Opinion
 

Peace on a shoestring budget

Matthew Lavine
Guest Columnist

Working for world peace is not something we men have thought much about. Conquering, dividing and colonizing other civilizations has kept us mighty busy. We're good at it. In fact, if women weren't on the Olympic committee, pillaging and plundering would be Olympic sports.

There is some incentive for men to promote world peace — it seems to be a viable alternative to global economic ruin. They figure this could be accomplished in a couple of decades for as little as eight gazillion dollars, and it wouldn't interfere with golf and tennis schedules.

But if women were given power and authority, they could create world peace in one afternoon. Establishing peace is second nature to them, and they won't need much money to do it.

The bombing of Hiroshima is a perfect large-scale example of the masculine mentality at work. Near the end of World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japan was given the chance for peace via the Potsdam Declaration, which was signed by America, Great Britain and China.

The Japanese Cabinet leaned toward accepting these terms, but, demonstrating that the fragile ego of the male mind is indeed universal, if was busy figuring out how to "save face" in the eyes of its people. Its response included the word mokusatsu, an ambiguous term which can be translated as "ignoring." The Japanese news agency, Domei, resorted to the latter translation. 

In addition to inaccurately representing the sentiments of Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro, it infuriated U.S. leaders who, with their own porcelain egos to protect, decided to nuke Japan into submission.

If the world were run by women, the president would send the Potsdam Declaration over to the Japanese prime minister with a bouquet of flowers, including a note asking Her Eminency to sign the document and an invitation to a White House celebrity ball featuring music by Madonna. The declaration would be signed immediately, although days would be spent deciding what to wear to the event — and mass destruction and genocide would be avoided.

What did the male solution cost? Bombs, planes and buying $3,000 government-approved tool kits(similar to the ones sold at Wal-Mart for $8.95) comes out to billions of dollars — not to mention the obscene amount of human casualties.

The women's solution? A shopping spree on the Ginza, a round-trip ticket to Washington, D.C., and nary a casualty — a shoestring budget by anyone's standards.

So let's give women the reigns of power for a change. In the process of ushering in an era of peace, I'm sure they'll demonstrate they can beat men in both price and efficiency, not to mention style.

Levine, a music composition junior, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu.