Yesterday, Donald Trump ordered the killing of top Iranian military commander, Qassem Soleimani. Predictably, the Internet blew up. People started making light of the possibility of World War 3 happening. These jokes and memes have sparked a debate over whether this sort of thing is ‘just a joke’ or ‘inappropriate.’ Here are four reasons why World War 3 shouldn’t be joked about.
1. War Causes Mass Deaths
We’re not just talking about their soldiers versus the American soldiers. Civilians. Innocents. They die too. Sometimes they get caught in the crossfire. Sometimes they die due to carpet bombing and other aggressive military tactics. It’s been reported that millions of civilians died in Afghanistan and Iraq.
2. Displacement.
Having your homeland destroyed can leave you with no place to go. So, what do you do? You can stay and try to rebuild. Or you can try to find a country to take you in. If you do find a country willing to grant you asylum, you may or may not receive the warmest welcome from the people who were born and raised there. There is so much misinformation propagated about immigrants, especially ones from the Middle East because of their religious practices.
3. Illegal Occupation.
What this boils down to is a squatter situation. A foreign nation sends forces, usually their military, and they not only stay, they start claiming land and resources for themselves. Right now, the United States is illegally occupying an estimated 30% of Syrian land. The land being occupied is said to contain most of the country’s oil, gas, and water.
4. Destabilization.
Destabilizing is exactly that. Making a country less stable puts them at risk for occupation, coups, and other forms of hostile takeovers. According to Zeroantropology, Afghanistan is at risk for fragmentation due to ‘the current unstable conditions in the country.’ One of the causes of this is Wahhabi fundamentalist Islam would have established wider and deeper roots in the country during the post 9/11 years.’ Evidence of this would have been seen sooner if the United States had continued funding Mujahidin after 1992.
#Gaye readers, this is serious and should be treated as such. According to Concern Worldwide, occupation and destabilization are the number one cause of displacement in the world. More displacement means more people needing safe places to go. And if you think that we're safe from something like this happening in America, think again. This sort of thing can happen anywhere to anyone. The ripples of conflict hurt us all.