Why...?

What would happen if people asked why?

When the government comes and asks us to kill other human beings that simple word "why" cuts through all the patriotic blather and manipulation of baser emotions and asks for a reason, a real reason, why some person must be horribly killed for our convenience.

"Why" requires that those in power show cause, a good cause, a just one, a profoundly necessary one for the killing of others. Surely if the common law says that a person cannot be executed without proof beyond a reasonable doubt it stands to reason that the execution of hundreds, sometimes thousands and millions, should require that same level of conviction.

"Why" is the question that gives people power when asked to kill. Wars cannot be fought by the unwilling and if there is no good answer to the question "why" perhaps there is no good reason to commit to the irreversible action of taking human life, especially when those who are ordering it have taken great pains to immuize themselves from the actual effects of thier decisions.

"Why" requires all of us to really look at the other human being as a person and resist the calls of power to dehumanize the other to such an extent that we feel thier life is expendable because they have determined it to be so.

Now I am not a pacifist. I understand there are times when war happens. But I believe there are too many times when the common people, those asked to kill and be killed, forget to step back before the hostilities commence and simply ask themselves, thier nation, and those in power "Why?". The end result has too often been millions of lives extinguished for silly reasons.

Things will change if people just pause for a moment and ask "Why?"