Building rockets, planes and bombs. Researching and refining the art and craft of warfare. Recruiting and training young men and women in such practices. Fulfilling the mission with pride and honor. Crippling the infrastructure and killing the enemy. Does all of this accomplish the goals of stabilization, nation-building and conflict resolution?

Idealism. The word connotes youthful passion and inspiration, coupled with naivete and a touch of foolishness. It is a type of fuel. We harness our passions to it. But it can lead us into unintended and undesirable situations. While a strong military is an important safeguard, it is idealistic to assert that violence resolves conflicts; that control and domination of others leads to peace, freedom and democracy; that passion harnessed to military hardware is a source of pride.

Many who have worked for peace have been dismissed as idealistic. But is the process of peacebuilding any more idealistic in its aims than the practice of warmaking? There is no non-idealistic answer to this question. But we have, perhaps as a species, been waking up to our potential as peacebuilders. And we have been waking up to the futility and ineffectiveness of violence.

The barbarism of warfare has never been more blatantly obviously revealed as in the current violent conflicts ongoing in the middle east. It's not working. Violence is not working. Violence is making the conflict worse. To be unable to grasp that is to be swept away in idealism.