All monolithic religions stress the importance of making peace and salute those who seek peace and make it. One of the most important reasons indeed is that peace is extremely important for human beings in order to live their lives and pursue their goals and, ultimately, become capable of functioning in whatever domain they happen to be in. After all, God created humans in the best form in order to have the best kind of life possible, and no real life is possible without peace. 

The problem most people of the world are facing today and had been facing for centuries is due to the fact that some decision-makers have cultivated a rhetoric that glorifies war and media that exults in motives and convincing causes for launching wars. The fact, or the historic fact based on the consequences of as many wars as our memory can recollect, is that there are always a few who benefit from launching wars, for which the general populace pays a very heavy price, sometimes for many generations to come just because they happened to be in a war zone. 

The beneficiaries of wars, whether their benefits focus on money, the arms industry, or political gains, are the ones who create the literature of war, in which one or another of the warring parties is glorified and their sacrifices are promoted to the degree of sanctity. No matter how big their number is, they remain a few, while the majority of people affected by wars are the ones who lose their loved ones or who are forced to be displaced or even migrate to a different country, simply uprooting them from their geography, weather, and culture which identify them.

No one stops to assess the magnitude of damage that befalls any people on earth who had to live in a war zone. The beneficiaries glorify the sacrifices, the courage, and the heroism of one party or another as if those people had any choice other than to defend themselves or to die; as if someone has consulted with them whether to be part of the war or not; as if it had been their choice to be killed or to be displaced or to become refugees. 

If we take the war on Iraq as an example, we find that the history of the Iraqi people is a history of non-migration. They are known to be deeply enrooted in their land with one generation after the other living in their country with no tendency to migrate, unlike the Lebanese and the Syrians, for example, who have this culture of migration to improve their situation. Yet, the American occupation of Iraq was preceded by a huge media campaign against Saddam Hussein, as if Saddam Hussein is the only Iraqi you can find in Iraq. The Western media plan, as well as the Israeli one for 2002, said to focus on the following words: Saddam Hussein. No one even cared to mention the cost the Iraqi people are going to pay; no one ever mentioned the cost Iraq, as a country, is going to pay in case this war would take place. 

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Despite the shortcomings of Saddam Hussein, which may be less or more than the shortcomings of any other ruler, Iraq before the American occupation was a prosperous country with excellent universities and excellent educational and health systems. Iraq was a beacon in the Arab world in terms of reading books, making publications, the scientists in different fields, and the GDP for all its inhabitants. Before American sanctions on Iraq, the Iraqi Dinar was over 3 dollars. During the American war on Iraq, millions of Iraqis became refugees. Syria too received two million Iraqi refugees, and for those who can never know what refugee means, it is better to die than to be a refugee. Just think about the idea of being forced out of your home, where you leave your intimate belongings, your pictures, your books, and the best part of your dearest memories and the core part of yourself... only then, you might get a glimpse of what it is like to be a refugee.  

In this context, I found the visit of the three European leaders to Kiev last week very provocative and very rude indeed.

The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the French President Emmanuel Macron, and the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi went to Kiev perhaps to ensure that the Ukraine wheat reaches Europe and nowhere else to save their people from a very looming famine. Of course, they traveled by a safeguarded train and left their families behind safe and well.

Little did they think of the 6 million Ukrainian refugees and the 6 million displaced Ukrainians whose lives were destroyed only because the West wanted Ukraine to be under its helm and to steal its extremely rich resources for their own benefit, not to mention their attempt to belittle the status of Russia on the international arena.

None of them gave a hood to the ramifications of this war and its impact on the Ukrainians who, until Western attempts to impose their will on that country, were living in one of the most beautiful and the most prosperous countries in the world; one of the richest in natural resources. The capitalist system that is based on the arms industry and on plundering the fortunes of other countries by any means, including wars, cannot claim to be the system that defends human rights and the liberty and prosperity of mankind. There is a contradiction in nature between the two concepts; that is why all religions and ethnics stressed the importance of working for peace, and so do the true leaders of the world.