War, What is it Good For? Part II

As I've mentioned before, all you have to do is turn on the TV any given day and you'll get flooded with reports of wars happening far away from home. You may be asking yourself, why are these wars happening, and what can be done about them? As can be read in the first installment of this series, wars oftentimes have their roots deeply seated in past events that have occured between the countries or people involved, many times going back thousands of years. But what about more modern wars?

Think about it this way; think of the countries of the world that are wrought with poverty; the countries that can't produce enough food to feed a citizen even one meal a day; the countries that have suffered droughts and famine for decades. Now think of the countries that have extremist terrorist goups operating within their boarders, or the countries that have been divided by civil war for decades. In most cases, these are the same countries. I'm talking about many countries in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, some parts of Europe, and the Americas. Okay, that's the entire world, but for all intensive purposes, lets focus on Africa. When most people think of extreme poverty, Africa is usually the first to come to mind. Much of the African continent is covered by desert, and desertification, or the turning of fertile land into desert, is only increasing. This has caused much of the continent to experience famine for, in some cases, decades.

What's the solution? The hard truth is, the world is currently capable of feeding itself four times over. Solving world hunger is simply a logistical matter of getting agricultural goods where they are needed. As can be seen, private enterprise has been unable to accomplish this. So, in the case of the United States, if we had spent the 500 billion plus dollars that's been spent on the war in Iraq to pay for helping to distribute food, we would be well on our way to solving world hunger. This action would not only improve America's humanitarian image, which has been tarnished by this administration's policies, but by improving feelings towards America, it would also be fighting terrorism.

The point is, diplomacy is not only politicans using words to ease tensions, but it is also through the actions of a nation. It seems that America has largely ignored this for the past decade, and if America is to survive at its current level into the 21st Century, we need to do more to improve our image abroad.