Thing Americans love more than peace is war

For all our constant prattle about love for peace, hatred of war, we spent 52 years, and counting, at war. George Bernard Shaw said, “There is only one thing people love more than freedom and that is slavery.” He meant, of course, slavery to habits, rigid ideology, anything which mitigates against freedom. Hence, we might say, “There is only one thing we Americans love more than peace and that is war.”

Now, we're engaged in three, Afghanistan, because, uh, well ... damn, I've forgotten. Iraq because, well, wasn't there a rumor it had WMDs and was coming after us? The third, against the Palestinians, because Israel told us to. And Israel is our friend. No matter its 1967 attack on USS Liberty, blame it on the Arabs to try to trick us to join them in their war.

The first war, Afghanistan, costs us billions per day and many lives; ditto for Iraq. For the Palestine war, we send Israel

$2.55 billion (fiscal 2009) just for military aid but in terms of lost American lives, we've got a real bargain here (so far), only the 2,749 we lost on Sept. 11, a small price to pay for friendship sake, yes?

Our ennobled aim is to spread democracy. But, hey, just because Hamas was elected democratically, if Israel and us don't like the results, they simply don't count. And we must continue our enlightened principles even though it means sacrifice of our general welfare, health, bridges and all that stuff.

Wilhelmine Bennett

Oxford