesting election data!

BEFORE I’D GO TO WAR

Before I’d go to war
I would ask myself: what for?
Could I easily explain
What exactly would be gained?
Could I say it’s worth the price
Of a single human life
To a grieving gold star mother
Or a sole surviving brother?

Before I’d go to war
To be fought on foreign shores
Where others pay the cost
I would ask: what would be lost?
What stands to be destroyed
By the weapons we deploy?
Do we cast so many stones
Because their culture’s not our own?

Before I’d go to war
I would ask: how would it end?
If the forces that we send
Win the war, what happens then?
In the wake of our crusade
Would the hatred never fade?
When we see what we have done,
Is it peace we will have won?

We have been through wars before,
And yet we always fight one more,
With peace as the intention
Of our hostile intervention.
How can peace be brought by war
When it never has before?
I would ask these things and more
Before I’d go to war.

Tijeras, New Mexico, 1991

I post this with the assertion that this is HIS material, not mine.
And all I'd add, is that, regardless of other differences in personal or political views or lifestyles we may have, I agree with him here.

[mulethree]

1. The Minstrel's website

http://web.northnet.org/minstrel/

He produced some of the best analyses on the ohio election data. Though it varies from 'hard evidence' to 'appearance of likely anomolies'. A groundwater specialist and travelling minstrel.

A ?Bard?