War

A majority of the earth’s population turns a blind eye to war, believing it is necessary, inevitable, and unpreventable. I am here to prove otherwise. I will change your mind and you will see that what is truly necessary is putting an end to war. War is too horrible and goes against the natural order of life to be inevitable. To prevent war you must join the rest of us in the movement to acquire peace. Mankind is currently at a point in which a decision must be made.

                 Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. As blatant as that may sound it is the truth. A majority of religious beliefs and individual convictions acknowledge an “end” war the likes of which no life will survive. Though this is held to be true by most no true preventative action is being taken. Some will disagree and state that we go to war to end war, but I say to you now that is like pouring gasoline on a fire, it only makes it worse. You cannot sustain peace while simultaneously preparing for war. Millions are killed in every war, and with each war the technology to kill large numbers gets better. In time a war will come where only one leader of one country needs to push one button and the earth and all life on it will no longer exist. Look back to WWII, when fat man and little boy were dropped the combined death toll exceeded two hundred thousand and their yield was 15kilotons which is the measurement of a nuclear weapon’s capacity. Since then better materials mechanisms and overall bombs have been developed; none have yet been dropped in a populated place but it is safe to say that if the first warheads killed two hundred thousand then the newer bombs will kill millions. The United States alone has weapons with yields in the megatons (1mt=1000kt) registered and archived on nuclearweaponarchive.org. If we were to measure the killing power it might look something like this: for every 15kt 100,000deaths, a 1.5mt bomb could then kill 100,000,000 people. Now no country has only one 1.5mt bomb the U.S. has 626 1.2mt, B83-0/B83-1, active bombs and many more reaching 25mt, MK-41 in production that are not listed in stockpile reports. One button is all it will take and millions of years of human progress will be wiped clean.

                Put yourself on the battlefield in the shoes of a soldier in war time: you go days without food, sleep, clean water, you fear for your life as a comrade is killed beside you, bodies lie all around you stacked up and you continue on to protect your country, but what country would that be? Take one soldier from both sides of any war. The reason they give for fighting will be similar; to protect my family and country and if it wasn’t for the other soldier who felt the same way there would be no reason to fight. Now I must admit that is an over simplification of the complex workings of the war machine, but apply that to any level of power within war and the reasons the opposing sides give will be similar. When you get high enough that the reason becomes close to “we are right they are wrong, we are good they are bad” you will discover that the war is waged because of a difference of opinion that enough people on both sides are willing to kill for. Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a Marxist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Throughout history war has been the corner stone of civilizations, but where are the first civilizations now? They are gone and all but forgotten, because war does not decide who is right only who is left and as time passes and war continues no one will be. Peace may seem unrealistic, mostly because it appears no country has been able to resolve a disagreement without resorting to war. That is not entirely true however, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was able to resolve conflicts without enabling war, and such a case was the Indian independence movement. Though he sent out a recruitment letter to aid an ongoing war in it he stated that he would not kill or injure anyone. Years after the Indian independence movement began India, gained its independence from Britain by the peaceful ways of Gandhi. Gandhi’s nonviolent resolutions can be found in greater detail in Gandhi & Jesus the saving power of nonviolence by Terrence J. Rynne. Gandhi states in a blunt way how peaceful nonviolent ways would overcome war “Hitler," Gandhi said, "killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs… It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany… As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions” by this he means that if one was to willingly die as a sacrifice to the enemy then light will be shed upon the issue and more will rise to oppose the enemy. Instead Jews fought back fueling Hitler’s lies that they were monsters and wanted to harm the German people. By not retaliating you refuse to participate in war, and the enemy with no one to fight will gain nothing. The leader may say to his troops they are the enemy if you don’t kill them our nation will die, but if you don’t fight back the troops will see there is no threat and that the leader’s words are empty.

                I hope you can see for yourself what I say is true, war needs to be stopped, and it is unnecessary to resort to war. War is a horrid atrocity that too many turn a blind eye upon and will consume us like a wild fire if the only action we take is to send more troops. Peace has worked before and will work again. It is difficult and takes willing people but the end is greater than that of war. War. War never changes. Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage.