Posted on 01/09/2006 11:56:23 AM PST by FairWitness
Seen through the eyes of the media, the world appears an ever more dangerous place. Iraq is sliding toward civil war, the slaughter in Darfur appears unending, violent insurgencies are brewing in Thailand and a dozen other countries and terrorism strikes again in Bali. It is not surprising that most people believe global violence is increasing. The reality is that, since the end of the Cold War, armed conflict and nearly all other forms of political violence have decreased. The world is far more peaceful than it was.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Two thoughts:
1) It is (another) example of how "reality" is affected by what the MSM decides to report. Deciding what to report and what to ignore makes all the difference.
It is good that the number of conflicts is down, but the pessimist in me remembers that it only take one conflict in the right place to start a world war.
It may be more "peaceful" but there is a hell of a lot more tension.
You will run across people here who really claim to think that Al Quaeda is more dangerous than the old USSR. As if a theoretical nuke is more dangerous than 10,000 real ones.
Al Quaeda will use its nuke when, not if, it gets one. But it cannot destroy the US, and the USSR dang sure could have!
True, but how much of that tension is generated by the way the news is reported?
In other words, the UN is saving the world, while the US is involved in a costly war in Iraq. Not very different from the MSM message, at all.
For some reason this makes me think of the movie Miss Congeniality - Sandra Bullock bump!
In the wake of last month's global summit at the United Nations, many critics wrote the United Nations off as an institution so deeply flawed that it was beyond salvation. Sharper analysis and the carefully collated data in the Human Security Report reveal something very different: an organization that, despite its failures and creaking bureaucracy, has played a critical role in enhancing global security.
I think a much more likely candidate is increasing global economic connection, and the current hegemony of consensually governed (and hence less bellicose) societies. Maybe it will last, maybe not. The last time someone got a lot of attention for arguing that war was obsolete, he was named Norman Angell, the book was called The Great Illusion, and the year was 1910.
Good point. But I think a case could be made that Al Queda (if they manage to mount more attacks inside the U.S., or cause one really big disaster) is more dangerous to our form of government and way of life than the USSR was. Fear of being hit at home has a way of changing things that facing an outside enemy wouldn't.
And yet the article gives credit to UN programs that began in the 1980's. No mention of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The left still can't give President Reagan the credit he deserves. They want to give it to the UN.
I hadn't thought of that correlation, but it makes sense. Good catch.
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