Alternatives to war

[Christa]

Nelson Mandela said: ‘If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy – then they become your partner.’ But where do we find the techniques we need to work with them? We can find it in the past, in modern creative exchanges and in traditions.

The way things stand now war is just too easy. It’s too easy to send someone else’s children to fight and die. It is too easy to dehumanise the enemy, making people believe, for example, that every Iraqi wore the face of Saddam Hussein. It is too easy for leaders to commit egregious crimes under international law, including the crime of aggression, and not to pay the price like the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg.

It is time to change the rules so that those who wage war, particularly illegal war, will reap the consequences themselves. It is time to end the double standards, and to replace might with the rule of law – without which, as Thomas Hobbes said, life is ‘nasty, brutish and short’. It is time to demand that our leaders find peaceful ways to resolve conflicts.

Recently, President Khatami of Iran, for example, has been a strong proponent of substituting dialogue between Islamic and non-Islamic nations in place of conflict. Such dialogue, if it’s sincere and serious, could lead to a wider recognition of the inherent unity of the human race that transcends race, gender, class, culture, civilisation and the other marks of difference frequently invoked to justify conflict.

Full article:

http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/9/alternatives_to_war

[whistle]

1. Bushbots and Cheneybots all work for conflict and division and their neocon

...agenda of world domination. These people just want war, that's it! The neocons are the war party and the republicans and democrats who side with them are part of the war party as well.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Murshid Samuel L. Lewis,

the first American Sufi, said that the key to diplomacy was to eat and talk together. The billions we spend on weaponry would be better used developing ways to keep our planet safe from global warming, feeding the world, and making sure all have a chance to follow their dreams.

[Christa]

3. Eat and talk together

what a beautiful experience.

Keep your enemies close ;)