By: Paige Rohe

I’ve become a broken record. I didn’t mean for this to happen, but it has. I have found that there is one message that I can’t stop promoting and I can’t put it to bed because it’s my future on the line. Nobody asks for times of crisis and nobody is happy to see such irrevocable changes darken their door. Maybe it’s the idealism of a youth, but I feel that even I, the insignificant college student that I am, might be able to shut out the trying times ahead if only I can add my voice to the multitude who warn others of what is coming. Thus, this article will be the third time I have written about the inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and repercussions of war.

Of course there are other important news stories going on. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has introduced a monumental social welfare program to aid the millions of poor in his country. A US citizen in China has been imprisoned by the Chinese government as an alleged conspirator of against the state for his association with the banned spiritual group, the Falun Gong. A famine threatens the people of Zimbabwe. These and other noteworthy stories affect lives around the globe, and yet I can’t bring myself to write about any of them. Why? Because War, in the news and in the conversations of my peers, is all there is in the world.

Bio-terror, nuclear terror, nerve gas, ‘imminent danger,’ ‘attack,’ and more, glare at me in newspaper headlines and yell at me on news broadcasts. The State of the Union Address given by President Bush last Tuesday night was overflowing with these terrifying words and ideas. That night, I wondered if America wasn’t having trouble sleeping or finding the 11:00p.m. re-run of “Friends” a little less enjoyable than usual.

We’re about to cross the Rubicon and it feels like the world is against us. Saddam wants us blown to bits, Kim Jong Il wouldn’t mind so very much seeing the US destroyed, and Al Qaeda, the worst of them all, has proven they just might win the bid to carry out the job -that’s assuming the deal has yet to be made. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and heavy is the heart of the greatest military and economic power on earth.

I don’t think the founders of our country had it in mind for us to be the single most revered and simultaneously hated state in the world, but we are. And as long as a dictator who appears to be keen on the use of biological weapons against his enemies is allowed to threaten American lives, we have little choice in how we must react. 

If the evidence of why we ought to nip these horrific catastrophes in the bud is clear, then why is such a large proportion of the world turning its back on us? Why have grandmothers in England who call themselves “Raging Grannies” begun to join the ranks of an untold number of anti-war demonstrators in Japan, Russia, Germany, Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, and other countries?

Sure British Prime Minister Tony Blair has managed to scrounge up a few countries in the EU who don’t seem to mind our present course of engagement with Iraq, but does their quasi-support matter more than the multitudes that seem to oppose us? 

As a friend of mine has so wisely observed: “It’s very different looking down from the mountain.” Sure we see a comet headed straight for us. But those whose survival depends upon whether or not they will get the aid from the US, as they have been promised, don’t care about the comet as much as they care about the avalanche. And that’s the awful truth of things.

Regardless of whether we fight or not, we lose. If, instead of going to war, we sit back and try to develop hydrogen-powered cars to rid ourselves of our dependency on oil and consequently the Middle East then we risk one day waking up to a nuclear holocaust in our backyard courtesy of Saddam Hussein or Al Qaeda. If we go to into battle, we run the risk that in the future more terrorists will be created out of hatred towards the ‘bullying US.’ So, years from now, instead of my friends or cousins putting their lives on the line for freedom and democracy, it might be my son or daughter.

I care about the poor of Brazil and the starving of Zimbabwe, but it seems to me the UN and the new Brazilian president are doing their best to avoid their respective crises. Who’s going to help us out? And where do I fit in?

Paige Rohe is an International Studies student at Emory University and a contributing writer for PurePolitics.com. She can be reached at feedback@purepolitics.com.

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