Clarification on Previous Two Posts

I recently received an email response based on my previous two posts regarding peace and war. Because of the statements the individual made it became really apparent to me that the previous postings did not effectively communicate my ideas on this subject. I was allowed to post the response on this blog and provide answers to them. I did answer directly to the reader. However, in this format, for the sake of continuity and ease of understanding, I will address each paragraph individiually. I have also added some thoughts that were not part of my original reply to the submitter.

> Brian,
>
> In your blob you note the UN "consensus" as some
> sort of moral authority w.r.t. peace. The UN has
> *NEVER* prevented a war or any type of military
> conflict. In fact, they have allowed some of the
> worst monsters since WWII to prosper in the shadow
> of their inability to act and fulfill their original
> charter and allowed 100's of thousands (if not
> millions) to suffer unnecessarily while they have
> looked the other way.

> The UN is a political organization, not a peace
> organization. Members manipulate it for political
> advantage, not peace.

I have to agree with you about the UN not being a
preventer of war. The whole point of both my articles
on this issue is that responsibility for world peace
does not rest with anybody but ourselves.

I was attempting to show that through the actions of
Ms Rice at this meeting(I didn't know it was a UN
meeting)the United States continues with the ideology
that war is an option in case of conflict. This cannot
continue.

Now many peace activists are quick to point to Bush
and the current administration as being the fault of
all of this(current bumper sticker debate will bear
this out).

My prodding encourages us all to look within ourselves
to bring about peace. If there were to be a critical
mass of peace in the US, even the world, there would
be no more room for this kind of thinking.
That being said, it appears that at least in regard to the US offensive on Iraq and the current conflict in Israel, the UN has seemed to continue to be committed to peace at any cost.

> I agree that the root of the middle eastern
> instability is ultimately "hate", but I don't think
> that the west inherently hates Arabs. On the other
> hand there are a good number of fanatics in the Arab
> world that consider you and I part of the great
> Satan; they are systematically taught hate us from
> the time of their birth simply because we exist as
> an agent of evil.

Understand that hate as I see it does not regard the
source of the hate, it only recognizes hate for
whatever the reason.

Like a fire, there can be anything or several things
that might start a fire, but there are completely
different things that can keep it going. Either way, a
fire can quickly rage out of control.

> I think that we are at a point in history in which
> there is a great conflict between ideologies:
> Judeo-Christian vs Islamic Fascism. Of course there
> are many who would choose to hide (Germany, France)
> or manipulate this conflict to suit their interests
> (China, Russia), but many of us (you and me, for
> example) really don't have a choice in the matter,
> the other guys simply want us and our ideology to
> cease to exist by any means possible.

But at the root of these conflicts is hate.
We have had and always will have conflicts,
disagreements and different ways of looking
at the world. What you are really describing
is the collective hate in the world that bears
itself out in these conflicts.

I will challenge you with a concept that we
need to conisder when thinking about these
issues. The world as it is now is a fight
looking for a place to happen. I knew people
in school like this. There are people in our
adult lives that do this now. My challenege to
myself and every citizen of the world is that we
need to eradicate the hate within ourselves, which
in turn will eradicate the hate within the world,
which in turn will eradicate the violence, war
and other insanities that we have in the world now.

> I am not sure what point you are trying to make in
> your blog; "war" is not synonimous "hate" nor is
> "peace" unconditionally good. There are governments
> all over the world that systematically kill and
> torture those who oppose them to "preserve the
> peace." There are both righteous wars and
> unrighteous peaces.

I am not praising countries that use violence to
bring about peace. How can that be real peace?
What you are describing is people living in fear
of a government. Countries sometimes do that to achieve 'order'.The country of China comes to
mind. How can a peaceful country run over and
kill college students with military tanks in a
public place? Hate does not eradicate hate. Just
because somebody can't fight back does not mean
hate is not being fostered. Love does not know hate or fear.

You can't have war without hate...what else can you
call using violence to kill in order to force the will
of one over another? The people that are dying now are
innocents that have not a thing to do with the people
having the conflict.

Love would not allow war as an option. We will always
have conflict. Love encourages us to understand each
other and work things out. There is nothing unrighteous
about that kind of peace. In our society, I don't think
we can conceive of that kind of peace, we certainly haven't
ever experienced it.

In regards to a righteous war, I'm not sure that we are at
a point to make a determination about what defines a righteous
war. The Christian Crusades were about killing people for the
sake of Jesus. That was seen as a righteous cause at the time,
but now we know that it was a horrendous mistake.

Did God 'use the US' to take Sadaam out of power for the attrocities that he committed while he was in power? It's hard to be clear on that when the US committed similar attrocities in the same places that his regime did when he was taken out of power. Perhaps we should have waited for time to do that. History can tell us that powerful cruel dictators do not stay in power forever.