OPINION

12/11/2001

It simply blows my mind that on this day 3 months ago, our country was attacked. I recall how sad that morning was of September 11th, 2001. I can remember every second of the day practically since I heard my roommate screaming that New York had been attacked. My heart aches still that something so horrible happened. The impact on the world has been remarkable. Good people all around the world shown through building a coalition all that’s wrong with humanity. The world still has far to go before we can all live in peace. Tens of times every day the news headlines all of the instability and violence going on around the world. We are at a precarious moment of our history. The pope has given daily eulogies that get scarier and scarier. It’s hard to understand everything that’s happening around the globe and it’s hard to predict what will happen from the current violence. Will the Middle East blow into an all out Arab-Israeli war? If that does happen, who’s side will America and its allies take? Will chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons be used? The possible results of this violence increasing is horrifying. It could seriously become a battle between the Muslim world against the Christian/Jewish world. That would be insane. Millions/Billions of people would be at risk of dying. History finished forever. We have to learn to love and trust one another no matter how corny that sounds. It’s the only way that peace will be resolved. War is HORRIBLE. It can start a spiraling of violence that may be impossible to stop. Consider this, each person has at least 5-10 close friends and relatives that mean much to each other. Also, each person knows a few hundred people at least. Imagine the impact of one soldiers death. Murder in war causes anger among the relatives. The more soldiers that are killed, the more sadness and anger will be infuriated and collectively experienced by many bereaving people. Just as with September 11th, a few thousand people’s death had an impact upon billions of people around the world. The U.S. has more connections internationally than most nations. Therefore, the sadness and anger is felt more substantially…So much is at risk. That’s the pessimistic view of things.

There of course still is much optimism. We absolutely have an opportunity to make things right and work towards peace. I believe that we should follow a collective approach with our allies in missions of peace. Attacking more countries will just cause more reciprocal sadness and anger. War will not protect us. Peace will protect us. Offensive actions towards countries will be extremely dangerous. The world can understand our intentions when we attack the Taliban, however war is a last resort. It should not become the top priority to attack nations. Every single measure imaginable must be considered before that. Killing people brings more pain. The pain in Afghanistan can be understood. However, pain brought elsewhere will not be accepted and cause extreme anger. People and countries may retaliate with foolish suicidal actions. The United States absolutely should not attack Iraq, Sudan, Yemen, or Somalia. We will pay a heavy price. Many countries have the ability today to attack our mainland with missles, jets, etc and the weapons today do unimaginable harm towards humanity… ....check back later for more comments...8^)...Evmeister

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Evan Lowery