Is life even worth living? Many people feel like it is not. Why do they feel this way? Is there a reason behind their pain? Many times the reason is a loss of a loved one or family member. This occurs all too often, but it is a part of life that everyone has to deal with sometime. Everyone deals with his/her pain differently. No matter how they deal with it, their lives will never be the same as before the loss of their loved one. Many people have felt this pain because of the loss of those close to them during times of war. Wouldn’t our world be a much better place if we could always live in peace?
“To preserve peace, we need weapons of smaller and men of larger caliber,” someone once said. The unknown author of this quote was trying to say that we need to negotiate instead of wage war. If we have better men that have better hearts, we will not need larger weapons because our world would always remain in peace. In our world today, if this thought was applied, these dastardly deeds of terrorism that occurred on September 11 may have not occurred and America would not have to use military force to protect our country.
Billy Graham thinks that, “We must have military power to keep madmen from taking over the world.” I somewhat disagree with Graham. I think that we can retain madmen without military force. We can do it with negotiation. In some cases, though, military force is needed. In the case involving the Taliban, military force is required because they are not at all negotiable. The Taliban has no compassion for anyone, so they cowardly hide in their own country while thousands of their fellow men are killed by military force.
Billy Graham is an 80-year-old man that has been our nation’s leading religious revivalist for the past 50 years. According to www.time.com, “He is an icon essential to a country in which, for two centuries now, religion has been not the opiate but the poetry of the people.” Christianity preaches keeping peace instead of war at all costs. So, Graham saying that military force is needed to keep peace in the world is totally off base from Christian morals. It is disheartening as a Christian to hear such a religious icon preach hypocrisy.
In contrast to Billy Graham’s thinking, Cicero says, “I prefer the most unjust peace to the justest war that was ever waged.” I agree completely with Cicero. He’s saying that peace is the only way to live. Even if the peace is unruly, it is still better than any war that could occur. In our world today, America is in a war against terrorism. People in the United States wish that this war could have been avoided. It caused loss of life and pain in the hearts of loved ones of those whose lives were lost. If we could have maintained peace in any way, it would have been better than this appalling war that is occurring.
Cicero was an orator, lawyer, politician, and philosopher. Cicero was an excellent politician. His whole life, all he wanted to do was be a politician. In ancient Rome, men that had military success were thought to have exceptional personal qualities. So, since his family was not of political descent, he had to prove to the country that he could be an excellent leader by joining the military. However, Cicero was no soldier. According to www.utm.edu, “He hated war, and served in the military only very briefly as a young man.” Cicero learned as a young man that war was not the way to solve problems.
Ben Herbster, the leader of the United Church of Christ, believes that everyone should work as hard as he/she can to reach his/her full potential. He says, “The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become.” I strongly agree with Herbster. Our world today would be a much better place if everyone gave 100 percent in everything he/she did. People today seem to give just enough to get the job done and get paid. Many problems are caused because of this lack of effort and many problems could be avoided if people would just listen and act on what Ben Herbster has to say.
Overall, war can be avoided and should be at all costs. Peace is so much better for everyone involved. War brings out the worst in everyone and causes tremendous pain. The loss of loved ones is the main source of this pain and could be evaded with peacekeeping methods. The terrible tragedy that occurred on September 11 should have never happened. If our world was in peace, many problems such as this would not occur and cause such an immense pain in the lives of those that have lost the ones they cherish.