This is War!

I am comfortable hazarding a guess that George Orwell would agree with this notion: “The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names” (E. O. Wilson).

The word in the title I would have you focus on for a few moments is war.

This photo from The Guardian is a war photo. Take a good, close look. We are not in a civil war here in the United States. A shootout is not war. A gun battle is not war.

Another war photo, this one from The Telegraph. Look hard. You do not wish war for us. We do not wish war for one another.

Just this last war photo, one from the BBC. Let us be a bit more careful with our words. I hear, or more often read of, voices calling for war, or insisting we are at war. We are not at war with ourselves.

That we have hatred being spewed, that we have injustice running rampant, that we have peace eluding us domestically dominates so much of our current landscape. But, we are not at war. Do not wish it so.

One word more, then. Go, in peace.