Wars

In my sophomore year of high school, we were talking about war in my history class. I forget exactly what I said, but whatever it was got the message across that I didn’t agree with war. I distinctly remember one of my friends turning to me and saying “Wait are you anti-war?” I didn’t respond, but gave her a “duh” look. Her only feedback to me was “Get out”. That obviously wasn’t something that my friend was okay with. The way she saw it, I was being an ignorant child by disagreeing with war.

The other day the radio was on in my dorm bathroom while a bunch of us girls were getting ready in the morning. Pretty soon after walking in, the air raids on Syria were mentioned. I had found out about it the night before thanks to my handy dandy news app on my tablet. It was troubling to me then, and from the look on my friend’s face, it was just as troubling to her. My other friend was standing across the bathroom, but heard all the same things we did. Her response was fairly amusing to me actually. She said that she wished she could just walk into a UN meeting, or even better a meeting of all the world leaders and sing to them a song. I’m sure you can guess which one she was thinking of. That great, catchy tune why can’t we be friends.

At this point I was still pretty upset over the air raids so I kind of gave her a weak smile, and thought to myself “and they would tell you you are being an ignorant little child who doesn’t understand the workings of the world” (you know, if they didn’t kill her first).

Here’s my question.

Think of two children. They start fighting over something, it could be something extremely stupid, or it could be something that even us knowing adults can understand the conflict in. Would you just sit there and allow the children to beat the snot out of each other? What if they were conniving enough to get other children to fight each other for them? Would you just sit there and let the violence happen? The general consensus (as I understand it) is no. Of course you wouldn’t allow the children to be subject to this violence. You would stop it as soon as you could and tell them (common guys I know you know this) to talk it out. Or maybe not talk it out, just drop it all together. (Dropping it all together don’t necessarily work, but that’s an idea for another day). Bottom line, you wouldn’t allow them to resort to violence. You would probably yell at the kids for getting other children involved if they did. You would make sure that the children got the message that violence is not okay.

So why then, is war okay?

Now I know some of you are thinking, “Uh… Jenny it’s a pretty big leap to go from two children fighting to war”. Okay, so… bring it up through all the ages. Doesn’t matter how old you are, generally the consensus is that violence is not okay. I know some of you still thinking I’m making too big a leap. You can’t compare two people conflicting to countries conflicting. Why? Because on the country level it’s too big of a scale, much different from two people jut disagreeing.

You’re right. Because with two people, thousands upon thousands of people aren’t being killed.  Two people might just get beat up if they disagree. People don’t even agree with that. Why then, would they agree with war? Maybe I’m just an optimistic 18 year old, but I have to believe that there’s a better way.