I can't say I love what you are saying because it's too sad you have to say it. You are such a conservative, referring to the rule of law, the constitution, and original intent. Where are all the other conservatives? We need to hear from them. Maybe Obama should proclaim, in his inauguration speech, just after he swears to uphold the constitution, that he too is a unitary executive and can do whatever he wants as long as, in his opinion, it's good for the country. That might wake people up.

Glenn, I want to write and think as clearly as you do. Thanks.

If two countries or groups, such as Israel and Palestine, are fighting a war or are engaged in a conflict spiral, what can be done? The participants are trapped by their war ideologies. They each believe they can achieve a net gain by fighting. They each are willing to trade off the death and destruction they will suffer for some imagined gain. They each have a list of grievances and injustices going back years. Thus being trapped, they cannot help themselves get out of their respective traps. So if there is to be any help, it must come from outside the warring ideologies. People and countries not directly involved must not be sucked in. Remember the participants are trapped each within their own war ideology, and the two ideologies are interacting. There is action, reaction, rereaction, rerereaction, never to end. Indeed a trap of two interacting trapped ideologies. So people outside the traps must keep themselves out, and people inside the traps must somehow be helped to get out by those not trapped.

People outside the traps may be empathic more toward one side or the other. This is dangerous because if they are not careful they may be sucked into the ideological trap of the side they empathize with. People outside the traps must see the conflict from the point of view of humanity as a whole. From this viewpoint, war is always bad, war is always a net loss for humanity. Wars kill people, destroy or damage parts of their bodies, and damage people mentally and spiritually by causing fear, anxiety, anger, hatred, depression, psychosis. And wars destroy physical property. Wars diminish people on all sides of all conflicts. Wars only destroy. They create nothing except possibly deep hatreds as seeds for future wars.

People outside the war traps must empathize with the human beings suffering in both warring populations and must not buy into the trap of either side. Forget all the history, all the arguments, all the claimed injustices. To do otherwise is to get sucked into the ideology trap of one side or the other, to join the (verbal) war.

Then all those outside the ideology traps must work to pull out those still trapped. How to do this? To use force or violence would be absurd. So we must talk to them. We show those trapped that they are trapped. That war is not working. That war is not bringing them what they say they need or want. They must see this. People will change what they are doing if they can see that it is not working. That’s it. All the people outside the traps keep talking to those inside the traps until enough are pulled out to stop the war or conflict.

The above is easy to say, easy to carry out in principle. In practice we must get many people to change their minds. Possibly the biggest hurdle is the first one: We must get enough people outside the traps to take an empathic view of all those inside the traps and be willing to do some work to end the war. The second step might be easier since convincing people who are suffering in wars that their war is not working should not be too difficult. Remotely directed wars where one participant is not suffering very much, like the US-Iraq war, might be more difficult. Results will vary.

I didn't talk of power, anybody's rights, or self defense. I'm not in the war. I don't want to get into it, even verbally. My post is about how to stop it.

I don't expect people being occupied to empathize with their occupiers. I ask people outside both traps to emathize with those trapped by their ideologies. For people fighting a war it's probably next to impossible to empathize with anyone. They are really trapped. All of them. Both sides. The question is how can anyone or anything help them get out of their traps? It's not a matter of which side is in the right or legal, more powerfull. I am definitely not saying that both sides are equal. I said forget all that. To start getting into all that is to get sucked into one or the other sides ideological trap. If we're going to be able to help both sides stop fighting, we can't get into the fight ourselves. We have to set aside all the who's right questions, at least temporarily, or we get sucked into the war and make it worse instead of stopping it.