Holy Cow, am I Sad.

(warning, this may be a little free-form)

All weekend I thought about whether or not we (the world) are already in World War III. If you sit back and think about the number of countries involved in attacking or defending against other countries, it sure looks like it.

People try to justify war. They say things like "some people won't be negotiated with, and that means that they must be destroyed, or they will destroy us", but it doesn't seem like a good solution to me.

What makes me sad is that there are people who won't be negotiated with. It makes me sad that there are people who think that war is a good idea. It makes me sad that there are people who think that the world will be a better place if others are wiped off of the earth through violence.

I only make those kinds of statements when I get crazy angry and frightened (and goodness, I certainly did). Within a day, I regret saying violent things. Within 3 days, I regret that there are so many that cannot step back from their anger and fear long enough to think that there is another way.

I live in the United States, where, it has been pointed out to me, war never comes knocking at my door with a rifle. I think it is often the case that people can only understand that something is an atrocity that should be discontinued if they are sufficiently removed from said atrocity for at least a generation. By not experiencing war on a daily/monthly/yearly basis, I have formed the opinion that life is much better when you don't worry all the time about Daddy getting taken out by shrapnel on his way home.

Of course, I think that this kind of pacifist thinking can also be carried too far, as in the case of vegetarianism. I still don't think that eating meat is an atrocity. Maybe I just need to be separated from it some more, though, who knows.

I am thinking of the people in Beirut, and the people in Haifa. I'm thinking about the parties we held in the bomb shelter when I lived on Kibbutz, because we could turn up the music without anyone hearing us. We got shut down, by the way, when it was discovered that there were men and women dancing together. I'm thinking about people using those bomb shelters to protect them from explosions, instead of a strict daily routine. I'm thinking about how there will be war for a very long time, and it's going to have to be incorporated into my daily thinking as something that just is, not something that people are working to stop, or prevent. The dichotomy of planning to attend a party next month, or an event in November, or my sister's wedding next year with the stark facts of families being killed all at once in places that I've been, on streets that I've traveled.

I regret the hot-headed words I said a few days ago, and I'm glad that they're only words, and even though they're out there forever, they don't have the power to end anyone's life. I'm so very sad that people whose words do have that power are the ones living daily with the anger and the fear, and the hate.