If you are a member of Earth, every war is your war. Whether you choose to ignore it, turn an ignorant ear or pose a challenge to end it — it’s yours and ours. By allowing war to continue in our names, we are condoning its existence; we practice and promote war by not condemning it.
Today, we have a chance to quell the custom of violence and start practicing peace.
The “Practicing Peace” event on Cal State Long Beach’s upper campus is a call to spiritual unison against war and violence in its various forms, both globally and domestically.
It’ll be pretty easy to practice peace at CSULB today. The music, oratory, poetry and, yes, even yoga are free, much like the messages of peace. The main ingredient needed is people.
In its mildest declaration, war is the malicious intent to inflict great bodily injury and, hopefully, death on those within your gun sights before they inflict it upon you. Humankind is the master of war because we practice it so diligently. We claim that war is an art. Bloodshed aforethought is not art; it is savagery.
The “art of war” is the most despicable oxymoron ever phrased. It is not John Wayne, Audie Murphy or Randolph Scott, and the battleground is not a set negotiated in a glamorous executive suite in the Hills of Beverly.
We expend vast resources to fight for limited resources; slaughtering each other to demand that one group’s holiest icon is holier than somebody else’s holiest icon. Snuffing out an entire populace because we don’t agree where the line on a piece of paper should be drawn is an anathema to co-existence on this big, blue marble.
We tend to think it’s our right to decide who should breathe and who should not. It almost seems as if death and mayhem come natural to us.
War is about one thing and one thing only — killing people. Wealthy politicians predetermine the killing fields. The pawns are poor young men and women lured in by promises of increased opportunities, the American dream of an education, a career and a home with a white picket fence.
The military machine can’t lay down its arms until we disarm the politicians that load their weapons. The paradox is that some of the most intelligent minds in the world practice war from the safe confines of Congress — far removed from war’s destruction.
The White House Budget Office estimated this week that it costs about $1 million per year to keep one troop in Afghanistan. To put that in local perspective — with current CSULB student fees — $1 million would pay for more than 50 bachelor’s degrees.
Many American soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder — and the entire globe suffers the effects. The only reason the U.S. feels numbness about fighting two wars at once is because the psyche of the nation is one of acceptance and complacency.
We appear resigned that war is inevitable and collateral damage is necessary because that was the political and militaristic mindset in Vietnam — where we also had no exit strategy. The news of the day during the 60s revolved around toe tags and body bags. Nothing was gained — not even wisdom.
Rape, genocide and poverty are humanity’s traditional weaponry, and the consequential spoils of any victory derived from its use are hollow.
Throughout the existence of humankind we have killed and maimed one another for minerals, religion, politics, land, cattle and oxygen.
Listening to the arguments against war are not good enough anymore. We need to actually hear the testimonials of those who have protested before us; those who have actually engaged in the combat for peace.
It’s time to pay attention to the pleas of groups like Military Families Speak Out, when they demand that we not only bring our troops home now, but that we take care of them when they return.
One of the event’s key speakers is Tom Hayden, a 1960’s student radical who still implores university students to effect sociological, political and philosophical change around the world.
Virtually every university student in the nation had a poster during the 60s that read, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” It’s a sentiment that carries equal weight today, if not more.
Living in peace, an activity that should come naturally requires the most practice. With a lot of practice today, we walk one step closer to a future without war. To borrow a cliché: Practice makes perfect.