Where is the love?

It has been a little while since I commented on anything. I recently had a though that could be summed up by a line from a Black-Eyed Peas song, (which is not normally a source of quotation for me). “Where is the love?”

Admittedly, in the song, and in many protest signs, and slogans, things of this ilk are usually used in absence of an argument, and to imply that a paucity of affection is what ails the United States. I would agree in principle, that you can never have too much love. However, this reflects more directly on the situation in which I find myself now. Apocryphally Golda Meir once said, “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”

Now it seems that the Arabs, indeed the entire Arab world is consumed by people who hate so much that they will hate anyone, for any reason. Whether it is Jews, for whatever imagined power they have, or the Americans for their real power, or the Danish for freedom of speech, hate is almost omnipresent. I don’t know why this is.

In reality, my limited personal experience has been that most Arabs are, personally, very loving. They care deeply about the well being of everyone that they know. While I may be naïve, most of them do love. But the problem is that they don’t love enough to go to the same extremes for love that the haters go to for hate.

It is also easy to fight for hate. Most countries demonize their enemies so it is easy for their soldiers to fight them, and even when countries don’t do that, soldiers often do. But in the American Army we have a saying that goes, “You don’t fight because you hate what’s in front of you, you fight because you love what’s behind you.” If that is your motivation then success is almost guaranteed, because you will do what ever it takes to win. Sometimes that is killing, but usually it is something else.

So I say, where is the love, Iraq? If you love your children, or you neighbor then you will not rush to civil war, or more immediately, store a 155mm Artillery shell in your back yard. If you want a better future for your family you don’t have to work with the Americans, but at the same time, you won’t do things that will provoke. Build a new store; work as a teacher; run for office; all of these things will make a better future and are not pro- or anti- US, or western, or anything. It is not that hard to make a choice, and you will see the future.