Hump Day Hmm 11-7-07: Blog Blast for Peace

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This is my BLOG BLAST for PEACE!

I think that most of us---the little people, the ones who actually do not sit on high or watch the world from a privileged perch, the ones who pay the very real price---want peace. I'll even venture further out on the limb and say we don't like war.

"War is a necessary evil," they say.

The phrase "necessary evil" triggers my red alert "brain spring into action" response.

"Necessary evil" is an oxymoron, an inconsistency, a piece of irrational illogic, and that always gets me thinking.

How can there be any evil that is necessary?

Rape, pillage, plunder, destruction, killing...this is necessary?

We've trapped ourselves in a vicious circle.

"It's the only way," they tell us. And my red alert springs my brain into action, again.

I am a person who sees many possibilities for solutions, rarely just one. Even when I exhaust the first batch of options, I usually find another batch to exhaust. It is this ability, think, that helps me not only to survive, but to continue to thrive in the life I lead. I am clearly descended from the people who survived to reproduce because of this ability to see many ways out, many ways to survive, and the ability to quickly think of solutions and implement them.

I am no better than you; I am the same as you. We are all descended from the people who could do this.

That's why, when my fellow descendants say there is only one thing to do---fight a war---I am suspicious.

Even revered generals prefer not to fight wars.

Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit. Soldiers usually win battles and generals get the credit for them. You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.

o Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

So the only choice is to break peace and fight a war? I believe this would surprise Switzerland greatly. It surprises me, no, it stuns me.

But as Slouching Mom says, the sensitive among us are frequently stunned.

I think what people really mean is, "I am such a zealot to my cause that I wish to destroy everything in my path that opposes me. There is something I want or need and death and destruction seems the fastest, straightest point from A to B."

At least some people who generate war are somewhere near honest with this.

We wore out the "war to end all wars" idea over sixty years ago.

We're on our fourth war since then. I don't think anyone believes that war brings peace. I think we all understand that war begets war. I think we all understand that all war does is quash for just long enough for the winner to achieve some objective. In the end though, the hatred of the quashed will marshal into a force, and once again, everyone faces war.

As Napoleon said, "Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit."

We think of spirit as a good word. "He's got such spirit!" is a high compliment.

But spirit can be bad, too, if it is a spirit of hatred.

Force does not create anything. Metal melts in the force of heat from a fire, it changes, bends, is reshaped, but retains, in the end, its essential qualities. It remains metal.

The average joe---the little people, the ones who actually do not sit on high or watch the world from a privileged perch, the ones who pay the very real price---probably knows this.

I contemplate my brother, the youngest one who is only 21 and is at university still, in a military training program. I remember when he was born. It was just before I left for university. He liked to gum my father's frozen beer mugs when teething. Like Persistence, he enjoyed pulling tape thread from tapes. I think his first word was car. When he was three, we were living in Atlanta and I was working in my first professional job. I used to take him out and about with me and everyone remarked on how much my "son" resembled me. We'd both laugh. He liked going out and about with me because my car had a hatchback and he could sit in his car seat in the back and stare at the clouds. I think he was seeing how many resembled cars. Even at three he could identify more cars than I could. His best friend was an adorable little girl from Japan. He began speaking Japanese. In elementary school, I was the person he called sobbing because he was prostrate with grief and fury at learning that his parents had "lied" to him about Santa. Later, I had to enforce the "no TV rule" when he was grounded from it for acting "too much like a Toon." I tutored him when he had trouble with writing projects. I watched him through high school, his first girlfriend, his first betrayal, his first breakup. I felt pride when he got his Eagle Scout, and I eagerly read all of the recommendations---including some from prominent politicians---he received for college applications. I grieved for him when he got wait-listed at his first choice university: air force academy. I celebrated when he found a good fit at another school, and succeeded there. I've seen him grow from a baby to boy to young man.

I want to see him graduate, get a job, meet a partner, and grow up. Peacefully.

Other options? In a burst of hypocrisy, no, there are no other options.

I want the same for my girls. My girls, who are largely unaware of war, a luxury many other children do not have. This tweaks my sense of injustice and unfairness, and so when it came up, I was honest to Patience. I told her yes, there is a war, and it is mean fighting where sometimes people die. Yes, children too. Yes, mommies and daddies are fighting. It is because we want to defend and protect our country and its people, which is honorable. Yes, so-and-so's daddy is at the war. Yes, that is where Baby so-and-such's daddy went. It is far away, not where we live. No, not even on our continent. Yes, there are children where the war is. Yes, I agree, they must be very, very frightened. Me too, baby, me too, I am also glad for us it is not here and sad for them.

Yes, we will pack shoeboxes for them, for the mommies, the daddies and the children.

I watched the war diaries on Discovery. I watched grown men get wet-eyed as they handed out their own supplies to children so much like their own back home. I got wet-eyed looking at boys so young they should have still been in high school or learning embarrassing lessons at college beer parties, I thought, not the University of Hard-Knocks, at war.

Yes, I am sure we'd prefer peace.

How do we achieve peace?

Here are some words from great people, to ponder towards that end (and peace is an end, versus war, which is only a means):

Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.

o Hafsat Abiola

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There is no trust more sacred than the one the world holds with children. There is no duty more important than ensuring that their rights are respected, that their welfare is protected, that their lives are free from fear and want and that they grow up in peace.

o Kofi Annan

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The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

o Black Elk (1863-1950)

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Peace, to have meaning for many who have only known suffering in both peace and war, must be translated into bread or rice, shelter, health and education, as well as freedom and human dignity.

o Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971)

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Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighboring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.

o The XIVth Dalai Lama

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If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

o Moshe Dayan (1915-1981)

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Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

o Albert Einstein (1979-1955)

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There was never a good war or a bad peace.

o Ben Franklin (1706-1790)

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It is possible to live in peace.

o Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

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It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.

o Andre Gide (1869-1951)

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We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.

o William Gladstone (1809-1898)

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But peace does not rest in the charters and covenants alone. It lies in the hearts and minds of all people. So let us not rest all our hopes on parchment and on paper, let us strive to build peace, a desire for peace, a willingness to work for peace in the hearts and minds of all of our people. I believe that we can. I believe the problems of human destiny are not beyond the reach of human beings.

o John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

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You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

o Malcolm X (1925-1965)

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We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but on the positive affirmation of peace. We must see that peace represents a sweeter music, a cosmic melody, that is far superior to the discords of war. Somehow, we must transform the dynamics of the world power struggle from the negative nuclear arms race, which no one can win, to a positive contest to harness humanity's creative genius for the purpose of making peace and prosperity a reality for all the nations of the world. In short, we must shift the arms race into a peace race. If we have a will - and determination - to mount such a peace offensive, we will unlock hitherto tightly sealed doors of hope and transform our imminent cosmic elegy into a psalm of creative fulfillment.

o Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

How different each of these people were and are. But how similar their message.

There is hope for peace.

And who else has a message about peace? Read on!

Lawyer Mama wrote Next of Kin

Within the Woods wrote Peace, Love, and English Composition

Thailand Gal wrote If not now, when?

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