Why Is Peace So Radical?

I just began reading a book by Colman McCarthy called I'd Rather Teach Peace. Mr. McCarthy was a journalist who was asked to teach writing at a school in the Washington, D.C. area where he worked. His response was, as the title says, "I'd rather teach peace." Which, he did. The book chronicles his experiences teaching peace in many different classroom environments, and the reactions of his students to the class.

It is a fascinating book. I have not gotten too far in it yet, but it already has me thinking about how much we are geared towards confrontation and aggression. We study wars in school for years, and touch upon just a few peacemakers. We call our soldiers brave, and our conscientious objectors cowards. The Iraq war arose out of a refusal to talk to our enemies, rather than attempt to understand them.

Peace was presented as an irrational alternative by our leaders, and their supporters. But, where was the rationality in invading a country, and removing their dictator, their army and police forces, with the hopes that democracy would emerge? Is it, or was it radical to suppose that chaos would emerge instead?

How much more courage does it take to sit down with your enemy and have a conversation? To talk rather than point a weapon or drop a bomb? How much courage does it take for a leader to send in troops to fight a war? Especially when those leaders have never witnessed the horrors of war?

Michael Kamber of The New York Times recently wrote about the scarcity of images of this war, especially of wounded or dead American soldiers. We don't even see the caskets coming back from Iraq. Photographs have been banned. Anyone around during the time of the Vietnam war will remember those images from that war. Caskets, draped with flags, lined up. Is this ban done out of fear of the reaction of the public? Do our leaders lack the courage of the conviction of their choices to the degree that they cannot show us the cost of this war?

Too many people do not know or see what is going on with this war. Will it be easier to go to war again if we don't witness the effects of war? We cannot recreate the pictures of the past. But, as an artist, I hope this project can help people see at least the numbers, and let their imaginations fill in the picture of what those numbers represent in lives cut short. I am listening to Vincent Bugliosi's book, The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder. It was recommended by a friend. As I listened this morning, he was outlining the stories of a few Americans killed in Iraq, and the effect the loss has had on their families. To say it is heart wrenching is an understatement. The saddest thing is that most of this pain is borne by a few in obscurity. Even more obscure is the pain of Iraqi civilians losing their children, their parents, their friends.

Real people get killed in wars. Not robots. Not evil characters as depicted in movies. Real people. If recognizing that is radical, I guess that makes me extremely radical. I will learn to live with that. If wanting to know what the effects of war are is radical, I will own that as well. And I will believe I am not alone.