Goals

My short term goal for peace is to smile at everyone. A smile could be insignificant, but to others it might show them that there is still a small percentage of peace in the world. When you smile at someone you let them know that you are happy and that they should also be happy. If a person is having a bad day, just with a smile you could cheer them up.  My long term goal for peace is to start an organization to help the poor. I would like to go across the world and help people that are need. I would especially like to help children that are abandoned in the streets that have nothing to eat. One of the things that truly hurt me is seeing the way how children suffer. Children that are living in the streets learn how to live on their own. Sometimes they learn the wrong things in life and it affects us because we depend on those children to have a better future.

Inner Peace

Even though it is hard to think of peace with all of the horrific things happening around the world, we mainly have to focus with inner peace. We really can’t do a difference in the world if we don’t start within ourselves. All around the world we are used to be in conflicts and use violence.  One of the things society, including many of us, tend to do is blame others and not realize what we do wrong. Inner peace should be started by accepting our errors and trying to fix conflicts without violence or accusing others for what we do wrong. For example in a relationship when a couple is fighting, they should not argue against each other. Instead they should talk it out and fight against the problem. Simple things like that can be the start of having inner peace. Through inner peace world peace can be achieved. First we have to start within ourselves then soon expand to our friends, our families, and our communities to reach the entire world.

Op-Ed

There Is No One to Blame but Ourselves

Brutality, assaults, attacks, power, aggression, terrorism, and murder are a few of the words that have become a regular part of our lives. The entire world has faced wars and conflicts between countries as far as we can remember. Yet, we have all been bombarded to make revenge but we all know that it just makes it worse. It is clear that our response to violence is violence, but it just becomes and endless back and forth. Since the September 11 incident, things have gone overboard especially now that Osama Bin Laden has been pronounced dead. I believe that the number one element preventing peace all over the world is the use of violence to solve problems.

We all know that President Bush started one of the biggest wars ever known because of what Osama Bin Laden’s organization did to our country. He destroyed all of the United States not only economically but also emotionally. When the Twin Towers were destroyed many innocent people were killed and family members were not even able to see their loved ones for the last time. President Bush decided to send a large number of troops from the United States to fight Osama Bin Laden. Due to this, there were more terrorist attacks occurring in the United States because it made our enemy even angrier knowing that we were attacking him. Poor Americans were sent daily to Iraq and had to leave their families behind to fight. Many of the civilians saw that war as a waste of time, money, and most importantly, lives.

Many people were hoping for the war to come to an end. As our newest elected President Obama was inaugurated, he promised that the Iraq War will come to an end and he has come closer to ending it. As soon as he became president, what Bush had promised us for many years was finally coming to pass. Many troops were sent home and they were once again united with their families. It was a relief for most of us to know that we were not at war anymore. Recently we all received “happy” news; finally Osama Bin Laden was killed.

But the relief that we had all felt disappeared in an instant.

As you all know, in this situation Al Qaeda in Afghanistan will soon find a way to take revenge. The war will once again continue due to this most recent incident that took place. The United States economy will get a lot worse than as it is now. The gas prices will rise even more and there will be intrusive security to prevent terrorist attacks. Once again there will be chaos in the lives of Americans, people will feel unsecure and scared waiting for the next attack.

If all of us would take an in-depth look into peace, we will all notice that peace is the only answer to our entire problem. There is no need for violence; instead, it destroys us even more. There are many steps that we could take after this incident to have a peaceful world. We could all reduce aggression by looking for peaceful solutions instead of violence.  We could also start little by little by making neighborhoods safe; we could show the little kids a healthy environment so that when they become adults they will change the world. The most important solution for this problem is after the 10^th year anniversary of September 11 we could all start from scratch working for peace.  How ironic that for most of us, the five letter word “peace” is just an imaginary perfect world that doesn’t exist. It may seem hard to bring peace back to our world, but when everyone contributes nothing is impossible.