Ten days later ....
thecurly1
It would seem that I should waste less time bickering with
Tony1; the debate over here is so much more relevant, interesting, and, with one notable exception, largely more educated than the quagmire over in the other forum. Nonetheless, I owe you an apology for the ugly delay in answering the simplest, most direct, and essential question thus far:
Do you agree that we are doing the right thing by taking military action Tiassa?
I shall endeavor to be somewhat focused, but I work with committee thinkers, live with committee thinkers ... come on, I live in Seattle; we can sell bad software and not sell good airplanes because we're a massive marketing committee up here. It's rather sick, and also beside the point. But nothing is simple; everything from my last girlfriend to ordering a box of envelopes from our internal company reserve bears more moral accretions than Darwinism should allow. (And I'll throw that digression out there and drop it:
Conclusive evidence to disprove evolution should be easily found in the present state of humanity itself, but that's beside the point.) The point of this loquacious disclaimer, of course, to note that my feelings on the present conflict are complex, and any summary I offer necessarily incomplete.
The
obvious answer at play is that
no, I don't think We the People of the United States of America are presently doing the right thing. Less obvious, and in some cases perplexingly subtle, is the detail of the mosaic.
I have a general aversion to warfare that comes from various sources. In sixth or seventh grade, I drew a cartoon of Ghadaffi (Khadafy, Qadafi ... you read the papers in the US ... you tell me
) on a child's ... hobby-horse (?!) ... you know, the broomstick with a horse's head, charging against an American tank. As a child I grew up thinking war could be good, could be noble. I was born in '73, under Nixon and the cloud of Vietnam. My first real vision of that war came when things began to unravel in the 1980's, and also post-Rambo. Of course I didn't understand the idea that war was a good thing, but Reagan had us thinking of nukes. And to hear my father speak of Communists--he fully admits his entire opinion of Communism comes from two classic issues--much less the American community in general, I remember two stunning ideas that I learned as I grew up: I read the
Manifesto, in parts, over the years, and then finally in a whole, cohesive reading; and also in college when my Foreign Relations professor drove home the point that our first interactions with the new Communist regime in the Soviet Union following the Revolution were duplicitous in that our assistance was only provided as cover for our attempts to destabilize the yet-unstable freshman government. And it's not like we ever lightened up; during WWII the US delayed munitions assistance to the Soviets in order to let the Germans carve through some potential future enemies. By the time it got to Kruschev banging his shoe on the table and hollering that he would destroy us, frightening the religion out of my father, the geopolitical situation was just a little out of hand. Does it surprise any of us that international journalists are pointing out that the fundamentalist Islamic regimes that trouble us have a history that includes the Red Spectre? Where communism failed, there is poverty and little education: the people are ripe for fundamentalism. However, I digress: I'm not sure the Cold War
had to happen. And that's what makes me sick about all the violence it caused: Central America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Africa .... Think about the grievance Africa is entitled to against the West--slavery, imperialism, environmental chaos: at what point does the global chess game stop? When do we all settle down and realize that this isn't working? We're stuck with the mortal job of cleaning up for a history that didn't have to be that way.
Don't get me wrong: I like the Manifesto; I don't particularly like modern communists. American Reds are, to say the least, just a little ... um ... ridiculous. Blatant. Idiotic--I once had a subscription to a communist newspaper; I generally understood what the writers and editors were after, even when I disagreed with them. But I still, to this day, fail to comprehend their protest of the removal of a public schoolteacher to a higher-paying, administrative position out of the classroom: the teacher was a registered NAMBLA member. So don't get me wrong, please--the modern communist understands the Manifesto about as well as the Bolsheviks, which is about as well as Governor Winthrop understood the Bible. But even the Manifesto is doomed to failure. It leaves too much to chance, assumes to much of human nature, and fails when it assumes the benevolence of a human race that is largely taught from birth of its own malevolence. It is quite telling of our confidence in our way of living if something so critically flawed as adapted Marxism should scare the hell out of us.
I truly, truly think we overreacted to Communism. Aside from it being a slightly-too-convenient tale for how we got here to be accurate, it was also one of my first true departures from the political dimensions I learned growing up. It made so much of the century's conflict seem ... well, dumb. It cheapens the promise of a free nation to contribute to death squads, dictators, and terrorists. I don't care what we think we gain--and why does so much of that seem economic?--by pandering to bad ideas: with Liberty comes the responsibility of Integrity. I've always accepted WWI as an accident of political lunacy, and WWII seems to have its proper cause, except that we might have avoided at least
some of the mess. But WWII set the political stage for an international nightmare. We went from post-war to Cold War and we'll be damned if there's any other way to do it than outgun the other guy. I wasn't quite to my teens when I first saw some of the uglier Vietnam footage. Much of it turned my stomach, and by the time I got to a monk setting himself on fire, it scared me that I thought I understood why he did it.
By the time I was watching SEALs land in Africa on CNN, I pretty much decided to listen to that inner voice that said it just didn't seem right, and figure out why it said that.
Today's wars are yesterday's wars. Clive Barker wrote that
Nothing ever begins, and as we tie the threads of yesterday into the present, we find ourselves reflecting on Janis Joplin:
It's all the same f--king day, man ....
In general, warfare doesn't seem to actually solve anything other than to kill the idiots at war. It rarely, if ever, settles the issue at hand, and usually leads to further human suffering beyond its immediate boundaries. Take the American Revolution: sure, we kicked the British out, but still there exists among the free government of the people the sense of a menace to liberty. We empower our government to commit some of the same injuries our forefathers complained about in the Declaration. Yeah, we stopped evil in WWII, but our warlike machinations belied American integrity: the rise of the atomic age created a political farce that proved to be more than slightly dramatic. It's like an example I used in the religious forum: If Joe kicks his dog, ouch. Okay, he learned not to kick the dog. So then he kick's the
cat. Whoops. Okay, no kitty-kicking. His son? He's not even going to start on that, so he kicks the sofa. Broken foot and all, when is Joe going to learn that it's not what you kick, but that you needn't be kicking anything at all? If I thought the world was learning anything from warfare, then perhaps I would see its value other than in terms of the macabre history for us all to nibble and moralize.
In consideration of the current conflict:
Stamp out terrorism? Ambitious, but it cannot be done with fire. Capture bin Laden? Nobody expects it to be easy but what was that Rumsfeld two-step last week? I've let it slip by me so far because I would cover my ass for that one, too. Semantics, my eye ... he just needs to be a lot more careful in what he's saying. We all know it, but that was a pretty blatant slip on his part. And what's with his Westmoreland routine with the press? We
know they're annoying, but Rummy ... bubs ... you're splitting hairs and the
whole world is watching. Send Bulldog Blair a nice fruit basket at Christmas, eh? So, yeah, I'm a little ticked watching Rumsfeld snagging his sac on the trees, but I didn't vote for his boss and if we've got the credibility to do this, why is he squandering it like a credit grift?
*
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsour...date=20011014&query=Jim+McDermott+Afghanistan
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Seattle, WA) spoke it well. My personal standard for simply shutting up and hoping for the best just wasn't met: we asked Afghanistan to extradite Osama bin Laden on the grounds that we'll blow their asses up if they don't. That was pretty damn stupid. The point of that was to
guarantee that this would come down to combat.
There were plenty of channels to try: show the evidence, put on the squeeze, and publicly hold the Taliban responsible with the incontrovertable evidence there for the world to see.
Is this warfare or law enforcement? There's an important question.
But I'm not aware of a formal resolution of warfare; Bush will need that
eventually. He'll get it, there's no question there. But this is the Hindu Kush we're going into; when it comes down to it, they'll do a hell of a lot of damage going down. Great empires have stumbled at the Kush: we must be prepared to lose substantial amounts of soldiers.
And when and if (I'll still hold out for the possibility of avoiding that phase) that happens, it will be hard to justify that this was the
only way. I got an e-mail the other day that pointed out how many times US Presidents have used the phrase "hunt down and punish". Clinton seemed to like it a lot. We don't have a good record of hunting down and punishing.
For the most part, wars don't accomplish anything. And those which we agree do accomplish something--were they truly necessary? Hitler, for instance, rebuilt the military machine at first with equipment from nations he would later take to task. I'd like to think that we're smarter about warfare now, than we were in the 19th century, when the threads of two coming world wars became identifiable. But I'm worried that we're not: it seems like we rushed into this thing in the classic American tradition of
shoot first think when it's convenient.
Civilians? Yes, it's a huge consideration. But if the reason we're going ahead is that the enemy is hiding among civilians, then we need to try harder. It's not like warfare is easy, but there must be another way. And we have all the time in the world to get down to warfare.
The "next strike" by the terrorists is an interesting concern in that sense, but it's not enough to sell me. It's quite obvious that someone is still screwing with us, despite the hammering we're giving Afghanistan. And I don't accept the horror stories of fundamentalist regimes worldwide, either: these evils existed before 9/11, and they weren't relevant to the political scheme then. They're merely convenient excuses for justification. To the other, it will be hard to ignore those conflicts; to yet another, we're Americans so we'll give forgetting our best efforts. But yes, these injustices need to be corrected; yes, these regimes must topple. But it's not going to get us anything to do it this way except more of the same.
Economy and education. Stability to ease the soul, and knowledge to understand human equality: society will always have its dissenters, but before you reach the point that you educate the violence out of dissent, you'll reach the point that you educate violence out of the culture. We are the United States of America: where shall we lead the world, and how shall we get there? What's the point of leading the world to freedom if it's no improvement on the present?
All warfare is stupid; from the first I learned of it I noticed that people tried awfully hard to make it sound like a good thing. Over the years I learned that it is not. From the most basic, immediately relevant juxtapositions, I find myself believing that those standoffs weren't necessarily unavoidable. Sometimes it seems like we decide there's no other way just so we can get on with the shooting and bombing. And, being a competititve, economic society, we require competition in the world to prosper. We have a trend of creating our enemies by accident of ignorance (accident of bliss?)--I don't think it's entirely coincidental.
But I do think we blew it in the current conflict; our credibility in this situation rests on the fact that we can blow the hell out of whoever objects if it comes down to it. I admit this is a better situation than in a Gore presidency: the GOP would have blocked all his major nominations, and we'd be without an executive branch in time of crisis. (
... come on, a little levity ....)
When we run out of options to avoid warfare, well, we run out of options. It doesn't seem to me that el Presidente really gave a rat's ass about the options. And that's a dumb reason for a war.
And to be honest, I could go on like this all night but I'd be repeating myself at some point, and still not have gotten it all on the table. It's ugly, but warfare accomplishes nothing that couldn't have been done less mortally.
It's how I see the world: there is no cause for warfare. A lack of foresight is no excuse.
Two cents or so ....
thanx,
Tiassa
