‘Nowadays, some governments believe that when bombing militants does not defeat them, the solution is to bomb them more and more heavily.’
In her classic novel The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot points to the futility of trying to teach someone a lesson that he is incapable of learning.
She instances the hypothetical case of a person who finds cheese indigestible and the folly of attempting to cure him by giving him more and more cheese.
Nowadays, some governments believe that when bombing militants does not defeat them, the solution is to bomb them more and more heavily.
On the contrary, further aggression incites further retaliation.
In this country, whenever ‘authorities’ have been negligent or made serious errors of judgement, they always say ‘lessons will be learned’. But as time goes by, inevitably these are forgotten.
There is a saying: “Those who do not earn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”
Miriam Brown
Lennox Avenue, Sidmouth
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