Op-Ed Article

An anti-war anti-violence essay

Man has waged war since he first began walking upright. He fought over land, money, and he fought for revenge. In fact in Hebrew culture "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," was considered law. There was no such thing as forgiveness in this primitive culture, and it would seem that not much has changed, man would still rather "get even" than forgive his fellow man.

 In kindergarten the first thing you learned were some very basic rules: play nice, be fair, share, and two wrongs don't make a right. As people grow older they tend to forget these simple rules which should be the basis of how they treat people. In kindergarten if someone hits you you were not supposed to hit them back, you were supposed to use your words. Surely everyones parents have told them it's not nice to hit and that you should use your words instead.

 If the youngest child knows it is wrong to hit then why do adults seem to thinks it is OK? War is essentially two children fighting over a toy, except it is two countries with highly educated leaders squabbling. Though I must give credit where credit is due children tend to forgive their aggressor rather than hold a grudge and bully them, military leaders could learn a lot from a child.

 When two countries cannot solve their differences civilly they go to war. They use war to punish each other and to prove that they are right. Though it seems that the leaders very rarely suffer for the acts they direct at each other. It is the innocent civilians who care for nothing but feeding and clothing their family who are really harmed.

 Bombs are dropped on their cities. These civilians may be killed or terribly injured leaving them permanently disabled. They may be left alone, their families dead. These people are broken and they will never forget what they experienced. They will never forget the cries of their dying families, friends and neighbors. They will never forget the pain they feel by watching those around them suffer. They will never forget seeing the life leave their loved ones eyes. These people without home and family have nothing left.

 They are not the only ones who suffer, our young men and women in the armed forces feel pain also. They engage in combat and watch the people who they have grown to love get shot down in a storm of bullets. They return home in caskets or without limbs. They must go through extensive physical therapy to gain a small part of their lives back. Even those who return physically unscathed must live with nightmares of what they witnessed and what they had to do.

 War is not a necessary evil nor is it a means to an end. War is evil and it is an end, an end of families and of peace. War leaves us with broken people and scarred soldiers. It changes people, it makes them hard, cold, and distant. In war even the victor is a loser. No war is holy, no war is righteous, and no war is ever justified. Ghandi knew what he was talking about when he said"an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

Review of A Blind World

By James Yaworski

Yes, war is hell.  People on both sides pay the price of the destruction.  But it is extremely naive to say that no war is ever justified.

Unfortunately, there have been situations in the past where nations, tribes, or leaders, whether kings or dictators, have decided to take by force from some other entity of humans.  In other words, aggressors who are willing to resort to force to get their way. 

So what is the target of such aggression to do?  Especially when the agenda of the aggressor might include exterminating the target.

World War 2 is the obvious example.  Do you like the thought of a world where an Adolf Hitler has won, and everybody's speaking German, the Master Race has exterminated the Jews, the gays, the gypsies, the Slavic peoples, etc., and the rest of us are treated as Nazi serfs?

Or a world where an individual who is willing to resort to force can rob, rape, and kill at will?  The police, the courts, the prison authorities, are merely the instruments of civilized society to stop those aggressive individuals who would wage war upon innocent citizens.

The police sometimes have to use force to thwart the aggression of the criminal.  Unfortunately, they don't always succeed, like in the instance of the criminal who opened fire at Virginia Tech earlier this week.  But if they had been able to intervene earlier, do you think this criminal would have laid down his murder weapons if he was asked real nicely?  Or if a social worker had explained to him that to continue shooting people was a bad thing to do?

Unfortunately, it takes more than gathering around the camp fire, joining hands, and singing "kumbaya" to preserve human dignity and human rights in this world.

If the Japanese Empire had conquered India, I'm afraid Ghandi would have found them much less tolerant of his non-violent protest methods than the British were. I expect he would have been quickly beaten to a pulp, and  beheaded in public, as an example to anyone else in India who was thinking of not instantly obeying each and every order of the conquerors. 

Luckily for you, the Allies *won* World War 2. Yes, at great cost.  But at least you are now free to proclaim your naive pacifist doctrines and, apparently, disparage their sacrifices as being merely the actions of children fighting over a toy.

I'm tempted to say "shame on you!"   However, you are probably the product of a touchy-feely education system that has never properly explained to you the sacrifices made by generations of your ancestors to get you in your current pampered position.  So, "shame on the education system!" It's evidently let you down bad.

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