It would not be easy to protect all life from violence. Many institutions and attitudes would need to change to effect any improvement to the present situation. Mostly people want to excuse violence, mostly people feel helpless in the face of violence. Anger is the often the response to any suggestion that violence is an issue to tackle in a public forum. Impatience, sometimes even Bible quoting, "There will always be war and the threat of war", "...an eye for an eye", etc.
I'd like to discuss the subject, I'll deal with the response. Let me start with some basics.
War is violence.
Life deserves protection.
No one is foreign or beyond the scope of our concern.
To protect all life, we could take concerted action. We could criminalize war, we could create and support a global justice system capable of enforcing a laws against all violence.
There is a fine line between force and violence, this line is of upmost importance. Forceful action would be necessary to arrest war fighters and war mongers. Effective force could never accept death and harm to combatants or non-combatants as inevitable or desirable. Through training and superior equipment, a large global force could eventually seperate fighters from weapons and isolate leaders from troops to prevent further violent acts.
For now, this is all I have time to write. If interested, you may read my previous post about this subject on the blog I share with novelist and playwright, Mary Burns, afterSonoma.
