This veteran of too much war and too much talk of it with too little substance, at too great an expense for too many to pay and too few to benefit, has discovered a long neglected and priceless truth, that we now can only ignore at our irrevocable peril. In the Fourth Century-B.C., the super-wise philosopher Sun Tzu uttered an incontestable truth, still valid and destined to remain so: “It is best,” he said, “to win without fighting.” His wisdom was preceded by several generations of combatant statesmen, who were described by a contemporary historian as “…those with the clearest vision of the glory and danger before them, who notwithstanding, still went out to meet it.”
The combative leaders of Athens, Troy and other contingent city-states ruled and came to ruin, along with their families and followers; then relinquished power, forever, as their custom commanded and for some, their lives, as ordained.
This is now the premise and price of our own nation’s redemption. Those who propose and pursue warfare must hereafter agree to become its primary participants and the sole redeemers of its costs and cataclysmic conclusions. Americans can no longer afford to deal with the depressive duality that separates the privileged from ‘The People’. This proven process will once again honestly identify us as indivisible, with “…liberty and justice for all.”
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