Today, we’re blog­ging for peace.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, “peace can be a state of har­mony or the absence of hos­til­ity. “Peace” can also be a non-violent way of life. “Peace” is used to describe the ces­sa­tion of vio­lent con­flict. Peace can mean a state of quiet or tran­quil­ity — an absence of dis­tur­bance or agi­ta­tion. Peace can also describe a rela­tion­ship between any peo­ple char­ac­ter­ized by respect, jus­tice, and good­will. Peace can describe calm­ness, seren­ity, and silence”.

Glad to see we achieved none of these goals. Absence of hos­til­ity? I opened the news­pa­per today and saw peo­ple get­ting killed in Israel, in Pales­tine, in Sudan, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Congo, in Pak­istan… — the only rea­sons it stopped there is because the news­pa­pers had ran out of space. Hey, no won­der, with about 50 coun­tries cur­rently at war for a rea­son or another. Are we liv­ing a non-violent style of life? Nope. It some­times looks like there is no enough room for all of us on earth: our favorite games seem to be taunt­ing, envy­ing, blam­ing and killing each other. In every day’s life as in war zones, we like to be right and well, if we’re right, the oppo­nent has to be wrong, isn’t it?

Why do we fight today ? Because they attacked us first. Civil war. Bio­log­i­cal war. Because we want to pro­tect our val­ues. Holy war and war gods. Because they have the bomb and they’re not sup­posed to. Pre­ven­tive war, atomic war. Because they tor­ture. War crimes. Because we have weapons to sell. Eco­nomic war. War of attri­tion. Phony war. War games.

I’m tired of all these clichés about wars and the need to fight. A war as no moral­ity, no mat­ter how hard our lead­ers try to sell it. Noth­ing can jus­tify vio­lence, period. Wars are fueled by racial, eth­nic, reli­gious ani­mosi­ties or ide­o­log­i­cal fer­vor. How do you teach some­one peace by fight­ing? How are we mak­ing things bet­ter? Is there really a civ­i­liza­tion above all oth­ers who has the sur­preme right? Don’t we all know, by now, that there is no right or wrong and that today’s legit­i­mate rea­son to attack will be tomorrow’s legit­i­mate rea­son to defend?

No, we don’t.

See, the war lords are demand­ing but they call the shots. Casus belli or not, here they come. Empires were lost but they stick around. All it takes is pro­pa­ganda after all.

And I see them on CNN, 24/7 cov­er­age. The other side of the food chain. They’re my age and they signed for it. Can­non fod­der sent back home when bro­ken. I feel for them cause it could have been me. I see these “casu­al­ties”, these “col­lat­eral dam­ages”, these civil­ians killed and these fam­i­lies mourn­ing — what have they done? Noth­ing. Just liv­ing. I watch them and I feel pow­er­less. I feel mad.

Clean war(s) ? Not quite.

I’m mad, because we don’t have to fight. It doesn’t make any sense.

I’m hop­ing for peace. I hope you do too.

Related arti­cles:

1. Close Up of the Cana­dian Parliament
2. Woman On Top
3. Talkin’ Bout A Revolution
4. Fall Sky
5. My Travel ABC