War and Peace

    In the course of these fourteen years, I have heard and spoken many words about many wars, and their reasons and consequences. Similarly, people around me have done so, people on the news channels and history channels have done so, people writing the history books have done so. They have all cited reasons like resources, land, and most of all, ideology.
    This is the reason I found most interesting. The few prominent ideologies, Capitalism, Communism, and Fascism. Each very different from one another, but all with a similar goal in mind, a similar agenda, albeit starkly different means of achieving this goal. This aim of theirs is to take care of their people. The Capitalists say that their economic system is the most beneficial for the entire nation, while Commies claim that socialism takes care of the greater good. Though their ideas differ, their ideas are simply to take care of humans, and that's why they want to establish their ideas as supreme.
    So this is their logic- they want to establish only one ideology throughout the world so that this ideology can effectively ensure human rights and happiness, and to do this they wage economic, political and actual wars on nations of other ideology. They attack and invade countries with opposing ideas, in the name of human benefits.
    Men and women have been trained to drop fire on other humans, to prove a point, a government shall send people to foreign countries to kill and be killed, with the objective of killing more than the opponents. The government of one country will bomb the people of the other in their homes and streets for decisions made by the governments, for decisions a majority of the people are not fully aware of.
    Yet these were cases from the twentieth century, the ideological warfares are mostly over, communism is limited to a few countries and most others have a mixture of Capitalism and socialism. Yet there are wars that persist, wars and conflicts that are still ongoing. I shall give the example of my own country and its everlasting conflict with Pakistan. Till today, there is little hope of ending all conflict. They still have border skirmishes, violations of the ceasefire, each side blaming the other, the Press filling our heads with lies, exaggerations and propaganda. Why? What does the Pakistani government want? They want Kashmir. The Indian Government? They also want Kashmir. Both want it to be a part of their country, both want it to be under their rule and administration, and when it is so, they will of course take care of the residents of Kashmir, why wouldn't they its a part of their country.
    So why, why should Indians die at the border to prevent a land from being taken care of by somebody else, and why should the Pakistani counterpart die for something similar. Are they not the same people, just a different colour on their passport because they happen to be born on the other side of a man-made line? Such is the hypocrisy of governments and humans. We pretend to want to uphold the rights and lives of other humans, and we hide behind banners like social causes and defending human rights and helping others gain theirs, but in the end all we're doing is killing other people, allowing hundreds to die in lands that are not very far from our homes, but it makes us feel safe when those born somewhere else take the hit, when the 'enemy' is defeated or pushed back.
    America, that government claims to be on the forefront of human rights yet it holds thousands of nuclear warheads whose only function is to destroy entire cities full of people. America may have the maximum number of these weapons but they are not the only ones, and several other countries soon shall be joining these nuclear 'powers' or 'greats'.
Robert Plant said in Stairway to Heaven, "yes there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on".
There is only one of two ways in which this story can end, but we can still choose which.