U.S. has culture of violence

There is an old Indian proverb that goes, "Like king, like subjects." As we all know, the U.S. was born from a violent revolution, and the violent Civil War saved it. Over the past 100 years the U.S. fought seven great wars in which hundreds of thousand of young men and women died and were injured, not to mention millions of people of other nations. It seems like now the U.S. is addicted to foreign wars at any cost to its people and its culture, and is constantly looking for every opportunity to drop bombs on people it perceives as a threat to its security.

The rest of the world sees the U.S. as a trigger-happy nation, which never misses an opportunity to wage war against any nation it imagines is a threat to its security, regardless of how destructive it might be to Americans themselves.

We can see such "might-is-right attitude" even in the government's dealings with its own people. The incident at Waco, Texas (1993) is an example. The FBI could have quietly arrested David Koresh in the parking lot of the grocery shop where he regularly went shopping. No. That would be too blasé. They had to attack his compound with tanks and machine guns. Such is the arrogance of the people at the top of our government. Such a culture of violence gradually seeps into the psyche of people. People are merely a reflection of their government.

K.P.S. KAMATH, Cape Girardeau