It has been an eventful week... and I am a bit behind on my musings... but stay with me as I meander around as I have a great deal swirling around upstairs...
Egypt has turned over its totalitarian government, and the West fears Al Queda? Or the Muslim Brotherhood?
Egypt's government got caught in The WEB! And it happened even though these folks existed under a very strict censorship of the Web. Islamic Radicalism cannot survive the Web any more than Radical Liberalism at elite U.S. universities, double talking politicians, petty rip-off-artists, and myriad other FOS sorts. Its just not possible! These phenomenon required the control of the flow of information and that just AIN'T gonna happen anymore in places with access to the Web.
In the short term, certain regimes are perhaps going to be able to restrict access to the Web... but not for long. For a number of reasons: technical - people will come up with technology that will by pass the censors; Economic - by doing so they are putting their society at a competitive disadvantage.
What has begun in Tunisia and Egypt will eventually sweep away the balance of the totalitarian regimes - EVEN CHINA. Maybe it takes a few years, maybe even a decade... but not a lifetime. And maybe its all over in a couple of years. Think about what the Web has done to the West in the last decade.
And Osama Bin Laden? He's an Old Fart, and Al Queda is yesterday's news (murder via "terrorism" existed before Al Queda and will exist long after they have gone). The Muslim world is youthful (somebody should point out how that came to pass and what it means to the West's ruling class of childless and single offspring power couples... and what it means to their sensibilities... while the privileged young of the West were busy studying "women's studies" and "Gay history" their counter parts in the Muslim world were having babies... no babies, no culture... lots of babies, dominant culture... why is this politically incorrect to point out? ). The future belongs to the young. While the West was concerning itself with Gay marriage
(which I absolutely do not oppose; people should be free to make what contracts they will - self-determination is not a sometime thing... that does not mean its an important issue for the continuance of our culture... because it simply is not... it might be important to Gay people... but in the final analysis Gay people tend to not reproduce in meaningful numbers, and producing children and raising them to be good people is requirement NUMERO UNO in ANY and EVERY culture... if you doubt this, just ask a Shaker. Oh, can't find one? That's because they did not believe in sex and procreation.)
the Muslim world was putting babies on the ground. These babies have now grown up, and with the assistance of the Web have become educated, and have taken down 2 despotic regimes in as many months. Somehow, I do not see them wishing to live in societies with the equivalent of the Nazi S.S. walking around and chopping off hands and heads, shooting women in soccer stadiums over their dress code, stoning, and some of the other niceties associated with Fundamentalist theocracies... but, hey... what do I know.
Now the folks back home in the West that benefit from all of the money spent on Homeland Security here in the U.S. and its equivalent programs elsewhere are FREAKING out right now. Between the federal deficit and the potential for democracy... well, they desperately need somebody, somewhere to blow something up, or else their budgets are going to get cut, their department will get closed down, and they will have to gain meaningful employment in honest toil... something they have never known.
Still, the Old Fart Bin Laden and the Old Farts here in the West are locked in a death grip over something (Oil and its accompanying wealth) that won't last another human lifetime in any event. And it is killing and maiming and mauling the few young people that our culture has been able to produce.
In my previous post I laid out my argument why abortion should not be debated as a legal issue and that it should be debated as an ethical issue. I think I can make the same case for ending the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and not starting any new wars and closing the far flung military empire that the U.S. has cobbled together and bringing our citizens/military personnel HOME.
War is legal. So what? What does that have to do with the ETHICS of war? Is it ethical to drop a 500 pound bomb from an aircraft on a house that a member of the Taliban has taken up refuge? What about the other people in the home? And look... I am not naive... the battle in Afghanistan is all about nuclear Pakistan... I get it. The number of lives lost as a result of a nuclear event coming out of Pakistan, both directly and indirectly would be in the millions... that does not make the killing of Afghan civilians any less unethical. Nor does killing them even the score for 9/11... revenge never works - and it never ends.
Let us take the killings of Americans at the hands of Law Enforcement over drugs. Is it legal? Yep. Is it ethical? You would have to be out of your freaking mind. Americans are killed in "police encounters" every day. Such encounters would never have occurred absent our insane drug policy, and whenever police kill unarmed Americans they have a handy excuse - "drugs were found at the scene". This is one of those times where I think I am the only normal person left. Let's think this through, shall we? We have people, Americans, willing to go to work for the Government and kill people via hemorrhagic shock/trauma (that's what shooting somebody does, and it is a horrible way to die) for simply possessing a particular chemical or plant matter... and for those that they do not kill, these government employees (I hate the word "Agent". It makes Law Enforcement personnel sound as if they were bred by the government and are a breed apart, when in fact these are people just like you and me...) are willing to torture these people in our Gulags for decades, long past the point that these people could be any threat to anyone, but occasionally releasing them after assuring that they are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while they are still young enough to do some real harm.
Does that make any f&*^%ing sense at all? Really??!! (And if it does make sense to you, I really have to question your humanity.)
The Left gets this one. Let me ask you folks on the Right.... WWJD?? Would He suggest that police encounter killings over drugs are acceptable in G-d's sight? I rather f&$##ing doubt it, but I am all ears. Fill me in. Set me straight.
Now let me set you straight. "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword". Matthew 26:52. This includes any and all people willing to kill or harm for any reason. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
Economic interests. National interests.
This is another one that makes me nuts. Whenever I hear "protecting American interests" I become deeply, deeply suspicious, because they never seem to be talking about rescuing an American hiker lost in the Andes... no, its usually about about killing people over "economic interests"; or more simply, killing people for money. Is that what a nation "under G-d" does? It kills for money? Absolutely. Is it Legal? Yep.
Is it ethical? NAFC.
And as I said before... I am NOT naive... nor a strict pacifist... there are some evils that should rightly be be destroyed (Nazi Germany comes to mind... but Dresden? Come on...). These do not include killing for convenience (abortion), killing for money (economic interests), or killing for the sake of exerting power (police encounter killings).
"Thou shalt not KILL". WTF is so hard to understand about that?