Source: U.S. News – Historic battleship USS Iowa to become museum in Los Angeles.
“There’s no more ships like this in existence in the active navies anywhere in the world,” said Robert Kent, president of the Pacific Battleship Center.
Thank the Lord there are no more ships like this in existence. When you take a massive explosive shell and launch it from up to twenty miles away there was little chance that it will hit exactly where you intended. It could just as easily hit a small town of 800 as it would a military complex.
Anyone who has read much of this blog knows that I am a peacenic. I utterly disdain all the wars we have managed to get ourselves into here in the U.S. They say that the 20th century, which I lived in more than half of was the bloodiest one of our existence. We seemed to be constantly in a war with someone for a number of different reason and as the years went by we honed our killing ability more and more.
We are to the point now that our soldiers don’t even have to leave their community and can still kill the “bad guys” remotely and be home for dinner. But at least we don’t have anymore Battleship Iowas that cause so much collateral damage. Now we have million dollar smart bombs released from remote-controlled aircraft to do our dirty work.
I can only dream that there is someway to make the 21st century less deadly than the previous one. Blessed are the peacemakers. Maybe some day we will actually take that lesson to heart. Goodbye Battleship Iowa. I am so glad to at least see you go…..
RJ's Corner 
Do you feel the United States should have permitted the absolute slaughter of the Chinese by the Japanese or the control of Europe to Hitler? In war all are “damage” whether soldier or non enlisted. If you are fighting for your life- you are In a war.
Is it only a good war if someone is attacking you?
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Hi Jan, thank you for your comment, I know it comes from your heart. To answer your question, no I am not yet a total pacifist. I believe there are sometimes valid reasons for going to war. As you mention the war that my father fought in WWII was necessary.
But I am against our seemingly going to war for mostly political reasons such as Vietnam of my generation, and Iraq of the current generation. Both of those wars and just about any others could have been avoided if we had sought a peaceful solution. Why send our kids off to their deaths except as an absolutely last resort.
I am a Quaker at heart and I have come to absolutely believe that “there is the light of God in each human being”. When we kill each other for any reason we are killing a part of God our maker. That is the saddest thing in the world to me.
As far as this particular post goes, yes I absolutely joy in the fact that ships like these that caused so much collateral damage are no longer part of our gorged arsenal. It might interest you to know that the idea of acceptable civilian causalities in war is a very new concept in the overall history of mankind.
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Civilian casualties have always been, they simply were never reported because serfs were not important in the scheme. When castles were sacked and burned, there were thousands killed in the interaction.
Our current “peaceful” way of stopping dictators is the starve the population and hope for an overthrow.
Can you tell me a peaceful way of stopping an “evil” dictator or regime? What is the difference between wars of: Mandarin Chinese and Tibet, Stalin and Theists or Hilter and the Jews and Polish? Are we only supposed to fight when the people we defend are our particular ethnic origin? Only care what happens to the people around us? I am not being sarcastic. I just cannot see a way of it working.
I disagree with most wars. I saw the Iraq war as a planned attempt to bring manifest destiny to a region we have no reason to be in, except oil. Get off of oil and we would never give a hoot about that region.Those people are quite happy to live as serfs under a dictator or theocracy. A complete waste of money so we can drive to work.
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