A Beautiful Man with a Beautiful Dream
The day Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died, I wept. I honestly broke down in tears. I didn't cry when one of my grandma's died, when an uncle died, or when a cousin died. But Kurt Vonnegut? I wept. I've been rereading his corpus today because it always fills me with the joy that I'm a human being concerned with equality and peace, rather than "victory at any cost," and other such nonsense. Here's a quote from Vonnegut regarding the Allied air bombings near the end of World War II, Dresden in particular (look it up).
"There can be no doubt that the Allies fought on the side of right and the Germans and Japanese on the side of wrong. World War II was fought for near-Holy motives. But I stand convinced that the brand of justice in which we dealt, wholesale bombing of civilian populations, was blasphemous. That the enemy did it first has nothing to do with the moral problem. What I saw of our air war, as the European conflict neared an end, had the earmarks of being an irrational war for war's sake. Soft citizens of American democracy learned to kick a man below the belt and make the bastard scream.
The occupying Russians, when they discovered that we were Americans, embraced us and congratulated us on the complete desolation our planes had wrought. We accepted their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now, that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the World's generations to come. That is how everyone should feel about every city on Earth."
Why don't we all feel that way?
Read more...
"There can be no doubt that the Allies fought on the side of right and the Germans and Japanese on the side of wrong. World War II was fought for near-Holy motives. But I stand convinced that the brand of justice in which we dealt, wholesale bombing of civilian populations, was blasphemous. That the enemy did it first has nothing to do with the moral problem. What I saw of our air war, as the European conflict neared an end, had the earmarks of being an irrational war for war's sake. Soft citizens of American democracy learned to kick a man below the belt and make the bastard scream.
The occupying Russians, when they discovered that we were Americans, embraced us and congratulated us on the complete desolation our planes had wrought. We accepted their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now, that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the World's generations to come. That is how everyone should feel about every city on Earth."
Why don't we all feel that way?
