Humanity Lost?

Is the war in Iraq really justified? This is a question that is haunting many of us with no easy answers in sight. Are some of us really waiting for the future to decide whether it was right or wrong? In this war, thousands of people have already ceased to live; innumerable have been left wounded and needless to say, many others have been affected in other profound ways, just as in any other war. It might be that there are no answers to a more peaceful world because humanity might be inherently flawed and we are incapable of finding peace within ourselves and with others, but a strong foundation based on love and non-violence is the key to start working towards any semblance of a solution. Love begets love and the same rule unfortunately applies to war as well. More than 50 years back, Gandhi outlined and successfully applied his ideas of a non-violent struggle for the independence of India. Initially, this did not strike me as being any good. It was just another history lesson that was learned by rote and almost immediately forgotten, without a second thought. In fact, in one of his more outrageous methods for resistance, people would just stand passively and get beaten, 'lathi-charged' as it was then called, without trying to hit back. But all these seemingly impossible and ridiculous schemes did work, patience paid and India won an independence that still stands out because of the manner in which it was achieved. Looking in this different light, Gandhi’s path was extremely arduous, but was in fact due to a superior ideology. We might think that such an independence movement of the past is not pertinent to the issue at hand and is out of context; maybe it really is not relevant in a complete sense. However, such a past, in spite of it being mutable, is invaluable to us from what lessons it has to offer and these lessons can be easily overlooked and sidelined if we do not cull the universal message of love, compassion and non-violence that is espoused in them. If we sift through all of these lessons carefully enough, who knows, we might find a solution, just as Gandhi did, one that is more humanitarian; at least the next time around that we are faced with a choice of having to go to a war, especially one that is preemptive.