What Would You Say To A Ghost?

Violet:

I don't understand why you say the soldiers' lives were wasted because they died in battle. These men were God's on precious sons. They were husbands and children. There lives were rich in meaning, which is part of what creates the sorrow of their loss. They did not live in vain, just because you see their deaths as unnecessary. Try to look at them through God's eyes.

Kate

Oh Violet, I stumbled upon your contribution here, and I could not leave without some comment. Have you heard of "revisionist history"? Where we take a look backward at another time, and without being there, try to "judge" the times, and places and circumstances without being there? Sometimes it is all we can do, but it is similar to judging another person "without walking in his moccasins".

Were those hundreds of thousands of young lives all wasted? Sometimes it does seem so, especially as I read the amazing histories of those Civil War battles (have you read them?) the terrible slaughter, the awful wasting away of lives in prision camps filled with disease, but think of the lives that were "wasted" to slavery, the bondage of one human to another, and the laws that continued to proliferate in our "Land of the Free", even as Lincoln was being elected President. It was a complex time. Have you carefully studied all that history? About the Western states opening up and people wanting to expand slavery to the new states and the fights about that?

Today, with all your "defense" of Peace, you do not seem to mind the fact that women are kept in complete bondage in Afghanistan, parts of Pakistan, and much of the Middle East. It is "fine" with you, because "you" see "Peace". But is it "peace" for these women and their children, who are continually beaten and opressed? I would suggest you read Nicholas Kristof, and find out how many people in this world are still crying out for salvation. And what about Darfur?

No, Violet, those many lives were not "wasted". But perhaps what you and all of us wish for is the "convenience" of "no conflict". What we are trying to learn is better ways of resolving conflict that were not available to those of Lincoln's time. Lincoln himself tried mightily to resolve conflict in peaceful ways.

You mention the Native American injustices. There is no question about that. Look at all the Treaties made with the Native Americans that were callously broken by ignorant white men! (Or probably also by men who did not understand that attacks were made by different tribes, not by tribes with whom they had treaties--the ignorant idea that "they are all the same!")

I do not like things like the War in Iraq, a terrible blunder by a horrible Administration that the majority of Americans did not vote for.

Non-violent resistance is a wonderful method of change. I prefer that way as well. But don't attack those in another time and another place, who did not have the tools you have, who gave up their lives for a cause many of them believed in, (and many of them were not "drafted", as you say, but enlisted actively, to end slavery, because they believed in abolition, according to histories I have read.)

Life is incredibly complex. As for actual "ghosts", it may interest you to know that certain talented psychics have found that at Yorktown (Revolutionary War Battlefield) and Gettysburg (Civil War) the battles continue to rage in another dimension, so apparently the "spirits" do remain discontented, and in that respect, you may be right. Or, as you ask, does the "aura" of so much misery and sadness always remain? War is a miserable thing, and anyone who thinks that Lincoln, or Lee, "gloried" in it has only to read the history of their lives, and that very unfortunate War, caused by the profiteers, first in Africa, who kindnapped their own people from the villages for profit, and then by slave traders and plantation owners who thought that "using" other human beings for labor (and the Church countenanced this) was a morally correct thing to do. Each day for hundreds of years, people made "business" decisions, kidnapping people, thowing people overboard, selling people, mistreating people,raping people, breeding people, until it became "OK" and amounted to an obscene problem. People are still being exploited today, except in different ways.

Now the "slave traders" use drugs and sex and porn. If there were no end users, there could be no profit. Much of the evil really comes from the "demand" (addiction) side. But instead of treating that side, Government seems to pour all its money into "Wars" on the "supply" side. As long as that continues, the "demand" will continue, and so will the "Wars". It is an "Industry", involving demand, supply, and attempts to control. All Wars start the same way. They are systemic. Even the Church is involved, as a moral agent of control, countenancing the situation or objecting to it. (I doubt if anyone is really going to "get" this paragraph.)