This is the kind of thing I have always suspected but have almost never seen reported on: “Peace: No Longer Just a Dream” is an article I read in The Week, and I think we should spread it around, mainly because the dominant 24-Hour News Machines tend to only make money on sensationalistic claptrap, and this doesn’t qualify. Some important points made by the article:
- The number of ongoing wars throughout the world has dropped by 40 percent since the end of the Cold War, and is still declining.
- The year 2005 had the lowest number of conflicts of any sort—wars between countries, civil wars, ethnic cleansings—since 1976.
I would go further to say that, despite what the media says about the war in Iraq, it’s not a catastrophic tragedy as wars go. Our loss of life is currently at 2,200 US troops. Vietnam was around 50,000. Yes, the war in Iraq was maddeningly unjust and poorly planned, but any comparison of it to Vietnam is flaccid. Of course, the most dangerous aspect of this war is not the blood in the field, but the sinister machinations of its genesis in Washington.
My point in all this is that I truly believe the world is continually becoming a better place, in increments too small to truly measure. Anyone who says the past was better, simpler or more peaceful is someone who hasn’t studied much history.
This is as good a reason as any to dig up Douglas Coupland’s The Past Sucks in the Internet Archive and give it a read.