Friday, October 7, 2011

Peace Activists Confuse Me

As I drove past the corner of Rockford Rd and Winnetka last night, I saw some folks out holding up various signs. (ie PEACE, GET OUT OF AFGANISTAN, etc)  This along with all the news and commentary of late (see example below) got me thinking...
  • Would getting out of Afganistan really serve the cause of PEACE? 
  • Or would it serve the cause of VIOLENCE?
I can think of many reasons for getting out of Afganistan, some include:
  • Stop the wounding and death of American soldiers
  • Stop the excessive spending of American tax dollars
  • Butt out of a foreign nation's internal strife
  • They've been fighting forever, unlikely to change anytime soon
However I can also see potential negative consequences, some include:
  • Women's rights in Afganistan disappear again.
  • Tribal killing increases again.
  • Drug production and terrorist training proliferate again.
So I am unsure what we should do? 

As a test of the Peace protester's beliefs, I think we should remove all Policeman from the Minneapolis streets for 6 mths.  I would be interested to see if the city would be more or less peaceful after the 6 months.  Of course, Mexico may give us some indicators of what may happen.  (Mexico)

I am thinking that pulling the troops out of Afganistan may be the right thing to do for America, but I am not naive enough to think that it will enable peace in Afganistan.

CNN Afganistan

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A modest proposal:
US begins to military draw down immediately, and for every one dollar saved in military spending, invests fifty cents in humanitarian aid and NGOs. I suspect Afghans (women and children in particular) will be better off, the US budget will be healthier, and the only real losers are Haliburton and Xe.

I'm not sure I understand your test. Soldiers exist to wage war. Peace officers exist to maintain peace. ??

--Annie

October 7, 2011 at 9:18 PM
John said...

I think we should probably re-label the US Military as the US Peace Keepers then after all the conflicts of the past 100 yrs...

Almost all of them have been fought to try and stop some agressor that wanted to disturb the Peace by invading someone else's country or area. Or some tyrant group that was killing people within their country or region.

We definitely are a strange country... You try to kill people, we stop you, and then we help to fund your rebuilding.

I am thinking the folks in Somalia may like a little less aid and a bit more "Peace Keeping". Since the aid can often not get there, and people are killed in droves. But no, let's keep the peace by staying out of there.

See what I mean by this is confusing?

October 8, 2011 at 12:16 AM

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