Enemy Mine Poem by Josehf Murchison

An enemy imagined is greater than an enemy that is real. For a real enemy can be killed, but an imagined enemy is invincible. No matter how much money we spend on defense, he will still exist. No matter how many we kill, the seed of its evil will spread. The true test of wisdom is to know the difference between an enemy imagined and an enemy that is real.

To live in a world where peace is a dream and war is the norm, this is the reality of man. Our governments and corporations spend untold fortunes on the weapons and the technology of war. A great amount of our economy is based in the machines of war. Worst of all is the cost in the lives of our family, our friends and our neighbors.

In the small town where I live bombs do not fall, mines don't explode beneath our feet and children do not fall to sleep with the sound of gunfire. The night is not filled with fear and the cold. Their days are not filled with funerals, starvation and disease. Our children do not bury the dead or tend to the wounds of the injured. Long gone are the years of war with our neighbors and yet our children are still filled with the images and the horrors of war. Acts of terrorism abroad and at home fill the media with images of the dead and the dying. They haunt our minds with enemy's real and imagined that feed on paranoia and fear.

If an enemy did not exist those that need one would invent a cause to fight or an enemy to kill. Animal rights activists and others the like, use images of horror to rally people to their cause. A war suited to the needs of people dissatisfied with peace, activists create a political war to turn away from peace. If won, they do not stop they push for vengeance against those that opposed them. Then in that act become an enemy of peace. Causes to be fought without complete victory they become a new group a hate group. They commit acts of violence against those that oppose them. They wave their criminal records like badges of honour. Without the concerns of peaceful resolution, the exhilaration of violence beckons to them. Their cause a call to war.


By
Josehf Lloyd Murchison