EDITORIAL - Give peace a chance

According to government statistics, a total of 2,838 soldiers and communist and Muslim rebels were killed in armed clashes in the Philippines last year. The number did not say how many policemen and civilians were slain in the same period.

What was also left unsaid was the fact that many of the incidents that led to so much carnage were probably unnecessary. They could have been due to misencounters, poor intelligence, senseless provocation, or drunken bravado.

Or maybe, the greatest cause for so much useless violence is the corruption of the human spirit, the intoxication of the human soul, with the lust for power. Perhaps more and more people think the only way to assert one's self, or one's idea, is through abundant firepower.

Unless one has terrorist tendencies or subscribes to terrorist notions, there are far less physically taxing ways of pushing an agenda that a growing number of people are actually finding it foolhardy to even think of picking up a gun.

Even foreign policy makers have realized there are far more subtle means of pushing diplomacy than riding shotgun on a gunboat. Arm-twisting has evolved into a very distinct style even if political ends have remained the same.

A sabre-rattling North Korea is being enticed, for one, with food - plain and simple sustenance for its millions of starving citizens. Pyongyang has nukes, but they can be wiped out in a stroke. It is the political fallout that is keeping enemy fingers away from the button.

And so it is with our local quarrels. The communists know their cause is dying, that whatever tactical highs they may derive from occasional raids and skirmishes, these are but hiccups that can never propel them to their sought-for political utopia.

The same with Muslim insurgents. Separatist movements only work where the playing field is at least level. The Philippines just does not afford them that. Of course some of them can embrace terrorism and use it as a guise to further their cause. But that never works either.

So, what this all tells us is that peace is still the best option than mankind can ever have in trying to resolve its conflicts. All that human carnage can ever hope to inflict is pain. Peace is not a sign of weakness. On the contrary, it takes strength to control human rage.