Christmas 1914

This is a Christmas card from Germany, 1914. Although only 4 months old, World War I was turning into a bloody mess. On this, the Western Front, the trenches were full of men, water and, most of all, mud. It was indescribably awful.

Just think of the mind set that would create a Christmas card with the theme of "Peace" over the horror of the trenches. Then think of the same mind set that claims we are making "progress" in Irak in the 120 degree heat.

Still, on Christmas Day, 1914, soldiers in both armies laid down their arms and walked out into no man's land! The next day they got back to the business of slaughter.

I was brought to think about this strange episode in Man's warfare by this post of Mr. Putnam's which references in full another post on Spiritual activism, political revolution & New Age fuzzy thinking. Here is a quote:

In Bush's War on Terror, threatening to kill anyone who threatens us and torturing the people we capture have become standard operating procedures. The neocon solution to terrorism appears to boil down to one simplicity: Kill all the bad guys.

And:

To believe that Iraqis and other Muslims are a different breed of human, that they they don't hate and fear and love like we do, is simply crazy. But that seems to be the neocon/Bush belief.

Could it be that we don't know the first thing about human behavior? That humans, including Americans, operate on a much more fundamental level than we have been led to believe?

To say we learn nothing from History is a triviality. But we don't. At the risk of being iconoclastic, and given the conclusions drawn from the information thread, I am not optimistic. I really do not think that humans, particularly Americans, can control their (another over used term) destiny.

I guess it makes us feel warm and fuzzy that we can.