Wars are becoming worse despite the world’s growing wealth, the grief of decent people and countless peace talks by the United Nations. This reality is worth confronting as we enter the new century’s second decade. Silence is dangerous.
There are wars visible in the media as in Iraq and Afghanistan, less visible as in Indonesia, Bolivia and the Congo, and near-forgotten as in Darfur, Myanmar and Thailand. In all of them, the innocent and those least able to defend themselves are dying and being maimed.
It has become morally too easy to kill because those who die are usually unseen. People in distant places send drones to kill dozens in Afghanistan and Pakistan as if playing computer games. Others, usually brain-washers sheltered in hideouts, strap bombs to the bodies of girls and boys or arm them to kill people they might barely see before dispatching themselves to what their indoctrinators, still alive and well, insist is a paradise exclusive to God’s good servants.
Women are raped as trophies of power and children are forced into becoming soldiers and cannon fodder. The UN’s human rights forums are filled with gruesome stories of cruelty unbridled. Persons, who should be living in hope and progress, are perishing in Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and tens of other places. Worse, each day militants in almost 50 theatres of conflict in Africa and Asia become more sophisticated as they learn to kill efficiently from encounters with American, NATO or other forces aided by the US, the UN and the West.
Yet most of us remain a silent majority going about our daily cares hoping that somehow the violence spreading all around will just disappear. We talk of peace and decency with increasing frustration and bewilderment. But we are not sufficiently outraged to really stand up for what we believe instead of letting ideologues grab the soap box.
Perhaps, not enough is made in education systems of the last century’s history so profoundly scarred by the silent majority’s irresponsible behavior at the start. The German Nazis who threw some 7 million Jews, gypsies and homosexuals into gas chambers or firing squads were just a handful of fanatics who grabbed government and became uncontrollable. They intimidated decent Germans who stayed silent into obeying orders until their entire country was destroyed in a war that cost over 50 million lives.
Russia’s whimsical Czars were evicted by a handful of ideologues who created a state that killed some 20 million of its own people and displaced other millions at the whim of Soviet rulers. Maoist Communism caused the deaths of over 40 million citizens in just three decades. It, too, began with a handful of true believers.
In almost every Muslim country, governments whether royalty, dictatorship or weak democracy have been fighting religious fundamentalists for decades. Fundamentalists are also conducting terror in many Muslim and non-Muslim countries to impose their belief systems. Yet the majority of Muslims, who are doubtless peace loving and decent, remain silent.
As we enter the new decade, tied together into a global village, the silent majority would do well to recognize the last 100 years were devastating because decent people were so cowed by extremists that they became voiceless while violence rose to reign. So it is time to speak up more forcefully against those who so easily sacrifice innocent lives either because they shoot on computer screens or they send robotised humans to die for their ambitions. We should not wait until it is too late again. (Ends)