War and Fear

I opposed invasion of Iraq. But it is not enough to oppose war. Opposition served the hawks' agenda more than the doves'. Unfortunately, war is very hard to ignore. My time could have been much better spent contributing something to the world. But my conscience compelled me to present alternatives and to challenge the rhetoric that rationalized violence. But I just contributed to the struggle and fed the underlying conflict that ultimately led to war. I have been trying to write something about war and peace since at least February. Writing about war has come easily. Writing about peace has not. I finally need to just publish something to get started. Hopefully it will provoke conversation about peace. I'm not an A-list blogger, so I'd appreciate it if you would point people to my post about how fear leads to war or add comments with links to where others are seriously discussing the mechanics of peace so I can get in on the conversation.

War is an emergent phenomenon which depends on rampant spread of fear. For example, consider the recent invasion of Iraq. For more than a decade we Americans knew that Saddam Hussein was a despotic ruler oppressing the Iraqi people with all sorts of brutality and nastiness. But we weren't afraid of him. He represented no threat to us. And as a nation we didn't exhibit much concern for the Iraqi's all those years. We certainly didn't show any signs of sending in armored divisions. By contrast in the past two years weapons of mass destruction entered the American consciousness and suddenly we were terrified. An epidemic of fear spread through this country and it became urgent that Saddam be removed from power by whatever means necessary. We couldn't wait for weapons inspections. Individual US citizens were scared of a leader of a third world country -- more scared of Saddam and unseen weapons than of loosing the lives of American soldiers in armed conflict. War emerged as a plausible option only after a majority of the American people were more afraid of Saddam remaining in power than we were of loosing American lives in war. How on Earth did we get here?

Please take a closer look at how fear leads to war and help me understand how to break the cycle.