Those of us who are not experts in military matters, international politics, or other issues directly related to the behavior and direction of the world, but who are parents, grandparents, children, spouses, siblings, neighbors, friends… and feel in our very bones the pain of those thousands of miles away, can afford to make mistakes, even with the best intentions.
This may be happening to me right now if I say that perhaps never before has the danger of plunging into the darkness of its own holocaust been so real for this nutshell that is our planet in the galaxy.
Today's technological landscape is not the same as it was when the First and Second World Wars erupted, for very similar reasons: boundless and unscrupulous greed, a thirst for dominance, and geopolitical interests placed above all else, even the right to life.
The destructive power of modern weapons is simply devastating, brutal, as astonishing as their range, speed, and precision.
Even so, civilian infrastructure and, even more tragically, innocent people become direct, deadly targets, a gray wasteland where death and human suffering take root.
Close your eyes—wherever you live, whatever your age, gender, beliefs, or political orientation—and imagine the hell that engulfed the Iranian school where 165 girls perished, destroyed by the aggressor's bombing. Regarding the pain of mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents… I prefer not to type a single word, knowing that I will be light years away from the inner despair in all of them.
Greed, arrogance, and hubris—weapons more dangerous and, it seems, more unstoppable than nuclear warheads themselves—have unleashed a war that could, just as simply, lead to the extermination of humanity.
For some, the times of dialogue, of respect for international law, for life, for the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples, for peaceful coexistence, for peace and love among human beings, are mere words on parchment, which bombs can also reduce to ashes anywhere, anytime.
Those who, intoxicated by power, dream of being victors and fail to see themselves as the great loser—life, the human species—are deluded.
I now lift my fingertips from the keyboard, for they are not—I repeat—those of an expert on these matters, but rather those of a father, grandfather, son, brother, friend who, in Cuba, Germany, Mexico, Australia, Vietnam, Haiti, Angola, Canada, Spain, China, Gaza, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, Belgium, and even within the United States and Israel, desire what every person, every family, every nation deserves and needs by natural right: peace, tranquility, respect, progress, brotherhood, a future.
May these lines be a virtual refuge or a lap of comfort for the thousands of children who cannot find their parents—and vice versa—amidst flames, rubble, or explosions, and for those who—as that tender song, now an anthem, laments—"have had their voices silenced."
And let this handful of paragraphs serve as a wise warning, hopefully not in vain, against the greatest folly (I'm not talking about a mistake, slip, or inaccuracy) that an irrational person can commit: sinking in the middle of the ocean the ship whose deck shelters him and his family.
