How does war destroy lives and leave nothing but death and destruction?

[Loren Booda]

Con scheme:

"You need only send us $1000 if you want a sure $10,000."

"Where is my $10,000? - I sent you the $1000 last month."

"Just send another $1000 so we can process the money."

"I've sent you $2000 over the last two months. Can I now have my $10,000?"

"The officials need just $1000 more to seal the deal."

"Please, I put my trust in you. I really need the cash. Here's my last $1000 . . ."

Dollars for death

 

[Hurkyl]

Huh?

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

No metaphor just truth:

In war, truth is the first casualty. ~Aeschylus

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. ~Bertrand Russell

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. ~David Friedman

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. ~Ernest Hemingway

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. ~Jeanette Rankin

You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon. ~David Lloyd George

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth. ~Mark Twain

It doesn't require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won't be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate. ~George McGovern

We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong. ~Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, 1941

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. ~Ernest Hemingway

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. ~Thomas Mann

We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide. ~Havelock Ellis

The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution. ~John F. Kennedy


If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a human society on mounds of corpses. ~Louis Lecoin

I would like it if men had to partake in the same hormonal cycles to which we're subjected monthly. Maybe that's why men declare war - because they have a need to bleed on a regular basis. ~Brett Butler

Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder. ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "A Declaration of Rights"

Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform? ~Douglas Jerrold


All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers. ~François Fénelon

Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong? ~Holly Near

The pioneers of a warless world are the [youth] who refuse military service. ~Albert Einstein

War is a game which were their subjects wise, kings would not play at. ~William Cowper

Only the dead have seen the end of war
~Plato

 

[Cyrus]

I think its satire......

 

[humanino]

"I am your protector, and thou shall be afraid because evil people are putting terror in your homes."
"We shall give thou all power if you save us. At all cost, be it blood."

Who benefits from the terror ?

 

[ranger]

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."
~Bertrand Russell

"You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race."
~George Bernard Shaw

"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare."
~SUN TZU

For more great quotes and metaphors on war, I recommend http://www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html

Doh! Just realized that the title of the post was asking us for our metaphors.

 

[Loren Booda]

My original post tries to express the gamble of the war in Iraq, a deadly con game witlessly started by our president. From the major botch of declaring and investing in war, we are "committed" toward seeing victory, no matter what the cost, one limb at a time.

The $10,000 might represent the insurgency's soldiers, which we would impotently bid for. The American government, having confided to sacrificing the first $1000 of their soldiers, are pridefully seduced to spend more and more, in just the manner of a swindle. Finally, our youth are spent and we have gained, at best, animosity from the world.

I spoke to an American general (who will remain nameless) before the war in Iraq, and he was so sure victory would be ours in a month or so, he wrote a book about it!

 

[hypatia]

War is not healthy for children and other liveing things.
Lorraine Schneider,1966.

 

[Schrodinger's Dog]

War is like trying to unscramble an egg, a waste of precious time and resources and it seldom leads to anything but scrambled egg.

me just then.

An actual metaphor

 

[moe darklight]

Two poems I wrote about war... poems are metaphors right?:

BIRTH OF A FUNERAL

Here where soldiers lie
wear their lead to die
Dye these grounds
with lover’s make
The pallbearing pallwearers
of the pallwearing pallbearers
Whose wounds are
nothing more than lips that sing
a requiem
for what was buried
beneath the buried
Here rest
Our leaders’ lies
Forever in peace
A’men



A BATTLE
(this one i wrote way long ago... my first poem actually! lol)

It was the dark and storming knights
that rummaged through the fields: weapons aimed: vision locked: dancing to the “cling!-clang!-crash!” of the melting of pots under the moon’s light:
skin on skin, blood on blood, and enough metallic sparks to start a fire.

And then: A first death!
“Hurrah! Hurrah! Victorious! Victorious!” Bastard children will continue in their search for the corners of Earth.

The angor of battle, and the ongoing of the ongoing agony of angons a-going through skin:
on in on in on, in agon.

The fun of killing soon drowned in the judging eyes of the ambulant heads,
and, by the arrival of the darkest hour, the soil was mudded with blood: the lancing had become imprecise, and the fields fell filled with the agonizing cries of nonfatal wounds.

‘Twas thrilling when the filthy mob
did fire their symbols round the wabe.
When the battle had been won.
When the last knight had spit his last breath.
And the night, it shined with armor.