Peace Essay Contest: How Can We Obey the Law Against War?

Forum posts

• 14 September 2012, 00:55

  "How can we respect the law if most of us are ignorant of its existence?"

  All of us, I mean everyone who has received some kind of formal education anywhere on the planet, were taught, in either a civic government class or an introductory course on the law, that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

  I’m sure you remember this old, tired cliche. And like a lot of cliches, it inherently makes no sense whatsoever. How can you obey something if you have no knowledge of its existence?

  Yet, somehow, the lawyers, and their masters, the people who pay them to write most of the world’s legislation, get away with this egregious piece of convoluted anti-logic, time and time again.

  It seems to me, Mr. Swanson that you too play a word game of pretzel logic similar to the many word games that lawyers play, through your use of the pronoun ’we’, implying that the people of the world are all at fault for the many devastating wars humanity has suffered since 1929.

  Really, Mr. Swanson? If that’s the case, if you really believe that common humanity, the vast majority of which are too busy minding their own business trying to eke out a living for ourselves and our families, are at fault for the world’s on-going invasions, mass murders and holocausts, then it would be appropriate to educate us on the many benefits of world peace.

  But, truthfully, the average decent human being already knows this in his heart, and educating them about the evils of war is tantamount to educating them about the evils of child abuse or pedophilia. This we already know.

  But perhaps you don’t believe like I do, that the vast majority of us are decent, moral people, far from perfect, but neither sociopaths or con-artists, then how would writing essays about world peace matter to a bunch of homicidal megalomaniacs? If that’s the case, wouldn’t we be better off having the more aggressive & hate-filled amongst us under psychiatric care, dazed perpetually with government subsidized medication and skip the essay writing?

  After all, one of the world’s greatest novelists spent over 1000 pages writing a stirring narrative about the roots of war. It sold millions of copies. It convinced many educated people throughout the world that war was inherently evil. Yet it didn’t stop the world from suffering through two horrendous global conflicts. It didn’t stop the world from becoming even more more dangerous than it was in the 19th Century.

  Do you really believe that your contest winner can do better than Leo? Or Lennon?

  Shouldn’t the ’we’ you write about be addressed more appropriately towards the people who actually plan, conduct and wage war? The people with more than ample time on their hands, the people with the billions, if not trillions of dollars at their disposal?The people nominally in charge of the world’s largest nation-states? The people who actually command the resources and the manpower to wage war on their fellowmen?

  Shouldn’t you ask them to write an essay for you?

  The world’s leaders may not know of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, but they do know the United Nations Charter, which virtually every nation on Earth has signed and purportedly must follow, a charter even more binding than Kellogg-Briand. The people who rule the world are very well versed in international law. They are even more adept at evading or twisting international law than actually following it.

  Here is Chapter 1, article 2 paragraphs 3 & 4 of the UN Charter:

  3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
  4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

  The UN Charter was signed in October 1945, by both the US and the USSR. It didn’t stop the Soviets from invading Hungary in 1956, or Czechoslovakia in 1968, nor did it stop the US from invading South Vietnam in 1964, or Iraq in 2003.

  Don’t tell me the leaders of these superpowers didn’t know or understand the charter they signed.

  Don’t tell me that if the people of the US and the USSR had known and memorized the UN Charter and the Kellogg-Briand Pact that those nations would not have waged wars on tiny nations that were not real threats to their security or their economic welfare. Their leaders would have done the same regardless.

  The people of the world don’t rule it, Mr. Swanson. Therein lies the problem.