Let the games begin!

With the Olympic games swiftly approaching, I am reminded of a theory I formulated in the car while driving with my mom one evening. As I pondered out loud, she “mm hmm”‘d me and chalked it up to yet another of Michele’s ramblings. I thought I had it all figured out. I kinda still do.

OK, so you know how we have wars when we need to settle a really big dispute? You know, those things where a bunch of official looking guys with lots of awards and pins on their uniforms formulate a plan at a table? They use lots of models and maps and cool instruments to plan their attacks and then they get to play with really awesome technologically advanced gadgets in order to execute their strategies. Sounds cool, right? Yeah! and then all they need are tens of thousands of REAL LIVE men and women who are all expendable if necessary to carry out their master scheme. No problem!

Now please don’t get insulted or think I am being disrespectful. I am immensely appreciative for each and every man and woman who nobly serves or has served in our military. I lost an uncle to the Vietnam war whom I never got a chance to meet and he made the ultimate sacrifice for the idea of freedom. It truly humbles as well as saddens me to think of all of the people who gave their limbs, minds and lives to secure the freedoms of others.

I acknowledge the necessity of dispute management, because let’s face it—the Hatfields and the McCoys are never gonna see eye to eye. But it is in the execution of it that I don’t see the intelligence. So here is my proposition—Let’s play games.

Picture this—we hold a really big game of Monopoly for the use of Nuclear weapons in South Korea. How about a round robin basketball tournament to see who gets religious rule over Israel? Rochambeau for oil rights in Lybia?

“Oh, Michele! You are being ridiculous!” you say. “We could never settle such important issues with childish games!” But seriously, if you take it out of context, how much more ridiculous does the first scenario which I just described seem?

Why not settle our differences with a competition of skill rather than sheer brute force? Each country already trains their athletes for the Olympics to peak ability and performance levels. Billions of dollars are spent researching the biology and chemistry of athletics. This would be a bargain for the military! For a fraction of the money they spend on a high-tech, seek and destroy, find you while you’re sitting on the toilet missile, they could build a really kick-ass gym with flat screens and fresh towels at every station.

It simply does not compute to me that we are still killing each other every day. Our soldiers are coming home permanently wounded or not coming home at all. We are abhorred when we hear about a gang murder in our hometown, but then we stick a 21 year old man in a completely foreign country, hand him a large gun and instruct him to shoot at whoever he feels is a threat. This is of course normal.

I probably will not ever live to see the day where a nail-biter game of chess will decide the fate of the economy in a third-world country, or when a pie-cook-off replaces a military coup. The big-boy game of organized death and destruction is the way it has always been and to change it would be overwhelming and drastic, but I believe healthy competition would be a much more productive and a lot less bloody way of settling disputes.