An old man alive today was born into a world only slightly transformed by prior generations. There was plenty of greenery, and the rivers and streams flowed with sparkling clean water that was usually safe to drink. There were often beautiful vistas to the horizon, with sturdy dwellings and sometimes an all weather road. These improvements were recognised as the gifts of planning and work by builders who made life easier and more pleasant for themselves and their children.
Education was valued, and often difficult to get. Neighborhood schools awaited the eager faces of each year's new class. Teachers with twenty years of training were poorly paid from the common purse to prepare children to take their place in the world. They were taught to honour the builders and respect their works. The builders are important civilisers; they enrich life, provide greater opportunity to explore the creative capability we enjoy, and generally make life worth the effort.
We can all be builders. The desire to build and improve is as innate as curiosity, and when combined with a desire to create something beautiful, life has an ephemeral quality that is, if not a miracle, then certainly something statistically improbable. The poet says a thing of beauty lasts forever, but this idealistic opinion disregards the demonic deviltry of the destroyer, who sees a thing, and wants it down.
Whether by bomb or bulldozer, the building and bridge must be broken to bits. The road must be ripped, the airport must be crushed to crumbs. The house, the hospital and the generating station must be blasted to ballast. Whether warehouse or office complex, though arduous and expensive to construct, it is minced in a matter of minutes by a laser-guided dumb bomb. There is no respect for beauty, for utility, for investment, or for life itself. The admirable accuracy of the destructive targeting is broadcast for the world to admire, as though to prove no "collateral damage" occurred.
The last hundred years saw its share of demolition and death. Flanders Fields are full of stones. One would think we'd had a fill of it. Those who suffered but survived its horrors certainly attest to its starkness, and report a surfeit of pain. Yet we are started again on another cycle of demolition, where the stronger enforce their demands with high technology machines of death and destruction. The carnage of unmanned murder is commonplace, and few there are to mourn. Most strange of all is to find among today's destroyers the children of yesterday's victims.
Nuclear weapons were thought to make war obsolete, yet after fifty years armaments are still for sale, and are widely desired. National budgets are diverted from schools and roads to instruments of demolition. Children are trained to shoot one another, virtually and in real life, with no thought that such bloody behaviour is certain to corrupt the core of spirit. He who aims a bullet into the heart of another finds his own heart has turned to stone as well. One heart stops, falling with a thud to its earthy end, the other beats on in a dead man walking. Thou shall not kill is the spiritual commandment, but anger usurps the prerogative of vengeance.
If the world is to survive perilous times, we must stop pretending the present predicament is free of lethal deceptions. The assumption that democracy is in place and working successfully requires re-examination. The effect of unbridled economic power, protected by the law of one country, but allowed to act without moral or ethical restraint in all others, is to applaud a ravenous raptor as it tears at the stomach of the weak. The hail for economic success as the ripe and rightful fruit of resolute but remote shareholders resembles a cheer for a man who is diligently digging our own grave.
Since September 11 there has been a rush to arms, disregarding established rights and boundaries. Increased killing power has been provided to anyone claiming to be an ally, no matter how vile. The military powers of the world seem unable to choose between demolishing roads, houses, schools and hospitals of poorly defined enemies, and demolishing their dreadful machines of destruction. A man is killed, then his house is destroyed. A family has lost a son, a father, and now the house is destroyed also. To what profit?
Hearing the news, a million more are churned to anger. Nay, ten or a hundred million more. The lesson of admonishment meant to be taught teaches only increased hatred, hatred that becomes ingrained, making sworn enemies for generations. The avenues for a peaceful resolution are closed shut, not to be re-opened in our times. First a single man is killed, then his house is destroyed. One family has lost a son, a father, and now a house also. What has been gained? Has an enemy been removed? On the contrary, a million, ten million, a hundred million men now believe racism is rampant.
Democracy that stands idly by, tacitly condoning what the world sees as the greed of a racist conspiracy nudging its neighbors from their nest, demeans itself. What is the profit to a nation if a man thought to be an enemy is killed, and a hundred enemies arise to take his place? A country that acts aggressively in retribution, striking with insane fury against people it has dispossessed, soon finds itself an object of scorn and derision. A re-examination is required. The upstairs room kindly offered as refuge to the homeless does not confer a future right to exclusive dominion over the house. The rudeness is compounded by dispossessing the generous donors and then taking adjoining houses by force and violence against the resistance of the rightful owners.
It is clear that at present the power to create or demolish lies with the US and the industrialised West. That demolition is really not the preferred option, is demonstrated by the universal sadness over the willful destruction of the giant Buddha sculptures. This suggests a capability to realise that what we see in Palestine and Afghanistan is not the action of "cold-bloodied killers" but a delayed reaction to a continuous affront, in retaliation for earlier violent acts. What is called terrorism is a "striking back" performed in desperation by a plaintiff who has been denied a fair hearing. At a distance, it is difficult to distinguish the "cold bloodied killers" from the "terrorists." In the end they will be buried side by side.
The question is whether the West will see that a forceful solution is infeasible, and will voluntarily return to a court of reason and right. Greed cannot be disguised as democracy in action. Environmental destruction cannot be defended as free enterprise. Unilateral disregard for human rights is not an admirable pursuit of national interest. Expanded military presence cannot be foisted off as a generous response to a request for police assistance. The world is not a ship of fools. Everyone understands that political expedience demands economic vitality, and that explains why the order is for full throttles over the waterfall.
We agree this is a time of crisis. The present course of targeted demolition and assasination (euphemistically called a "change of regime"), leads to disaster. The power brokers of the world are encouraged to change course. Events may eventually force it. By whatever means, a return to the path of construction and re-construction is essential. A continuation of today's capitalistic system of unrestrained corporate control, providing diplomatic and financial support to corrupt dictators, trading military might and mechanical machines of destruction for scarce and scarcer natural resources, is all to the detriment of democratic institutions. The world is warming, and the captain does not mind his helm. The world wonders when, if ever, the right time for mutiny arrives. Waiting is itself a choice; is it the right or wanton one? If we are wrong only a wilderness of waste will witness the want of wisdom.
In the courtroom of the world, the fair claims of a plaintiff are not allowed an adamant assessment. It is the nursery of destroyers. If rightful claims of continuing damage are denied, and no opportunity is offered for a fair hearing, the plaintiff is finally forced to find an out-of-court, non-judicial resolution in a venue of violence. In this milieu, the first impulse of the now-violated defendant, is to react in a self-righteous rage, rank with revenge and recrimination.
The pained parties must be convinced to return in truce to the courtroom, with an assurance that the hearing will be fair and impartial. Neither must be allowed to overrule or intimidate the bench. Restoration of an effective adversarial dialogue is impossible in the absence of a judge empowered to restore and maintain order in the courtroom. Must the world watch in silence while a muscular defendant murders an emaciated plaintiff? Where is the voice of reason that orders, "Go up to your room!" It's not nice to be a destroyer, a killer.
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