War on Hunger

The attacks on September 11, 2001 impacted us all. Most of us remember where we were and our reactions. The fact is that many people died in a terrible apparently unprovoked manner. Although I agree that the 9/11 attacks were awful the fact is that many more people die daily in ways that could easily be prevented.

This image tries to put into perspective the number of people that are starving in the world with something most Americans can relate to. We obviously cannot witness 824 million people starving. To most of us the concept of starvation is foreign, something we have never suffered from or witnessed, whereas we were all horrified when we saw the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001. Since then, the "war on terrorism" has been a priority for our government, politicians and many people who have served in our armed forces. But few government officials touch the subject of "war on hunger". We have not separated billions of dollars to solve the issue of approximately 35 million people in the United States who are going hungry, let alone world wide. The image effectively gives us a point of comparison of a number of people we can relate to and makes the viewer aware of the huge disparity in the numbers.

The controversy behind this image is using a very sensitive time in our history which has provoked a long and costly war (not only in dollars but in human lives) which many of us believe has been completely justified in order to protect the world from terrorists. Meanwhile it makes us aware that we all turn a blind eye to an issue as delicate as people who die everyday from something as simple as not having food to keep them alive.

Personally, I am against all wars. I was also horrified and frightened at the 9/11 attacks, but I am much more horrified of the idea that millions of people do not have enough to eat. Growing up, my mother would have me make food for those less fortunate than me, mostly children who lived in the slums in my country and I would take it to them, this gave me a huge perspective of how blessed I was. I mean I have never been rich, but I always had a plate of food on the dinner table. I would watch children that were my equals similar in age and size, scarf down the food as if it would run away, we would drive by garbage dumps with children walking through them in search for scrap metal in order to make some money and therefore have access to food. (Since my childhood, the military dictatorship in my country ended and there are many laws in place that protect and provide nourishing meals to children, and the number of children searching through garbage has gone down tremendously.) These altruistic actions my mother taught me since a very early age has made me a compassionate person. I was always taught to make sure that everyone had there basic necessities met. To me it is very difficult to conceive that the idea of spending trillions of dollars on a war that has cost many more lives than the attacks that triggered it is justified. If the effort and money that has been placed on the war had been placed on making sure all children had access to food and water, I would sleep better at night, wouldn't you?