Does peace count?

Who counts the costs of war? Historically--and sadly, still in many "analyses," the costs of war are just two, referred to reflexively as "blood and treasure." 

Stop. Please stop. 

The battlefield deaths are the blood. The money it takes to wage war is the treasure. In truth, those are simply the obvious opening costs. More include, but are not limited to: 

·       pollution

·       infrastructure

·       mental health

·       education

·       healthcare

·       morals

·       norms and ethics

·       cultural care and compassion

·       regard for the humanity of all

These costs linger for years, sometimes generations. They produce populations whose distorted outlooks auger new destruction--the victors viewing others as inferior and the losers nursing deep desires for vengeance no matter how long it takes. 

Breaking the war cycle means unilateral sacrifice for the long-term greater good. This is hard. Often that unilateral sacrifice is destined to come from traumatized people, making it immeasurably harder. But it's been done, movingly so, from time-to-time. 

·       Liberian women set aside all legitimate desire for revenge and ended their poor country's godawful war.

·       Serbians who had been victimized horrifically by Slobodan Milosevic set aside their historical culture of vendetta and used mass nonviolence to bring down the dictator. 

·       Chileans, repressed violently for more than a decade and a half, rose up in joy and resistance, ending the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet and restoring democracy.

·       Filipinos and Filipinas had been traumatized by brute force under Marcos for many years and yet set all the normal need for a bloodbath aside to nonviolently stop a civil war. 

The list goes on. People have proven again and again we are not irrevocably chained to the ultimate dysfunctional craving for vengeance and bloodshed. 

We cannot change the past. But the future is ours to create anew.