The Fight For Libya

Because there are far more important things in life right now, like fighting to keep one's own.

Today after spending hours surfing the net and lurking through forums I accidentally came across this link

(http://free-libya.tumblr.com/) after a user of an online community which I'm a member of, posted this. Since I was bored to death, I absent-mindedly clicked on it and it brought me to a tumblr.com page which shows images and information about the ongoing war in Libya.


First of all, I won't pretend that I know everything about the matter or even an inkling of why and how it began. I am also not here to give a history or political lesson and I'm certainly not here to point fingers on who should be blamed. In a nutshell, Libya is in turmoil right now because people are asking for Colonel Gaddafi to step down from his 40-year reign as ruler of the country. As with all political disputes, there's violence and with violence comes the death of hundreds of innocent people.Okay, I'm not the go-to person if you want to understand politics and how the government works. I admit that I obviously do not understand what economics is. But what I do know is that no innocent life should be spared because of any of these.


It's hard to go around your usual everyday business knowing that thousands of miles away from where you're sitting and drinking your coffee there is probably a man, a father or a brother who is fighting for his country's freedom. Thousands of miles from where you're watching TV there's probably a woman or a mother trying to beg for food. And thousands of miles from where you're surfing the net and reading these words there is probably a child who is fighting for his life. A child, whose innocence has been replaced with fear and the instinct to stay alive. 


Because of our distance to where this is all happening it's easy for most of us to turn the other cheek and to be indifferent. Why should we care? We have enough problems in our own country that we have to deal with first. True. We think that we don't have the ability or the power to resolve big things such as this after all, how can a student, an accountant or a bum like me fix these things, right?


What I'm saying is we don't have to mobilize the entire neighborhood or go to the U.N. committee and throw pitchforks and demand resolution. What the people in Libya is asking for us to do right now, first and foremost, is to not neglect them in their time of need.


Share the information you know to your friends and family. Post a link in your facebook, twitter or website. Read about the news. Research. Read  and be informed more about it. Information is power. Whatever religious group you belong to, you can offer a prayer for peace. You might not be there to fight along the streets of Libya or care for their sick but what's more important is to be empathetic and that you know what they're going through.We have to remember that all of us share a common responsibility, unbounded by gender, skin color, religion or economic stature to stop crimes against the basic principles of humanity and the right to stay alive.


Remember that you are only one, BUT you are one.


I hope that the political turmoil in Libya will soon be over and no more innocent human life be spared.