GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

This makes me nauseous. It makes me absolutely sick. I am speechless in that I do not know how to express my anger and confusion toward a nation that blatantly defies the international laws that are intended to keep them safe, to protect them from the need for these defiant actions. This world is a dangerous place. There is terrorism. There is narcissism. There is hubris. There is suffering and there is conflict. Yet, we, as a community, as members of the colorful and diverse umbrella race that is humanity, must come to an understanding on the topic of nuclear weaponry. We are all one. We all love a God, we all love a country, we all fight for a people, we all embrace an idea of freedom, we all share common values involving family, love, power, and money. And yet we feel the need to fight because their God has a different name, their country has a different government, their people have a different mindset, their idea of freedom is not our idea of freedom, their common values are not prioritized in the same way as ours. Of course, we need protection. Every group of people needs protection because it is simply human nature to rise up against a minority as the fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany once did. You see it on the playground and you see it in the workplace. Yet, violence and anger, war and conflict, should be centered on a fight against those who blatantly defy peace efforts, who stand up to the ultimate peace-keeper, the United Nations, and say "No, we refuse to end the development of a nuclear weaponry even if the rest of the world is finally willing to." The way I see it, they are throwing the overall idea of peace and resolution on the ground and burying it deep beneath soot and uranium and the ashes that once were the bodies of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are promoting the threat of mass death as a means of maintaining power and yet no one is questioning their sovereignty. Sure, every nation wants to be at the top of the food chain, but if nations like North Korea who are so inclined to use the threat of the most barbaric form of weaponry fail to abide by the laws of the international realm, there will be no one left to live. We will be an empty Wall-E like planet that is infected not by trash and pollution, but instead is laced with radioactive materials that prevent anyone from living long enough to maintain a nation at all.

People should never be sacrificed in order to make a point. The threat of the deaths of innocent people should never be the central tactic for a nation trying to step ahead of the rest. Why can't the world see? We struggle in the U.S. to understand it. We struggle as humans to understand it. But all we are saying is give peace a chance. Try to see that we can all live as one community, giving and taking what is necessary in order to survive. I know that my country is no better. We used atomic bombs twice in order to shatter an opponent that may not have been an opponent if we had tried negotiation in the first place. There are so many grey areas with the events that led to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings though, just as there is so much chaos, miscommunication, and misunderstanding involved with any form of conflict. Yet in retrospect, even those who consider themselves to be the antithesis of historically-inclined (aka, me) can see that there were many windows of opportunity for someone to put down an iron fist, stop the buck, and declare peace over war. I look to the words of my political mentor, the man who inspires me to accept peace as the ONLY solution to conflict regardless of the audacity of our enemy and the call for violence of our people.

I call on all members of the United Nations seriously to consider this important resolution and to give it their support. We must ask the question, which might sound naive to those who have elaborated sophisticated arguments to justify their refusal to eliminate these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction - why do they need them anyway! In reality, no rational answer can be advanced to explain in a satisfactory manner what, in the end, is the consequence of Cold War inertia and an attachment to the use of the threat of brute force, to assert the primacy of some States over others.(Address by Nelson Mandela at the 53rd United Nations General Assembly).

So I'll repeat over and over again the title and chorus of my favorite John Lennon song. Give peace a chance. Whether it's in an argument with your mother or a discussion with the newly and controversially elected leader of Iran. I don't care who you are, who you were, or who you're going to be. I don't care how big your fight is or how quickly you could win. Forgo violence, curb your threatening words, and end the proliferation of nuclear weaponry. Just give peace a chance.