What the World Needs Now

I could begin singing Love, Sweet Love! But that would be more than a little corny. On the other hand the lyrics to that song make more sense to us today than they did long ago when the song first appeared on the list of hit songs.

The world really does need love and lots of it.

Think of Syria and its civil war. It’s president has gone to war against his own people with more than one enemy opposing him. His tactics have been so cruel and obscene that hospitals have been moved underground to protect their patients. Still patients are bombed out of existence in those places of refuge.

Russia has lent a hand to help Assad and his embattled nation. They say they are fighting ISIL for Assad but they really are fighting both ISIL and the rebels that are defeating Assad’s troops. Now Turkey is in the fight, first to defeat Assad, then ISIL, and now they are morphing into some kind of international rogue nation working with Russia to defeat ISIL but somehow doing what with Assad and Syria? Who knows? The lines of strange bedfellow arrangements are surely blurred!!

More than love is needed to straighten out this perplexing situation. And more love is needed to cool the jets of Israel and her age-old enemies. Both the enemies and Israel have ramped up their distrust and hate to destabilize the region. One thinks often this is just what both sides want – instability. Why? Because they can leverage that condition for more support from friendly nations without taxing their own citizens for the expense of costly wars.

Just why wars are the favored status is still beyond me. I know it is complex. I get it. But when will the combatants tire of this incessant bloodshed and horror and just get along? Love, people. Love. One another and each other. It takes both kinds to calm the ruffled emotions and find peace.

Don’t like violence and war? Think of peace and what it is like and how it can be maintained. So much better than the current situation. Why not give it a chance to happen?

And then North Korea. What is the world to do with such a wayward child nation? So impudent, such purposelessness. So dangerous nonetheless. They have played this game long enough to gain money and favor just to calm them down. No more. I say love them enough to wall them off from the rest of the global community so they stew in their own juices. Citizens have rights. But they also have responsibilities to require their governments to behave. If they don’t then they are responsible for what they get. And what they have in North Korea is insanity cubed. Time to overthrow their own government and connect with the rest of the world. Disarm them. De-nuke them. Then help them when the citizens step forward to make the country a partner of peace with the rest of the global community.

Global business. Global community. World peace. That is the business we should be about. America spends $700 billion annually on military/war/peace machinery. Wouldn’t that go a long way toward funding peace all the way around the world? And the same expenditures from the rest of the world’s nations for the same? We are talking trillions of dollars worth of living standards and peace.

Peace is a goal not an ideology. Practicality is a tactic not a strategy. Cooperation and collaboration is a strategy not force of weapons or economic blackmail.

We should try it some day to see if it works. I think we give up on these strategies too soon before learning if persistence will work. Goals. Not tactics. Long term goals.

Let’s aim for that and see what we reap.

August 30, 2016