Questions Questions

I wrote an entry yesterday but never got around to publishing it. D’oh! Work is going slowly. We’ve had about 5 cases come in so far and I’ve dealt with 2 of them and I’m now just festering. There is a womyn in Milwaukee that I’ve been trying to get a hold of since last week but she remains unwilling to call or email me. What can I do?

I hope everyone had a good weekend. The elections in Iraq went off hitches and all. Not only is it too early to know who the victor is, but it’s also too early to say that democracy has taken hold. But it’s a start and I’m glad that it went off without mass killings. Honestly, I don’t know much about how it went other than there were a few dozen killed and more injured by mortar attacks and such. Supposedly 60% of eligible voters cast ballots. Will they be counted correctly? Will insurgents start assassinating elected officials? I was against our invasion of Iraq, am still furious with the Bush administration for their justifications of the it but find myself to be ambivalent about what’s happening now. First Bushy pushed the idea that Hussein harbored, aided, and abetted terrorists. When it was pointed out that Iraq was no Islamic state and was, in fact, a secular government – something that Osama bin Laden abhors - then it became the threat of WMDs. When this became suspect, we then stopped acting out of self-interest and were cast by Bushy as the good guys deposing a brutal dictator with nary a mention of WMDs or ties to Al Queda. So we went from self-defense to altruism. And who among use actually believes that our invasion was done expressly out of altruism? No one in this country is distraught over Hussein’s removal from power. The question is motive. Who is the more morally just: a person who desires to kill someone but refrains for fear of punishment or a person who harbors anger towards someone else but refrains from killing him or her because the act of murder is morally repugnant? I’ll admit wholeheartedly that geopolitics is not my strong suit but my country has a history of imperialism. To be sure, not exactly on par with that of, say, England, but it’s still there. I don’t recall King Kamehameha inviting the U.S. over for dinner and cocktails. Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Mexico – we’ve been fighting other countries for land and resources throughout most, if not all of, our existence.

Here’s a question that I’ve been pondering lately: Is it morally right for the Untied States to invade another country that does not pose a threat if for the express purpose of making it into a republic? Republican democracy is certainly the best choice for this country but does that mean it is the best choice for all countries? If we support freedom as an idea, must we also support the freedom of other peoples to reject democracy? OK, I should have written “some questions that I’ve been pondering” instead. Everyone on the left and right can agree that Hussein’s disappearance from the scene was good regardless of anything else. And I think that everyone agrees that our invasion of Afghanistan was just in that it aided and abetted Al Queda members. If people like David Horowitz are right and our invasion of Iraq was justified by the evil of Hussein, then what are our moral obligations now? Are we now required to invade Iran and North Korea? What about Saudi Arabia?

Any notion that the United States should, for any reason, spread democracy scares me a bit. All of this talk about when freedom spreads, America is safer sounds like a justification of taking measures to ensure that democracy is propagated which sounds a lot like the old “white man’s burden”. How do we address the problem of the Arab world’s perception of the USA however wrong it may be? Lots of folks in the Middle East hate us. Even if their reasons are wrong, it’s still a massive PR problem that needs to be addressed.

Ugh! So many questions, so few answers.

I joined my 3rd Genesis group recently so now I’m a member of 3 Yahoo groups and 1 Google group. Mark Batatis is a long-tim Genesis collector and the Google group is his. Unfortunately there’s been precious little discussion about Genesis’ music or trading bootlegs as most of the discussion has been about trashing Alan Hewitt, the publisher of the Genesis fanzine, The Waiting Room. I personally have had only the most minimal contact with the guy although I know that he’s been rude to various folks at the Genesis Forum. Regardless of how deserving he is of criticism, must the whole group be dedicated to giving him a slogging?