Commentary
“Thou shalt not kill.” — God
I don’t remember Moses (or was it Charlton Heston?) including any list of exceptions to that order. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.
Alas and alack, World War Three has already begun. Of 195 countries on this little blue marble, 110 are currently shooting, according to the Geneva Academy. That’s well over half, 56 percent.
The world’s greatest talk radio host Travus T. Hipp once told the story of his conversation with a man from the former Yugoslavia. The guy talked of his life, family, dreams and ambitions — one of which was killing a Serb before he died.
“Why?” asked Hipp.
“Because a Serb killed one of my relatives,” the man replied.
“When?” asked the former Tribune columnist.
“In 1352,” came the curt reply.
Some guys hold a grudge forever. And the world’s warring tribes keep warring to this very day. Some have been at it so long that the cause has been forgotten and doesn’t really matter anymore. (See below.)
Wars make big bucks for the ever-expanding military-industrial complex.
It’s disastrous for economies.
In 1966, Look Magazine published an interview with corporate consultant Pierre A. Rinfret, who unabashedly noted “I am the highest-paid economist in the world. My clients don’t pay me to be wrong.”
His bottom line: Peace is bullish. War is bearish.
Rinfret liked to use two examples: A tank and a tractor.
A factory builds a tank and the money used for materials and labor goes into the economy. Once.
Build a tractor and not only does that cash percolate thru the economy, but the tractor also keeps producing value for the next 50 years or more.
So which is the wiser option?
Not long before he died, Rinfret read one my Tribune columns quoting him and we corresponded for awhile. He had never changed his tune.
The pettiness of war has never changed, either. Some guy (it’s almost always a guy) wants something some other guy has. Or one megalomaniac wants to force somebody weaker to genuflect to his wonderfulness. Or else.
Only the weaponry has changed and the arsenal has become scarily more efficient in modern times. And more prone to accidental Armageddon.
As Walt Disney’s wacko inventor Gyro Gearloose once opined, “there’s no machine so smart that some guy won’t be too dumb to use it.”
We’ve got lots of dumb guys running things these days, at least 110 of them. (Regular readers know that my solution to eternal war lies with simply putting women in power. Moms rule! I can dream, can’t I?)
This week, the Guardian of London, UK, published a piece about U.S. evangelical Christians digging the latest defiling of the formerly holy land. I already knew the story, having done that research in 1991 when President Bush the Elder lied us into war in Iraq. (Like father, like son, eh wot?)
Then, as now, fundamentalist religious zealots were looking for signs of war expanding to the Plain of Megiddo (in modern war-torn Syria), for a battle called Armageddon. Which will bring Jesus back for judgment day.
One of my radio listeners sent me one of several books entitled “A History of the End of the World.” It described the myriad previous wars which were supposed to cause the return of the ultimate man of peace, none of which ever happened.
DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN. How powerful is that “end times” fascination? The latest sequel to the best-selling “Left Behind” book series jumped to number five in U.S. sales last week. That’s the sci-fi story predicting that one day, millions of true believers will just disappear, instantly “raptured” (transported) to heaven while the rest of us sinners get a one-way ticket to eternal global warming.
RAY OF HOPE DEPT. On Sunday, the New York Times printed a piece by veteran commentator Bret Stephens about his conversation with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
The wise man advised against playing by Hamas rules which entail coaxing Israel into a frontal assault which will lead to another gruesome WW2 Battle of Stalingrad. Bennett suggests a “squeeze” strategy, cutting Gaza in half and creating security corridors to allow refugees to move south. Israel will thus have isolated the battlefield and obtained a major advantage.
It’s more complicated, so I suggest reading the piece which will be linked to expanded web edition of this column at NevadaLabor.com/ War is senseless, but Bennett’s scenario makes the most sense of insanity.
RICHARD LAMM, Colorado’s late “Governor Gloom” (1935-2021), once co-wrote a nationally syndicated column as part of a series projecting the future at the Millennium.
I’ve been unable to find the piece online but the basic thrust was included in Lamm’s 1985 book “America at the Year 2000.”
Ironically, it starts with the most oft-quoted opening line in recent articles on the centennial of World War One: “Nobody really knows what caused it.” The assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife may have provided the spark, but the kindling had been gathered for decades. Maybe it was because three old primacies were teetering toward collapse and were too hidebound to close up shop. Indeed, WW-1 ended the Holy Roman, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.
“Nobody knew what started the nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, and in the end, it didn’t really matter,” I recall Lamm writing. The devastation so shocked the world that we disarmed.
That semi-unintentional nuking seems closer than ever, especially if you watch the doomsday clock on the front page of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
I hope and pray for less-than-rapturous end of times violence.
LIVING DINOSAUR DEPT. Newly minted U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, is convinced that “The Flintstones” is actually a documentary.
That’s not a joke, it’s a fact. Look it up.
Stay safe, get vaxxed and pray for those cruelly afflicted by the cruelly small minds on this small planet, especially victims of our perpetual wars.
Happy All Saints Day. / Feliz Dia de los Muertos.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.
Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 54-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com/ where links to all of the above may be accessed. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us
