What’s So Funny?

…About Peace, Love, and Understanding.

Nearly 500 years after Elvis Costello those words are still important today. What is it about the idea of Peace that makes folks so angry right now?

When anyone throws down a shout out to end the war and bring about peace they are regularly attacked for being weak, unamerican, or just another liberal pacifist that doesn’t get it.

Well, it’s true. I don’t get it anymore. I just don’t understand what it is about war that is so hot.

This is what gives you a hard on?

I get that a blanket and sudden withdraw from a war torn area that is divided not along political ideologies, but ethnic and religious ones creates the perfect mixture for cleansing of populations (and it would be all out fault). I don’t support just pulling out. This is our mess. We started all of this.

We have a grave responsibility to see this end, but that end does not come with perpetual fighting without a defined strategy for closure. You cannot continue to follow the rhetoric of the warmakers. This is not a conflict without end.

However, the democrats have latched onto the wrong terminology as well. America cannot decide when a war is over all by itself. The fighting just doesn’t stop when we decide to leave. If we so aptly “cut and run” there really will be a continuation of violence and a continuation of evacuations from the country.

Iraq will suffer many long years of recovery. The elimination of a government structure and destabilization of infrastructure does not come with a light cost. The scars of war will forever onwards be part of this nation.

This is not the legacy of responsibility that I want to stand in history for my generation. It is time that this war is ended responsibly and honestly. If we want a real peace, we must treat this like a real war. There should be talks for the signing of a real peace treaty. We should be looking at engaging the conflicting forces in real talks and real discourse over what is to be done with this country.

Some may say the United States doesn’t broker agreements with terrorists. Others might argue that the United States isn’t a nation of pre-emptive war. Both are moot arguments. We are at war, we started it. And our continued presence has forced the opposition into more organized, more dangerous, and more stable enemies. We have forced terrorists to become movements of will through many trials of fire.

By allowing them to face the most powerful military in the world and not be immediately crushed we have already validated their presence, and abilities. This doesn’t become an issue of right or wrong, or good guy v bad guy. It’s about what unifies a force. And fighting the United States is a unifying ideal.

it is time for peace. Real peace. One that comes from an agreement on all sides. Not just demanding that a government we forced into existence quell it’s people. The ideals of democracy and revolutionary change are rampant in Iraq right now, w’re just too goddamn dumb to realize that the yoke of oppression they are attempting to throw off is ours.

It is not the place of the United States to decide what form of government is best for what nation. It is time that our political leaders understood that as well. But most importantly the Untied States has the ability to stop violence in a place where we perpetuate it, that is not a concept worth standing for.

So, again I ask,

What is so funny about Peace, Love, and Understanding?

(x posted)

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