There are many factors that contribute to why the world is the way it is today. We can trace human behavior and our subsequent responses to certain events back to the beginning of human history. Humanity, whose existence has always been full of flaws, has caused the world to fall into a cataclysmic storm like the one we are seeing today.
The perplexities of our existence, many of which were influenced by ourselves, have created the many crises we continue to face. The patience of our ancestors should have been the catalyst to eliminate many of the stigmas and rationale that have led to so many of the imbalances in the societies that we have. Retribution has always contributed to the collapse of society.
The ills that afflict humanity cannot be solved by complacency, ignorance, apathy or hatred. The indoctrination of subsequent indifference is just as problematic as the solutions to real harmony and peace for all mankind. The gray areas of our existence can be eradicated by the perseverance of man’s determination to achieve balance in societies. One cannot help but wonder if man is inherently incapable of distinguishing himself by realizing that we have always been prone to suffer for our actions without knowing that those actions were actually the mistakes we made in the past.
When societies are not balanced, all forms of problematic crises always occur. If ever there was a moment that requires immediate resolution to acknowledge that we keep repeating past mistakes, this is it. When events unfold, too often we react spontaneously with little or no conscious effort to match our reactions to similar events and reactions in the past.
As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we are reminded of what we accomplished and what we actually did in the 20 years since. Although the circumstances were different in the Vietnam era, both the events and the subsequent military responses to Vietnam and Afghanistan were complete failures. And now, while we remember 9/11 as well as we should, there now has to be a conscious resolve to make sure that our reactions to any future events, occurrences, natural disasters or otherwise, carry with them the responses made that will prevent the mistakes we made in last.
If we had realized that we have made the world more hostile and many times more violent with our military actions since Korea, the world today would be much more stable. Our government, since Korea has endangered military forces, did not understand what the General of the Army, General Douglas MacArthur, warned. He quotes: “When a war is forced on us, we have to use all possible means to end it quickly. The very goal of military engagements is victory, not prolonged appeasement.”
All the US has been doing in every military action since Korea has been prolonged appeasement. The thousands upon thousands of lives needlessly lost, the trillions of dollars wasted, and the nations destabilized are the ultimate parody of what we continue to do. We fail to understand that the mistakes of the past have been repeated too many times. Though many thought of MacArthur as a war monger, he understood what very few could of the savage brutality of what armed conflict really does.
Until our elected officials and the public realize the failures of repeating similar responses to past events, we will continue to repeat the mistakes that have already been made. The world cannot create the balance in societies that is so desperately needed when we do not realize that we are about to repeat the mistakes we have already made. Our continued efforts today to resolve the domestic and international crisis still resemble repeating our responses to similar events that occurred in the past. When will we learn?
