Fire With Fire

Every day we read tragic news about those seeking refuge. We look around at our comfortable lifestyles and feel guilty that other inhabitants of this lovely blue planet that seems to grow smaller as technology grows larger, and we wonder why only a few thousand miles away, there is such incredible suffering. We feel helpless even though we might carry signs, light candles and give money to help people in these disastrous states. It appears that's all we can do unless we are involved in professional organizations that send personnel, such as medical people and others who can deal directly with it. But those heroes who go off and risk their lives to help others are few. Most of us can only stand by and watch and listen with tears, to what happens. It is easy to blurt out simplistic solutions when the complicated political timbre in certain countries belies any understanding. We can "try on" what it would feel like to suddenly have a government that rules us out of our homes and causes bombs to explode and guns to be fired, to see us fleeing for safety with only the barest of  possessions we can carry, our frightened children by the hands, to find, in desperation, some kind of safe shelter. Money, things,  mean nothing. Lives must be put on the line to escape the terror. On this continent we don't know that kind of warring. And hopefully it will not happen to us. But it is happening to people just like us, humans with families and needs that are the same as ours. What can be done? Behind the scenes of this kind of tragedy, there are economic elements that involve the supplying of arms and other things vital to warring: fuel, clothing, food, shelter and military training. Where do these things that play into the hands of aggressors, come from? It is not an easy question to face. It is not easy because the reality of it is, that most of it comes, unbelievably,  from peace loving countries who shake their heads at what's happening in these conflicts but continue to supply directly or not, contributions to its horror. Media makes huge profits on these wars. They feed on photos of fleeing refugees, pictures of streets full of fallen bodies, military conflicts in action that we are told we must see. Really? Sure, I want to know what is happening in the world, but I don't want to see it repeatedly and by those in competition with each other for the most heart-rending, money-making scenes. Once is enough, thank you. I get it. What I want to know is what's being done to make it stop, other than bullets, and to find out why isn't it stopping. Where does the supply come from and what plans are in action to make it quit? Who is doing this? Why not cause complete economic halts to any and all supplies coming from peaceful country sources? What about complete sanctions against countries who cause vast numbers of their own people to flee? When there are fellow humans bleeding out past their own borders, can't some kind of tourniquet be applied? There is no heart in greed.