Give Europe a Bottle - Cas Young

There is never a time for war. I believed that when I was little and I'll believe it until the day I die.

It seems that nowadays when you tell people you're a pacifist, people will look at you like you're crazy. It's like all of a sudden you sprouted four heads and turned into a giant purple scaly lizard. Since when has opposing war and conflict been a bad thing?

Our government funds trillions of dollars to the military, and I don't think it's a good way to spend money. I know that yes, there are wars going on and yes, it's out duty as the "hero" to solve everyone else's issues, but that's no excuse.

There's not a single time in history when a war has solved anything. Punic Wars. All of Greece and a lot of Persia died. Crusades. We fought over a piece of land, for God's sake! (no pun intended) World Wars. Millions died because Europe had a horrible system of alliances and the French and English pretended Germany would eventually chill out. War is good for nothing.

There's not a single instance I can think of where the conflict couldn't have been solved by a civil, diplomatic meeting. Is it really so difficult to set small differences aside and work out a mutually beneficial solution? And if it requires a major overhaul it should be a sign that something was serious wrong in the first place!

To me, war means that the leaders of the opposing sides were too petty and too hasty and too immature to work calmly to find a solution.

Now, this is just ideally. I know that a war-free world isn't feasible, war has been sold and spoon-fed to us for hundreds of years as beneficial to the economy and national pride and whatnot, but if I can work to make us one step closer to that, I fully intend to.