Mr. Harry Patch, 109 years old, the last known surviving British soldier who fought in the trenches of World War I:
"Too many died. War isn't worth one life," said Mr Patch.
He said war was the "calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings".
Sunday, July 29, 2007
The slaughter of war
Walt Calahan sent me the following quote from a BBC article entitled "Veteran, 109, revisits WWI trench".
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What I found particularly poignant about this report, when I watched it on tv, was that this wonderful old boy absolutely refused to contemplate any difference between the suffering of his people and the suffering of the German soldiers. As far as he is concerned they all suffered and he never said anything about this suffering without including the Germans. Personally, I think he has lived this long so that his testimony in that respect can be heard by us today. So many do not see that the suffering of an English soldier blown up by a roadside bomb in Iraq is exactly the same as the suffering of an Iraqui blown up by an allied air strike. This blindness to the other is one of the major reasons we are capable of allowing wars to happen and to be waged in such cruel ways.
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