Monday, December 01, 2003

Weapons For Peace

I know this sounds like an oxymoron, weapons for peace, but this is the way Alfred Nobel, of the Nobel Peace Prize Fame, thought about his invention of dynamite.

My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world
conventions. As soon as men will find that in one instant, whole armies
can be utterly destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.
—Alfred Nobel


While I might agree with the philosophy behind the idea, anyone as smart as Alfred Nobel ought to have known that is not the way the world works. I mean if you invent something that is for war someone will use it just for that purpose.

Now this article talks about another member of the ‘my weapon is for peace society.’ Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the Automatic Kalashnikov 1947, also infamously known as the AK-47, says that he wants to see peace in the world.

Kalashnikov, 84, says that despite the rifle's proliferation in war zones around the world, he has never really viewed his invention as a killing machine, but as an instrument of peace.
Jane's Infantry Weapons describes the Kalashnikov as the most important and widespread weapon in the world and estimates that well in excess of 50 million have been sold.

Maybe he is getting senile or something but to think that the AK-47 is a weapon of peace is absurd. I hate to say this but as long as there is weapons in this world there will be people willing to make use of them. I would personally like to think better of the human race but there will always be power hungry people that will wage war and others will have to pick up weapons to fight them. Maybe someday the human race will outgrow this. I sure hope so and the sooner the better.

Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience. Richard Stivers