War Making Headlines, but Peace Breaks Out

[CVX]

The chilling sights and sounds of war fill newspapers and television screens worldwide, but war itself is in decline, peace researchers report.

In fact, the number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meantime, are growing in number.

"International engagement is blossoming," said American scholar Monty G. Marshall. "There's been an enormous amount of activity to try to end these conflicts."

For months the battle reports and casualty tolls from Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) have put war in the headlines, but Swedish and Canadian non-governmental groups tracking armed conflict globally find a general decline in numbers from peaks in the 1990s.

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[capt_buzzard]

Yes,as peacetime missions are growing in numbers,so has local wars in countries we only ever seen in pictures or on Tv docs. The US cannot police the world,much as many of us would want them to do. But what I do hate to see is,this new EU telling the US where to get off. Europe has lost its memory re WW11 when the United States helped rid Europe of that other madman Hitler. Its only a matter of time,and I can see it coming when our kids are drafted into a new superstate EU Army to police europe or the mid east.

[plazul]

WW I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. All it did was set a new standard for cruety and brutallity in combat. Then WW II raised the bar with the atomic bomb and now, over a half a century later, America's neo conservatives are contemplating a new world war and devising a strategy to save humanity from itself. Nuclear proliferation to rogue states must be stopped at all costs, Israel must be secure, and the wealth of nations must be allowed to flow unhindered by the politics of Islam. That is their misson. They don't believe that diplomacy and goodwill alone will bring peace in our time, appeasement is not their style, and while the rest of us go about our business they are planning their forward strategy and calculating the number of people that will have to die for Pax Americana.

They see their fear mongering and deception as part of their patriotic mission and pretend that they are just putting the Constitution on the shelf for awhile until their work is done. They see themselves as soldiers in their own kind of holy war and go to bed at night thinking about their place in history as liberators of the world. I see them as enemies of the state.

They might succeed but my instincts tell me that there are some true patriots in the system preparing to undermine the master plan. I wish I could shake their hands.