Peaceful majority and the Cost of War

Hiya

After a few posts in which I celebrated an almost hedonistic indulgence of wonderful food, here's something a bit weightier.

One of my favourite people has forwarded to me an essay about why the peaceful but silent majority doesn't matter when it comes to extremism and fanatic killers.

The essay is thought-provoking and most of what it claims is quite true. However, there are several problems with the text, starting with the author: a one-minute search of the Web tells me that the essay, actually written in 1997, is not by Emanuel Tanay but by Paul E. Marek.

Looking a little further, I found Marek's blog. He is actually a duo that presents itself as "A Father (Paul) and his Canadian Forces Son (Junker) blogging from the Right side of the aisle." While Marek & son don't paint the world in black and white, they certainly seem to have no time for a critical examination of the massive failings of our, i.e. Western, society.

And that's what bothers me a whole lot more than the false attribution of authorship in the forwarded message, which in itself is bad enough. The essay fails to mention the horrendous exploitation by western "explorers" and their backers of huge swathes of the rest of the world. Not a word is said about the obscene amount of money that our governments (especially the US and UK govts.) are throwing at the people they claim to "protect", not in the form of food, education, infrastructure, health care, but in the form of guns, bombs, destruction, death, rape, murder. Click here to watch the dollars being wasted on warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 --- the mind boggles!

It's not as though that was a recent phenomenon -- it's been going on at least since Christopher Columbus first set foot on what he thought were the shores of India in 1492.

The constructive, positive things that could have been done with this money! Misinformation, greed, vengefulness, lack of justice, lack of education, lack of prospects push young people into the paths of fanatical leaders -- it was true in Germany, it is true now. How about supporting peace work and teaching people how to resolve conflicts in a non-violent way?

There's a debate raging over here (UK/Scotland) about the cost of human lives. One of the latest news headlines is about ministerial aide Eric Joyce, who quit Gordon Brown's cabinet on Thursday in protest. The Brits are getting itchy to get out of Afghanistan because to date 212 British soldiers have lost their lives in combat there since 2001. That is 212 lives too many and my heart goes out to the families of these mostly young people. However, it pales in comparison to the loss of civilian lives in Afghanistan -- tellingly, no-one has been keeping a tally on that number.

Might I also remind everyone of the loss of lives to famines, disease, misguided or blatantly absent health policies, and, to bring in a killer of the first order in the western world, road accidents. For example, in 2008, 272 people were killed on Scotland's roads, 2,535 were recorded as seriously injured and 12,756 suffered "slight" injury (source: The Scottish Government website, accessed a few minutes ago).
Exploring the reasons why this number is so high would merit another hour or two of thinking and research.

Nuff said for now -- I bid you a very good night and a wonderful weekend -- wars and death and wanton destruction notwithstanding -- and look forward to your comments.

PEACE!