War is only a three-letter word but to many people it has an aurally profound and stressful impact. On the other hand, the sound of peace promotes a refreshing feeling that can soothe one’s spirit. Unfortunately for humankind, combats are more common than their counterpart. In such cases disagreement means to kill one’s opponents and destroy their native land.
I once looked up the word war and in my naivete was astounded to learn that at that very time there were many wars of one sort or another being fought around this world. Imagine an alien observing this planet and reporting back to its space-bound colleagues in the heavens that the third planet from the Sun is occupied by mongrel-like creatures constantly assaulting and attacking their nearby inhabitants.
The current Ukrainian-Russian conflict is a terrible, terrible atrocity. To ingest the nightly newscasts causes peace-loving people to have bilious attacks and disrupts their ability to sleep. In fact, some of these newscasts show such terribly inhumane acts, the worst of which are so gross that these are unfit for human consumption and gratefully edited out.
For one example, very recently a Ukrainian children's hospital was destroyed by some explosive armament. Children were heard to be screaming from amid the rubble. The Ukrainians claimed it was a Russian rocket. The Russians claim it was a misguided Ukrainian drone. Whichever, how must the person, or persons, who pulled the trigger on that device feel about the result of their initiative? Can they sleep in peace at nights or enjoy securely tucking their own little ones at bedtime?
I don’t care to repeat the large number of deaths and injuries suffered on both sides of this current war. However, it must be beyond the measures of sanity for most normally minded people. To add emphasis to that cruel psychopathy is the fact that a large percentage of those casualties are women and children.
There is an irony about this war that is not explicable to me. A number of countries are attempting to bring this war to a close and volunteering their services to negotiate a settlement. However, at the same time some of these same countries are supplying weaponry and other war-related support to the particular combatants, the Ukrainians and the Russians. I am uncertain how to reconcile that complexity. I must admit that world politics is well and beyond my pay grade.
It is true that all wars will eventually come to an end and one of the combatants will typically claim a victory and ignore the cost. It is probable that most people on this planet hope that warfare will end sooner than later and hope and pray that at some point peace will prevail.
Wouldn’t it be marvelous when our fictitious alien observer would be able to report that all is well on their unceasingly peaceful and very neighbourly planet.
