PEACE IN OUR TIME

"Peace in our time" was a slogan used by Woodrow Wilson to justify the United States' entry into World War 1, the war he called "the war to end all wars." Seems like the guy was 0 for 2 in the slogan department. Wilson was also the man responsible for the creation of the ill-fated League of Nations, the ill-fated part being the fact that the United States never joined the League and it presided over the buildup to World War 2, the most destructive and widespread war in humanity's history, claiming over seventy million victims. Not exactly a stellar record for an organization dedicated to world peace and understanding. Presumably Hitler, Hirohito and Mussolini never got the memo and all hell broke loose.

These days the League of Nations is replaced by The United Nations, a world body in which all nations of earth are members. The U.N. is not much more effective than its predecessor since no nation anywhere bows to its authority and wars great and small rage everywhere. The fact that there hasn't been a World War 3 yet is not due to anything the United Nations did or said, but instead the fact that a lot of nations own nuclear weapons and that sort of puts a damper on the large-scale wars, what with a nuclear holocaust threatening to kill everything on the planet except cockroaches and Andy Rooney.

And so the news comes to us that peace is breaking out between the Israelis and the Palestinians, two of the more bloodthirsty populations in that tinder-box of bloodthirsty populations called the Middle East. This cease-fire was brokered by Egypt, a nation that twice went to war on Israel with disappointing results, having been soundly defeated and falling quite short of their stated goal of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. One supposes that all those nations in the Middle East who share that goal want to go down in history with Babylon and Rome for having thoroughly trounced Israel, maybe even being responsible for a new Diaspora of the Jews.

So far, no good. Sixty years into its history, Israel's still standing, mostly due to their alliance with the United States. It seems America likes to have a henchman handy in the region to do our dirty work and Israel fits the bill, being nominally a democracy and being more than willing to shoot anybody who threatens them, in real or imagined terms. This way the U.S. military is freed up to invade hapless dictatorships at the whim of our own bloodthirsty presidents. You could look all this stuff up, it's happened, all rhetoric to the contrary. Americans and Israelis are natural allies, having a goodly portion of their citizenry believing that the Earth is only 5,768 years old. As dumb as that notion is, a great many people in both nations believe it. So, perception and not reality is the basis for this alliance, like so many alliances throughout history. Like the perception that Israel is an open, democratic society when in fact they pretty much disenfranchise that 20% of their citizens who are not Jews. And on these sand castles we try to build peace.

And why not? If peace can be attained anywhere for any reason, that's a good thing, and a basis upon which to build other peace agreements elsewhere in the world. If the warlike tribes of the Middle east can be brought to the bargaining table, then what greater example is there for the rest of humanity? If it takes pretending that they like one another, go for it. It's better than not making peace. We already know the result of generation after generation of hatred and warfare and it's not pretty, to say the least. So if we have to pretend to like one another or pretend we have a lot in common, then why not pretend to live in peace? Hard-headed pragmatism has us mired in an endless cycle of hatred and killing. Screw all that. Let's all join hands and sing while we lay down our swords and shields down by the riverside. Peace in our time. There is nothing else more important. These wars are killing us.