I... dropped... Van Toilet's Stinky-Ass Vindictive French Teacher Bullshit French Class!
Weeeeeeeee!
Freeeeedooooooooooom!
Anywho. I do have to do a mod IRP in its stead.
To comment on the topic on absolutely everyone's minds, hearts, and lips: though I am, as a human, against the concept of war in principle, I cannot say that I do or do not support the (now certain) upcoming war with Iraq.
My dad made a rather salient comment to me a while back: when someone steps in a fire-ant pile in his yard, and gets bitten, he goes to the shed and grabs ant poison, and proceeds to poison the ants. He may even poison all the ant piles in the yard, and perhaps even some random piles of dirt. He knows full well that there will be more ants; he is fighting a pointless battle. However, he is pissed, and wants revenge.
The moral of the story is this: America is angry. It's not important if it's right or wrong (I could go into a whole diatribe about the nonexistance of morality in international politics, but I'll spare you), it's not important if the war is going to be effective at stopping terrorism or not; it doesn't matter if America is being hypocritical, or violating international law (also a tissue-paper concept). That is all just political rhetoric and word games(on both sides).
The Japanese strategist Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto once lamented about waking a "sleeping giant" when his country enacted his plan to launch an attack on Pearl Harbor. There has always been an undercurrent of violence in American foreign policy, and Al Qaida woke that giant again. America is swinging wildly, and it is focused now on Saddam Hussein.
I won't defend Hussein. He surely is no friendly neighborhood authoritarian; he is, for lack of a better word, a monster.
Violence and war are inevitable; war in an amoral world has existed since the first time humans organized enough to fight in concert with another group. It would be foolish of me to judge this particular occurence any differently. It is ridiculous to believe that it could be different.
I am saddened by the inevitability of collateral loss of civilian life. But the men of the Iraqi military will fight out of choice. I've seen copies of CIA "Surrender or Die" pamphlets that were dropped on them before the Gulf War, and I doubt that it will be any different this time. They can desert in the hope that there won't be Hussein's regime after the war to punish them. The men and women of the Coalitian military are there by choice as well. They volunteered to put their lives at risk when they enlisted.
I also know better than to believe that the US can successfully institute a democratic government into a political vaccuum after a war. No one has been particularly successful at that, especially not in an ethnically-divided country like Iraq.
But, I neither protest nor support the war.
Studying history has made me indifferent. I have read too much about crushed ideals and stifled activism not to know better. The forces of the world move and change at their own pace. We are merely along for the ride, like bits of paper in the wind.
~Halcyondream~
a sleeping giant