War is childish

Disclaimer: This is not the opinion of the Rose Thorn, but simply of my own personal ideologies. By the way, I have had friends and family fight in the wars with some not returning home and I support their decision to give their lives for their country. Now let’s get to the article.

War is childish, as the title denotes. Never have I seen such immature behavior since boys pulled the pigtails of girls simply to steal their popsicles. To say war is mature would be to say that adults, being unable to resolve their conflict, may resort to beating each other to the point of death; except, for the most part, that these two people are too lazy to fight themselves, so they send other people to do it much like two school bullies trying to claim territory on the playground, but then send their friends to hash it out instead.

The biggest problem with my argument, you may try to point out, is what do you do with the bullies of the world? How do you deal with the “big kids,” such as Hitler? The teachers usually dealt with them in elementary school. But where are our teachers of the world? I’d say in our classrooms, and in our homes. As most teachers are aware (and possibly some students too), life at home intensely affects the learning of students in school. When the home is not conducive to learning, the student cannot bring his or her best to class the next day. To educate our children is to prevent wars in the future. As future parents, we need to ensure that we teach tolerance and understanding. To believe that a presidential candidate would be “un-American” as a president because he or she is Muslim is unacceptable. Just as to hate another religion simply because you do not know the real story is ignorance. I’m not saying that you have to go against your own religious beliefs, you can still think that they will go to Hell (even if their religion doesn’t believe in Hell), but to not even make the honest effort of talking to people because of one aspect of their lives is plain stupid. In the grand scheme of things, any extremist view is harmful for the entire planet.

Surprisingly, President Bush’s war in Iraq has helped Iraqi youth realize the problems with extremism (as was discussed in Aaron Meles’ article, “Extremism’s worst enemy,” last issue) and will probably help curb any militarism against the United States once Iraq is back up and on its feet. I, personally, have not been fond of Bush’s choices while in office, and am torn by the fact that he may have actually pulled something positive out of an unprovoked attack against another nation (beyond the simplicities of stopping another bully). The United States needs to learn that we are not the enforcers of the world (and certainly not the teacher), but rather the other bully, and we need to be careful to not get a detention.