Learn war no more

I was disappointed in the Christmas message from the editor. It reminded me of warnings about political writing from George Orwell in his essay, Politics and the English Language: “Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” Similarly, Harris indicates that Canadian military intervention in Afghanistan creates “possibilities for peace” and that “peace is a messy business.”
Harris omitted an essential component of a Christmas message from a Presbyterian publication: the prophetic tradition. “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”