The Making for Peace
Tonight the President announced that we are staying in Iraq for a while - and lot's of my friends have exclaimed that he is an idiot and we should pull our troops out immediately. I disagree. Once we decided to enter the fight we should stay and win and help them form a working democracy.
No one wants war. No wants to see human lives wasted. But peace does not come about by wishful thinking. Peaceful nations - those that trade and cooperate - have evolved over time. I firmly believe that we can achieve world-wide peace when what we do is help other nations become free and economically advantaged. The middle class has much too lose in a war and much more to gain in peace time.
I'm old enough to remember that this is the recurrance of the same seesaw we've ridden about all other wars. We get in for what at the time is considered good reasons and then there is a hue and cry because of the costs - the costs in lives, emotions, and money. There are those who want to quit before the job is done.
I don't know what wars we should have gotten into and which we should have left alone - and that's not the discuss I want to have here. My main thought is to talk about what it takes to bring about peace.
Let's work for peace - but not go belly-up. Let's educate, set good examples, bring different groups of people together so they can learn about each other and stop hating due to prejudice, let's help build constitutional systems, create sustainable economies and be good neighbors.
And, most of all let's stop polarizing within the United States as badly as we've been doing lately - let's lay down our invective towards those in in "the other party" and start cooperating again as one team with somewhat different ideas from time to time.
Steve believes in revolution. My vote is for evolution with very active involvement.
No one wants war. No wants to see human lives wasted. But peace does not come about by wishful thinking. Peaceful nations - those that trade and cooperate - have evolved over time. I firmly believe that we can achieve world-wide peace when what we do is help other nations become free and economically advantaged. The middle class has much too lose in a war and much more to gain in peace time.
I'm old enough to remember that this is the recurrance of the same seesaw we've ridden about all other wars. We get in for what at the time is considered good reasons and then there is a hue and cry because of the costs - the costs in lives, emotions, and money. There are those who want to quit before the job is done.
I don't know what wars we should have gotten into and which we should have left alone - and that's not the discuss I want to have here. My main thought is to talk about what it takes to bring about peace.
Let's work for peace - but not go belly-up. Let's educate, set good examples, bring different groups of people together so they can learn about each other and stop hating due to prejudice, let's help build constitutional systems, create sustainable economies and be good neighbors.
And, most of all let's stop polarizing within the United States as badly as we've been doing lately - let's lay down our invective towards those in in "the other party" and start cooperating again as one team with somewhat different ideas from time to time.
Steve believes in revolution. My vote is for evolution with very active involvement.
Labels: evolution democracy, middle class, peace, war
posted by ArLyne Diamond, Ph.D. @ 10:32 PM
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