The Soccer War Blog # 3

Greed for Power

Are political wars, used to improve a country's situation or only for the greed of power? Throughout the book I have wondered if all of the politics of the countries that are named in The Soccer War, are fighting because they want to improve their county or only because they just want to have the power. At the beggining, Kapuscinski states valid reasons to have a war, but these benefit the towns people, they are for the good of everybody and not only for the goog of the politicians and the high class of the countries. For example, wanting to free Algeria from France and making it an idependent country where there are original and unique customs. But as the book continues these reasons start to dissapear and the only thing Kapuscinski writes, is about the political issues and wars that are going on in the five countries he has visited. "In the course of a moth I had driven though five countrie. In four of them, there were states of emergency. In one, the president had just been overthrown; in a second, the president had saved himself only by a chance; in a third, the head of government was afraid to leave his house, which was surrounded by troops. Two parliaments had been dissolved. Two governments had fallen. Scores of political activists had been arrested. Scores of people had been killed in political conflicts." Pg. 127
It is amazing to see how wars go around political issues and that's about it. The presidents and teh governments don't actually care about what their people think, what their people want and what is the best for their country. The greed for power is clear in each of the five coutries that have been narrated until this point, and it is unbeliavable to read and to think that thousands of people were killed and politicians didn't actually care because all they wanted was to reach power. "Everywhere there was an atmosphere of tension, everywhere the smell of gun powder."Pg. 127