The Army

Imagine you have just completed training to be a lifesaver on QLD beaches. It comes to your first day on the job and you are looking forward to rescuing people who are struggling in the surf. But instead of supplying you with floatation devices and an inflatable rescue boat, your instructor gives you... a gun.

It seems to me this is close to the situation we have with our army, although vastly simplified. I've had many conversations about war and the defense force before, and often I've heard people say "but they're really doing aid work, rebuilding, protecting families, keeping the peace." To which I say "Brilliant, but if that's what they're doing, why all the weapons and military training?"

When that's your training and those are the resources most readily at your fingertips, peacemaking options and creative solutions also become very limited. Imagine if we only gave lifesavers a gun? I would guess that deaths on beaches would escalate and there would be a lot less rescues.

Now dream with me. What if all the money spent on our defense force was spent instead on nonviolent aid instead? What if all the time spent training these millions of people for the military was spent training them for humanitarian work? What if the brilliant minds at the top were enlisted to find creative nonviolent ways to organise nations, creative nonviolent ways to work through conflict and threat, and creative nonviolent ways to bring world peace?

I'm convinced we COULD have world peace if more nations started thinking like this. It wouldn't even need to be all of them.