War and Peace

Today I read something in the paper about how the budget for defence (wouldn't attack be a more appropriate name for it? Or at least War, as it has been for a long time - at least that was more to the point) has been increased all over the world. Half of the world's military budget, though, is spent by the US. Russia's increased big time, too. Are we back to Cold War here?
As for war crimes like what the US troops did in Iraqi prisons, I can only quote one of my favorite songs: "There's no such thing as a winnable war" (that's Sting: The Russians) - and the US apparently try hard to lose this one. And sorry if you don't agree with me, but to me it doesn't really matter who did what in Iraq. That is, I don't care what rank these soldiers have you see on the pictures from Abu Ghoreib. And I don't think it mattered to the Iraqis on the pictures either. I just think that this way of humiliating an Arab muslim has to be the consequence of a process of thinking hard. To torture them, or even to kill them, maybe would not have created as much protest in the Arab world than undressing them and all this. So I firmly believe that somebody ordered these things to happen, with the idea of deeply injuring and humiliating the Iraqi people. Why esle should they take photos of the whole thing?
Yes, I was against this war.
I think the American president should have been truthful enough to state the real reasons for it, not inventing some stories about weapons of mass destruction.
(Here's a joke I heard a few weeks ago: Bush keeps Saddam Hussein's revolver on his desk in the Oval Office. Why? To show to his guests as proof of the WMD in Iraq...)
I'm not sure what the true reason is, though. Was it revenge for his father? Or finishing the job Bush sr. has started? Was it to take the attention away from inner problems?
Anyway, after the war started, I hoped the USA would be smart enough to have a concept of what to do with Iraq once it was "liberated". Apparently, they don't. And apparently, they never gave a thought to the difference in mentality between an American and an Iraqi soldier.
When we saw the first pictures of Iraqis on their knees, handing over their guns to some American, I knew that this had to go wrong.
I always had the impression that Arabs in general are a proud people with a strong sense of honor. Dealing with them would have demanded much more respect for their different way of thinking than the American soldiers had been prepared to have. If they have been prepared at all for anything but the fighting part of the Operation.
It will take a long time for the wounds of this war to heal. And I really don't look forward to living through this time. I was always happy to live in a time and place that makes it unlikely for me to be involved in a war. Also because my brother is an officer in the German army and I don't want to see him off to Afghanistan or Iraq or wherever else the Americans deem it necessary to introduce the one and only acceptable way of life - theirs.
I don't like our chancellor, but in keeping us out of the war in Iraq, he has done something right for once.

The problem with armed conflicts today is that they can be out of control so easily.
Some German guy, I think he is a historian, once made a movie called The Third World War. It was made up like a documentary film, starting from the point that the German reunification in 1989 didn't take place, but that the Soviets send their army to stop the protests. Then the American and British troops stationed in West Germany reacted, and within a few weeks there was a new World War going on, with more effective weapons than ever before. The film ended with the Russians dropping an atom bomb over the baltic sea. If anything like that happens, nobody can imagine the consequences. This is just too much even to think about.
Have you ever relized that most science fiction movies start after a world wide desaster? I'm not talking about stuff like Star Trek, but about movies like Waterworld or The Snake. So maybe Science Fiction is not the right term. But anyway, the descriptions of these movies in the TV guide usually start with something like "After a war/environmental desaster/terrorist attack/... the survivors have...
So while many people think about how life will be after the fact, we really don't want to imagine the thing itself. Maybe it's a way of protecting ourselves against the almost unthinkable.

There' another thing on my mind lately. And that is Genetics. Or rather, the question of changing the DNA of plants - corn in Germany right now - to keep certain insects away. Greenpeace and other organisations destroy the fields were these plants are tested. So the so called green genetics is a bad thing. But what about the red genetics - fooling around with human DNA. Isn't it kind of stupid to refuse to eat corn with manipulated genes (We have done nothing but manipulating the DNA of domesticated plants and animals ever since the Stone Age - so please try to be sensible about this!) but to accept the idea of cloning children? There are parents who decide to have a second child just to have "spare parts" for the first one. But still, the opposition against the "Gene-Corn" is much stronger than against the excesses of some biologists.
I just don't understand this, it doesn't seem to make any sense. If it does to you, leave me a note, I'd be happy to get a new look on it.
Sometimes I wonder where all this will lead. But then again, even if I live to be a hundred, hopefully I don't have to see the end of it.
I just want to live long enough to see humanity take to space, maybe to meet one or two alien people. According to Star Trek and Babylon 5, this will happen somewhere in the 2060s, so chances are I might live to see it.
If I ever manage to earn a lot of money I'll book a space flight for vacation. It must be an incredibly moving experience to see the earth from that distance.