Civilized Warfare

For years and years, humans have needlessly killed each other. I don’t know if warfare is a natural inborn behavior in our species, or if we’ve just conditioned ourselves to handle all our disagreements with violence. You’d think with all the progress we’ve made, socially and technologically, we would have found better way to solve conflicts. Unfortunately, when it comes to diplomacy, we’re still living in the dark ages.

This is evident in the global conflicts that have taken place over the last forty years or so. It seems that now we are doomed to a future of killing regularly, no matter how petty the disagreement at hand. Whether we fight for religion, land, oil, or power, there’s always and excuse and an opportunity to spark up a conflict somewhere.

Many politicians have looked upon small level conflicts (such as the war in Iraq) as a way to stimulate the economy, energize the populace, and make a quick buck. I believe many politicians see war as a way to take advantage of the public while eroding our personal freedoms. We’ve traded a lot of our personal freedoms recently due to our fear of terrorism. It looks like terrorists have finally found a way to destroy our country to some degree. We may be supposedly “safer” now than we were before 911, but we have destroyed many of the freedoms that made this country the shining example that enraged so many terrorists to begin with.

In my opinion, The Patriot Act and our ongoing war on terror has actually done more harm to our country than good. We are no more safer than we were before 911 (as if that’s what this war was really about to begin with), Bin Laden (or one of his doubles) is still free and bitching up a storm, and more people are pissed at us as a nation than ever before. Of course, civilian “collateral damage” just drives more and more foreign civilians into Alqeda recruitment. After all, we’re the ones responsible for “accidentally” killing their family members. It’s only natural that a son would start to believe terrorist, anti-American, propaganda after we get done killing his father by accident. Drunk drivers “accidentally” kill people in America everyday and you know how easy it is to hate them.

Many presidents and politicians have jumped on the war bandwagon with a fanatical zeal in recent history. Many of them view war as an opportunity to shift blame away from themselves and make a quick buck in the process. It is plain to see that the general consensus among those in power is that young American lives are not as important as gaining political power and exerting control over the world in general. War is, and always has been, a big business and there’s a lot of money to be made whenever you’re willing to sacrifice the lives of fellow humans. I know many politicians have voted for war when they’re own children were in the armed forces. I know they sent their own children to war in the process. The question is how many of those children were sent to the front lines and how many of them were put into more prestigious or safe positions? As a commanding officer, would you want to be held responsible for getting a senator’s son or daughter killed in the line of duty, or would you rather keep them as safe as possible in relation to the other soldiers? As a senator that has sent your child off to war, would you (out of guilt) use your influence to make sure they don’t see as much action as their fellow soldiers? It’s something to think about.

It also seems like the most “righteous” members of our society always push for war, which doesn’t seem logical to me. If you send someone to war and make them kill (and break the big commandment) then if they get killed in the process, they will go to hell. If you kill a lot of bad people, then they go to hell too. So war is a good way of sending more human souls to hell and therefore giving the devil strength, right? Yet pro-life Christians almost always vote pro-war. Shouldn’t this be considered a sin? Supporting something that involves breaking commandments, while also sending more souls to hell, just doesn’t seem right. I know there’s evildoers that kill people for their own evil ends, but if you actually total up the amount of lives lost due to terrorism and compare that to the amount of lives lost due to war and bombing, it’s easy to see who’s sending more people to hell.

I’m not saying that all wars have been pointless. There are many things in life that are worth fighting for, such as liberty and freedom, or stopping genocide (which we evidently don’t do anymore). But there is no reason why we should constantly find our leaders making up excuses to go to war over petty stuff. It seems that most modern wars are fought over oil, or to boost the economy, or as in recent conflicts, to provide some seriously sweet profits for military contractors that are close to the ruling administration. War has become an industry and the leaders of that industry have enjoyed way too much political control.

I know I sound all gloom-and-doom here, but I think I’ve found a way to make wars a bit more civilized. I have concocted a rather far-fetched solution to this endless cycle of rich people sending our children off to die. I haven’t worked out all the kinks, but I’ve got a fairly good blueprint to go on.

I say we take the leaders of each country that has an unsolvable conflict that (in their opinion) merits war, and make them personally responsible for any acts of aggression or lives lost, that they feel is necessary. How do we do this? Well, here’s my modest proposal that I believe will solve our current addiction to warfare:

First we take the two leaders of the opposing countries, that would like to have a war, and you put them into a locked room together. Then we give them all the communications capabilities that they need, such as videoconference, phones, etc. This will insure that they have all the resources that they would need in order to work out a peaceful resolution. Then we tell them they have two weeks to come up with a peaceful resolution or they will be forced to fight to the death in order to resolve their differences. In the case of a death match, the winner wins the war.

I believe that if it is important enough for leaders to offer up the lives of their fellow countrymen, over a disagreement, then they can demonstrate their dedication by risking their own lives instead. It only seems fair that they would take full responsibility for lives lost in war, and I think this is the perfect way to make them take personal responsibility. Then we can sit back and see exactly how many wars will be started over petty things like oil and financial power-play. I have a feeling the world would become a much more peaceful place if we used this method to settle international conflicts. Of course we could always televise any death matches on pay-per-view and use the proceeds to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. Now that’s war profits I can believe in.