June 7, 2007: A subsidiary of The Economist
magazine was hired to create a Global Peace Index. Thus the ten least peaceful
nations on the planet are; Angola, Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Pakistan, Colombia,
Nigeria, Russia, Israel, Sudan and, at the very bottom, Iraq. The list does not
measure how dangerous it is to be in a nation, but rather how much of a threat
the nation is to world peace. Thus a large army would make you more dangerous,
even if the army was rarely used, and was there mainly to keep hostile
neighbors from attacking you. Because of
this, Israel ends up on the bottom ten, even though it is a safer place
to live than most of its neighbors. Same with Russia. The country with the most
horrific war, Congo, doesn't even make the "10 Worst." The United States is
also near the bottom of the list, because of its large armed forces. Yet many
of the nations that are higher on the list, have small armed forces courtesy of
the United States, which sees to many of their defense needs. No good deed goes
unpunished. The Global Peace Index is endorsed by former U.S. president Jimmy
Carter, the Dali Lama, and archbishop Despond Tutu of South Africa (which has
one of the highest murder rates on the planet, peaceful, maybe, but safe,
definitely not.)
