WE MUST ABOLISH WAR

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By Bruce K. Gagnon (about the author) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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For OpEdNews: Bruce K. Gagnon - Writer

One major reason to call for the abolition of all war is that in the "technological age" it is civilians who do the majority of the dieing.

As we are seeing in Iraq today, where over 1.2 million people have died since the U.S. illegal and immoral invasion of 2003, it is the innocent who are perishing.

In WW I, for every 100 deaths, 95 were military and 5 were civilian.

In WW II for every 100 deaths, 33 were military deaths as compared to 67 civilian deaths.

Hitler used his V-2 rockets to strike the cities of London, Paris, and Brussels. Clearly civilians were the targets.

The U.S. introduced the mass fire bombing of cities like Dresden and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hundreds of thousands of civilians lost their lives.

Estimates for the total casualties of WW II vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians.

Gino Strada, war surgeon and founder of Emergency Italia, with extensive first-hand experience in many modern war theaters, has argued that over 80% of casualties in modern high-tech wars are civilians.

There can be no such thing as a "just war" any longer. How could wars that kill innocent people who are not engaged in the fighting be called "just"?

We must call for the abolition of all war. It must be outlawed for a nation to spend their national treasury on weapons systems that end up killing women, children, and the elderly.

Like the abolition of slavery in the U.S., the abolition of war is a huge struggle that appears impossible to reach. But history reveals that such changes are possible if the people are single-minded and determined over time.

We must call for the conversion of the military industrial complex as our first-step in the abolition of war.

http://www.space4peace.org

Bruce Gagnon is the Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.

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