Meditations on Two Photographs The obscenity of war

has many faces:

Some face down and dead

in awful places.

Some, thumbs up and beaming

like a boy

In some dark death machine

posed like a toy.



Yet in disparity the ugly link

Between the grin of power

and the stink;

The smell of rotting death,

the stench of war

Is guaranteed to man

for evermore. Michael Leunig



all decent men detest them. Weapons are the tools of violence;all decent men detest them. Weapons are the tools of fear;

a decent man will avoid them

except in the direst necessity

and, if compelled, will use them

only with the utmost restraint.

Peace is his highest value.

If the peace has been shattered,

how can he be content?

His enemies are not demons,

but human beings like himself.

He doesn’t wish them personal harm.

Nor does he rejoice in victory.

How could he rejoice in victory

and delight in the slaughter of men? He enters a battle gravely,

with sorrow and with great compassion,

as if he were attending a funeral.

(Stephen Mitchell, trans.) Laozi , Dao de Jing, Chapter 31(Stephen Mitchell, trans.)



I should explain, the man in the upper photograph is Tony Abbott, Australia’s current Prime Minister. He’s seated in an F-35 Joint Strike Force fighter, boyishly celebrating his country’s purchase of an additional 58 planes (at a cost of $12 billion AUD) bringing Australia’s total to 72.

The man in the lower photograph… Well, the poem explains him well enough.