Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Our Children Deserve a World without War and a Society without Fear

I woke up today, as I most often do, thinking of my son. Today, however, I was thinking of the world that my generation would be leaving him.

I grew up in fear of a nuclear war. In the mid 70’s my grammar school was still holding duck and cover drills. I remember being led by our teachers into the hallway of our school and being told that this was a safe place in the event of a nuclear bomb blast because of the concrete walls. As a 1st grader, I knew this was not true. Along with preparedness for a nuclear war, we were taught to loathe communism and abhor the Russians and the Chinese.

When the Berlin Wall came down my anxiety lifted. To me, the destruction of the iconic symbol of the cold war meant an end to the state of perpetual war which had led our country to Korea, Vietnam, and covertly to participate in the dirty wars in Latin America. Our decades-long enemies were now our allies and it seemed as if anything were possible. The anxiety and fear of the future that I had carried since grammar school fell away like the stone of the wall. My trepidation returned, however, as our country replaced the cold war with the war on terror.

Currently our country is fighting two declared wars. Our troops are stationed in at least 150 countries and we are still training the soldiers of repressive Latin American governments at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia. The U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile still stands at over 2500 warheads and a total of seven countries are known to have their own nuclear weapons. On top of it all, today President Obama is expected to announce that he will be sending as many as 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. This morning I sobbed at the thought of my son growing up with the fear and anxiety that the state of perpetual war brings. Who will he be taught to hate? What will he be taught to fear? How will I raise him to be loving, compassionate and hopeful in spite of it all? The promise of a new path which was born of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall seems to have been forgotten.

I will pray for my son and all the world’s children. I will pray especially hard for myself and all parents that we have the courage to look for that new path which leads to peace and global solidarity. In the words of Sr. Mary Lou Kownacki “May my imagination overcome death and despair with new possibility. And may I risk reputation, comfort and security to bring this hope to the children.” My son and all of our children deserve to grow up in a world without war and a society without fear.

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1 Comments:

At 12/03/2009 2:15 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

Come back from wonderland. What our children will have to deal with after our own departures cannot be summed up in a trival relation to national debt or shity overpriced healthcare. Teach your children what you know is right and cross your fingers. That principle has kept the human race alive this long....

 

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