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| When Will We Ever Learn? |
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Around the time of the first Gulf War, I was hitchhiking down to Dunedin and I got a ride by this guy who knew the answer to all the world’s ills. Like most of us, this guy did not like the idea of war. He strongly believed that the way to get world peace was to get rid of Saddam Hussein. For him, like most of us, world peace was really important. But I remember thinking, “How ironic, to go on about world peace and yet he had ‘HATE’ tattooed in big letters across his knuckles. This guy saw world peace as necessary and important. He was quite happy to see other people’s role in that but he didn’t see himself as having to live up to the same peaceful standard. The more he went on, the more he pointed his finger at Saddam Hussein, the more he was actually pointing a finger at himself. Recently I enjoyed devouring a book called The First Casualty by Ben Elton. Basically it is a whodunnit mystery but it’s set in 1917 during the First World War, the Great War, touted as the ‘war to end all wars’. The main character is a police inspector who is tried as a conscientious objector, not because he has ethical or philosophical opinions against violence but simply because he sees the war as stupid. The plot is fun with the inspector getting into some interesting ethical binds but the most impelling point of the novel is the way it highlights the absurdity of war and the social behaviour that surrounds it.
A recent tiff here in Cambodia recently highlighted the absurdity of war again as over 2000 Thai and Cambodian troops had a rather tense standoff. This dispute was sparked when a temple, on Cambodian land contested by Thailand, was deemed a world heritage site. The irony of course is that if the troops had clashed they would very likely have destroyed the very thing they would be fighting over.
Another book I read recently also highlights the absurdity of war and the behaviour that surrounds it. Brian MacLaren in Everything Must Change describes the security system as one part of a big suicide machine that society seems to have accepted. War has become big business. The United States, Great Britain and France earn more income selling weapons to developing countries than they give in aid to those same developing countries. In 1999, the United States provided weapons to 92% of the conflicts happening on the planet, and just to be fair, provided arms to both sides. 80% of the countries the US supply arms to are countries they themselves have labelled as undemocratic or known for the poor human rights records. A mere 10% of the US military budget could care for basic needs of the entire world’s poor.
It’s simply stupid! It’s stupid that no one listened to Jimmy Carter when he said, “We can’t have it both ways. We can’t be both the world’s leading champion of peace and the world’s leading supplier of arms.” Like my friendly driver, the world can’t seem to learn that you can’t go on about world peace while you have the word “HATE” tattooed across your knuckles.
This passage from Ben Elton’s novel seems to echo eerily in today’s reality. “Kingsley reflected that, in 1917, the twentieth century was not yet two decades old, but the quantity of human misery it had already witnessed was unparalleled in all history. He wondered what scale of suffering and injustice future generations would find it practical to accept before they took a stand. Or if, in fact, they would find it practical to take no stand at all.”
Pete Seeger summed it up in the 1960s…
Where have all the flowers gone? |
