|
|
||
|
Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15 |
|
Jay Elias | You can take it with you
"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II
2003-08-02- 12:11 a.m.
Don't Worry, It's Coming
As an atheist Jew, I don’t believe in a heaven or a hell. But if wishing could make it so, I’d wish that at least the hell part were true. There are simply many upon many people on this earth who deserve suffering well beyond anything this mortal realm has to offer.
I’ve been watching the pundits fall all over themselves explaining the myriad of reasons why the United States shouldn’t send troops to serve as peacekeepers in Liberia. And amidst all the talk of the lack of American ‘vital interest’ in Liberia, I just get so sick with the amorality and hypocrisy of it all that I want to scream.
You know, it wasn’t so long ago that our President went before all of us to explain that we must depose Saddam Hussein because he was a “terrible dictator” who “tortured his own people”. Which was true. Saddam Hussein was all those things. And Liberian President Charles Taylor is all of those things today, and worse, since in Liberia, innocents are dying by the hundreds almost daily.
I suppose it is a useful object lesson in just how hypocritical both sides of the Iraq debate were. All those protesters, who were so insistent that the United States should only use their armed might in the most pressing cases and with international sanction, and so upset about the innocent Iraqis who might lose their lives are willing to ignore the Genocide Convention yet again, and couldn't care less for the thousands of innocent Africans who are being slaughtered. All those hawks, who were so insistent that some evils demand intervention, and who claim today that weapons of mass destruction are so much less important than the liberation of an oppressed people could give a shit about liberating people whose bad luck has their oppression taking place on a worthless piece of West Africa as opposed to lying on an ocean of the decayed organic matter of the greatest forest of the Paleozoic era.
For all of our moralizing and our rhetoric, this is what it boils down to. These lives, and many others, are within our power to save. We are the world’s King Solomon. This is how we’ve chosen to determine who lives and who dies.
In the future, when kids in school read about our fall, none of the books they read will suggest we didn’t have it coming. As Nero fiddled, we will have gone to the mall while Washington burned.
Copyright © 2001, 2002 - EoZ
Productions
All Rights Reserved
If you want to make me
famous or just complain: Jay Elias -
jelias@diaryland.com
Older
Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
Don't Worry, It's Coming - 2003-08-02
Diaryland
join my Notify List and get email when I update
my
site:
email:
Powered by NotifyList.com
Email
