No war. Unless we need it.

I support peace building. I am not a pacifist.

In relationships, between people and countries, conflict is normal. It happens. In an ideal world, no one should have to resort to violence to resolve it. However, not everyone plays by the rules.

Sometimes you’ve gotta kick some ass to stop violence. I’ve said this before: We didn’t get Nazis out of Europe by shaking hands with them. We killed some, including by public hanging.

People, and countries, can behave violently. In these instances, of course, violence against them can be justified. It’s called self defense.

So, how do I feel about the possibility of World War III? Some say we’re already living through early stages of it in Europe, we just don’t know it yet. I don’t necessarily agree or disagree. Besides, when it comes to World Wars in general, we need to think differently about the “world” and “war”.

Back in the 90s, something folks colloquially call the African World War happened. How silly can we be? If there’s an international conflict where several sovereign nations are warring with each other, it’s hell. It’s war.

If we can recognize the humanity lost during the killing, disabling, raping, displacing, and otherwise harming of millions of humans by calling it a “World War”, we don’t need to make a delineation between an awful “World War” that mostly harms people on one continent, and an “African World War” that predominately harms people on another one.

(Much like we no longer specify “doctors” vs. “women doctors”, where “men” is the silent default deemed to be “normal”, and others are just an aberration.)

I’ll close with this. Because I built my first website in the 90s, I’ve been writing about my life publicly since the days of the so-called African World War. Therefore, you may already know that I was raised evangelical Christian, and I used to live in New York. Both no longer apply, but that context is why I know the following.

Near the UN’s Manhattan headquarters, there’s a statue called The Knotted Gun. It’s a gift from Luxembourg, created by the late Swedish artist Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd. Either they moved it, or I’m simply misremembering that it once sat in Ralph Bunche Park. In any case, the wall’s inscription and The Knotted Gun statue are forever linked in my mind:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

Perhaps it’s my religious upbringing, but reading that comforts me. If you’re into fact checking or looking up Bible verses, that’s verse four in the Old Testament book of Isaiah’s second chapter.

We should not want war. Anywhere. For those who want it, if we can’t stop them with diplomacy, there are other options and I support them.