Since the dawn of history, people have fought against other people. Wars have always caused great suffering and hardship. Most people hate war, yet for hundreds of years war has been going on somewhere in the world nearly all the time.
The past 100 years changed the nature of war. Today’s war is different from the war that we read about in history books. Suicide attacks and dramatic bombing of public places and transport anywhere and at any time adds to the conventional killing and ethnic cleaning. Nations, on the least suspicion of the whereabouts of „terrorists or would be terrorists“, strike in any location on earth. All these acts create great fear in all our hearts because we never know when we could become victims of terror.
The „war against terrorism“ as it is called, brings surreptitious dimensions of war on a global scale. The people, who use terror – inspiring acts, range from normal individuals who are driven to self – sacrifice as lone suicide bombers, to organized suicidal groups, such as the ones who crashed airplanes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.
Today’s war defies all logic. War against who and for what? Where is the battleground? The USA says: „you are either with us or against us“. When the world supported the War in Afghanistan it was with the understanding that the oppressive regime will be overthrown and followed by the reconstruction of Afghanistan and that Al Qaeda will be destroyed. Today the Taliban regime is no more in control but the process of reconstruction has hardly begun. Osama bin Laden remains difficult to find and Al Qaeda is far from being dismantled.
Despite the apparent failure in Afghanistan the world was again asked to join a coalition to fight a War against Iraq. If the reason for war was that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, then why have we not declared war with North Korea, a dishonest state according to the US, which has admitted to possessing these weapons? If the reason for war was because Iraq is going against UN Security Council resolutions then why have we not declared war with Israel, a persistent violator of UN Security Council resolutions? If President Saddam was the problem, then why have we not brought him to the international court to answer for his „crimes“? Why punish the entire Iraqi nation?