It is worth noting, historically speaking, that war has been around since the rise of expansionist civilisations in large scale agricultural societies in China and the Near East. It is worth pointing out the empirical fact that war has, since the rise of those civilisations, been a constant and has often been regarded as a form of diplomacy by the elites who guide and direct political policy. And while a minority of humans have opposed war--the Anabaptists since the 16th century and the Quakers since the 17th--and worked to end it particularly since the 19th century, those few who oppose wars have not been successful as history shows. Wars continue whether among the great powers, the minor powers, and almost everyone with a military. Finally, it is worth pointing up what Buddhism and Niebuhr's Serenity Prayer have preached, that you can only do something about what you can do something about.
Humans, of course, empirically speaking, have been characterised by pettiness, silliness, narcissism, emotionalism, gullibility, moronicity, an obsession with money, an obsession with power, and war, to name a few human characteristics. And while It is true that humans can also be compassionate, human compassion is generally selective in its application. Human compassion, in other words, is generally applied selectively and situationally by the very humans who claim to be compassionate. That such a form of situational or selective ethics is not respectful of the human rights of all humans should be obvious even to those blinded by the ethnocentric and nationalistic light.
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