New Media

At the risk of leading my readers to assume that jnarvey.COM has changed from a more general, current affairs commentary from Vancouver kind of web page into a war-mongering, reveling-in-violence blog, I’m publishing here a copy of my letter to the editor published this week in Vancouver’s Georgia Straight. The original article I was responding to can be viewed here.

By the way, I didn’t write the title for the piece. I’m kind of ambivalent about it.

War is tolerable when it takes out tyrants

Publish Date: 14-Sep-2006

Re: “War—what is it good for?” [Sept. 7-14]. Verne McDonald’s contention that war solves nothing is somewhat accurate, though some of the examples he uses actually seem to refute his thesis. He notes that the First World War was supposed to check German imperialism and give self-determination to smaller European nations; his only comment is “Oops.” Readers might be confused by that. The Allies did prevent Germany from becoming the centre of a European empire, and the death of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire actually did bring autonomy to some new nations—at least until round two.

The Allied nations destroyed the German and Japanese empires in the Second World War; unquestionably a good thing for the hundreds of millions of people who hoped they would be liberated.

As for McDonald’s little footnote about Israel, he seems intent on perpetuating the perverse myth that Israel’s strategy for survival is “continuous warfare with the Arab world”. Like many before him, McDonald confuses the conditions (terrorism, war, endless hate-filled propaganda, and economic sanctions) imposed on Israel by the Arab world with the extreme actions that Israel must take to defend its people from a second Holocaust.

War is a terrible thing. But letting tyrants enslave or eradicate entire nations is worse.

> Jonathon Narvey / Vancouver

Tags: Georgia Straight, Verne Macdonald, war pig, flower power, cry freedom