During times of armed conflict, powers great and small instinctively react with brute force: sanctions, no-fly zones, occupation, embargoes, freezing of assets. Short and medium term goals are achieved with acceptable amounts of casualties and other costs. Long term peace is rarely secured, unless it is in the form of an uneasy truce (North and South Korea) or when the enemy has literally had its ability to engage in armed conflict taken away (Germany and Japan).
I am a committed pacifist. I think that all war can and should be actively opposed, whether it is a international conflict like the one simmering between several Arab states and Israel, or the civil war that is beginning to take place in Libya.
How, you ask, can I sit idly by when a dictator threatens to massacre his own people? Would I have let Hitler murder half the world in addition to the millions of Jews, homosexuals, and others who he thought should be exterminated?
My answer is simply that we must try to find out. It is more in our nature to get along than it is to fight. Opposing war, and finding nonviolent resolutions to conflict may be difficult - it may be costly - it may seem insane. But it is not as difficult as resorting to organized conflict - or as costly - or as insane.
We must find a new period of enlightenment in the world where there are more choices than just doing nothing or engaging in force. We must find within ourselves the forces of truth, of reconciliation, of love... and these forces will overcome all our obstacles and challenges. We just have to believe.
How can people of the world believe in a Heaven above and beyond us which they have never seen, but discount a world which seeks to ban nuclear weapons, land mines, and crimes against humanity. This is the world we live in, and can not afford to write off pacifism any more than we can afford to write off nuclear disarmament and universal human rights.
I believe in this world, for all its faults and missed opportunities. I believe that peace is achievable if we want it. If only a critical mass of people in every nation big and small were to believe it as well, and in believing it make it real by building the institutions and platforms necessary for it to succeed.
Belief in peace alone will not suffice. We need activists and community builders to put it together, here on our streets and in our state houses, as well as at our nations' borders. If we are lucky and work quickly we may be able to not only save the world, but to have a world worth saving.
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