There comes a time in every man's life that he is called upon to serve his country on the field of battle. Perhaps, they are even called upon to give the supreme sacrifice to his country by dying for it. He may or not believe in the cause he is fighting for. In fact, he may not even know why he is sent thousands of miles from home to defend his flag in a country he may or may not have heard of. Even as you read this, hundreds of people are dying, somewhere, for someone, or something. In some cases he may be fighting to keep democracy alive, or to fight back communism. Maybe it's to protect foreign interests as we've been told so many times. In any case, many young men have been called upon to serve his country and give his life to protect some intangible ideal that he may or may not believe in. It doesn't matter. It is his duty.
First we must ask ourselves why we are fighting in a war that's not ours. Fighting in a place where we really have no foreign interest. An area of the world that has been the cause of constant conflict all throughout history. A place where hundreds, even thousands of civilians have been brutally murdered, raped and deprived of their basic needs in the name of nationalism and democracy. An area of the world that just a few decades ago set off a war that came to be known as the war to end all wars. Once again, numerous countries have sent their soldiers off to this area to protect the ideals of world peace and justice. There seems to be a higher power over the nations of the world. When they speak, the world must listen. Many questions arise out of this situation but one stands out above all in my opinion.
Have we not learned from our past mistakes?
In schools, we teach our children that we should learn from history, or else we are doomed to repeat it. Does it really seem as if we are learning from it? Is it that past generations just were not listening to what the schools had to say and ignoring it, or is that people are just doomed to forever repeat their mistakes?
A little over eighty years ago nations began allying themselves with other nations, in hopes of keeping the peace. Obviously, this did more harm than good because war was declared on all sides of the world. The cause, an assassination in eastern Europe. At this time, even more countries began to ally itself with others. This brought about a war on a scale that no one had ever seen before that. Nearly three-fourth of the nations of the world were involved in this war on some level. They called it "the war to end all wars."
They obviously saw no irony in this statement when, years later, a war on an even bigger scale was waged. This time, ending in the use of a weapon the likes that no one had ever seen. A weapon that not only caused the death of the millions of victims during the blast or even the repercussions following it, but also directly and indirectly caused the needless deaths of many more young men on all sides of the world in what came to be known as the Cold War.
After this second major war, a group of nations from around the world began an organization to insure that the world would never again have to see conflict on this level. Intentions were good, but, like all government operations, it is run by people. People, who, once getting that little taste of power, begin to abuse their positions. Without even knowing it, these people have seemed to have created just as many problems as they have stopped. They just can't seem to mind their own business. Some problems must just be left up to the country itself to deal with internally. This world organization just can't seem to get a handle on that. They want to get their hands into everything. The most tragic result being, that many of the soldiers in the world are sent off to "police," or "keep the peace" in a certain area of the world that seems to be having some problems. The end result, our nations young men are sent off to die for no reason.
Just a few short years ago, another one of these peace keeping missions wound up nearly causing another major world war. In fact, by definition alone, it could be considered a world war. This war was fought under the premise of protecting a country's freedom. A country that many of the people fighting this war had never heard of. What was the real reason this war was fought? Who knows? My opinion would be that this war was fought for oil. I think this war was fought because many nations thought they were going to lose out on oil. I won't get into that here. Point being, many nations were called upon by this world organization to help fight off this evil dictator. After this war, at first, it appeared the casualties were not as severe as most other wars. However, we were soon to find out that chemicals had been used during this war and many veterans of it began getting symptoms of some strange illness. Many have died from this, so it seems that this conflict may have caused even more damage than originally thought. All at the behest of an organization that continues wanting to be the world's baby-sitter.
So, it seems that we truly have not learned from our mistakes. Our leaders just have not realized the harm it does to meddle in other nations' affairs. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and now as our nations begin sending men off to keep the peace in the Balkan area of eastern Europe, men are sent off to die so that the great powers can feel good about themselves and feel like they have made a difference.
The only difference made being that across the globe many resources that could be used elsewhere are wasted on fighting for countries whose problems could have been solved by simply leaving them alone and letting them deal with them. We can no longer continue policing the rest of the world. Most nations, even the larger ones, have internal problems that they tend to ignore so they can concentrate of someone else's. I truly believe that if a country believes that they will get no external assistance, they will find a way to deal with their problems internally, without needless bloodshed on any level.
So, how do we deal with this problem? Tell your legislators and other leaders how you feel about what's going on, that's what they are there for. They are supposedly public servants. So use them. Write them, if they give no response write them again, or call them. If they continue to ignore you, continue trying to contact them until they can take it no more and give you a response you can deal with. If they want to keep their jobs, they will listen. They may not agree with everything you say. Remember they've been brainwashed by years of government service.

By Steve O

Questions or comments about this essay? Email Steve Oat steveotter@yahoo.com.

If you like this then come back often cuz Steve and I have worked out a deal and he'll soon have a bi-monthly column running on my page.