Social work required
Reader comment on item: War as Social Work?

Submitted by Jocko (United States), May 6, 2003 at 13:10

Dear Dan ....

Yours is a distinctly old fashioned, even ancient, view of war: Whatever is in our perceived best interests entitles us to pursue them with all the destructive force we can muster. Fortunately in the latter part of the 20th century, we have become a bit more civilized about war and have started to look on war for what it is. We have even added a humanitarian aspect to it which requires the destroyer to be responsible for what he has destroyed. If we are going to war purportedly for moral reasons, we have to continue to keep morality in mind in the post-war period. In modern life, public morality is expressed in large part by social work.
"Destroy and abandon" befits the conquerors of the past, not the present.

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