A Morality Tale
This is a tale about the futility of Morality.
The main people who boast that they have morals while everyone else is immoral are usually holy than thou people who usually lead two-faced lives, not knowing the meaning of the word in the first place. Morality is a trumped up word for what is supposedly right for the culture you happen to living in at the time. It is very much similar to the words right and wrong. What appears to be moral in one culture is not necessarily the case in another culture.
For instance, it is morally wrong to kill another human being unless your tribe or nation happens to be at war with another tribe or nation. Then it is almost a moral obligation to kill “them”. At least it seems to be a moral obligation to serve your tribe and support the killing off of the other tribe. I see “Support the Troops” signs everywhere. Who says that supporting the troops is not bringing them home so they can at least have the choice of being killed while driving a car around town suddenly hit by a drunk driver, instead of forcing them to carry 100 pounds of survival gear around a strange country being moral policemen afraid of what is around the next corner.
What about the war on terror? It is such an undefined quantity that the US government has to tell the people who to kill and who not to kill. This often varies with who is in power at the moment.
What made it so morally wrong when Idi Amin butchered the other tribe in such large numbers so that his tribe could always be in power and at the same time what makes us so sure we are morally right in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, and Somalia to kill so many people that merely do not think as we do?
We invade their country and proclaim that Democracy is the only way to govern. Why can’t they see the light? When the student is ready the teacher will appear. Maybe we’re trying to push the 21st Century on a 10th Century culture. When the people of Iraq & Afghanistan are ready for change, change will happen quickly. Look at the Berlin Wall as an example.
America has always believed that might is right with respect to foreign policy. We seem to love war and being the world’s policemen, though no one is asking us to be that. It is supposedly good for finances, except for this war on terror, which is the first war that we openly started. We usually play at war with CIA/NSA supporting one side against the other until one side eventually wins. This time, however, was different. We actually invaded another country because we were told that they were bad enough to give us problems in the future. Once we were in the war, we found that they weren’t as bad as we thought, but by then we had destroyed their government and had the “moral” obligation to stay and make a new “democratic” government in its place. We did all this without asking the real people if they wanted democracy in the first place.
Now, with a change in American leadership approaching, we seem to be headed on the way out of Iraq, much the poorer for the experience, financially and morally.
We will leave Iraq with a very weak government made up of different factions that do not want to work together and in fact kill each other behind the scenes. The infrastructure of Iraq is still destroyed with different religious sects bombing one another at will, each trying to terrorize the other into submission. This will only get better when the actual Iraqi people want it to and not before. Right now, the Iraqis’ want us out, along with our assumption that democracy is the only way to govern, preferring “civil” war as somehow better than our alternative (What is so civil about a war inside a nation anyway?). Theocratic Dictatorship is all Iraq has ever known to be a way to govern, where the religious thug of the moment rules supreme. It seems that any way to get rid of us occupying their country is preferable to us staying there influencing them in ways they do not care for.
I think there is a lesson for us somewhere in this parable, but in our “moral police” mode, we are the “experts” who are teaching them the lessons so our minds are closed. There is something about morality and learning that are diametrically opposed.
For all our morals, we will leave a war torn country even more so than before we came in, knowing we were right to do so; believing that we had “the way”, the righteous way. With Sadaam in charge, the war was limited to dissenters who openly opposed him or angered him. Everyone who knew their so-called “place” could walk down the street without fear of being shot, raped, or molested. Now as we, the crusaders of democracy, leave; everyone lives in fear of being shot, raped, and /or molested. How this is better than it was before is a tale for the politicians to spin. And spin they will, just like Vietnam and Bosnia. It seems we will never learn when to leave well enough alone.
Here we sit with largest, best funded, openly warring army in the world. I wonder where we will use this awful power next. One thing is for sure, there will always be some dictator who thinks he can kill another tribe, committing human rights violations galore such that we, in our “righteous morality” call it wrong and then a new wave of “moral indignation police” wars will begin again.
I wonder how we can consider Guantanamo Bay morally right with its own human rights violations in play. How can we, on one hand, condone water boarding torture and then make an about face when some very poor African nation declares war on half the people in its sphere of influence, causing us to police them up with our own version of righteousness.
I guess I just don’t understand “American Morality” and that is why I wrote this tale.
The main people who boast that they have morals while everyone else is immoral are usually holy than thou people who usually lead two-faced lives, not knowing the meaning of the word in the first place. Morality is a trumped up word for what is supposedly right for the culture you happen to living in at the time. It is very much similar to the words right and wrong. What appears to be moral in one culture is not necessarily the case in another culture.
For instance, it is morally wrong to kill another human being unless your tribe or nation happens to be at war with another tribe or nation. Then it is almost a moral obligation to kill “them”. At least it seems to be a moral obligation to serve your tribe and support the killing off of the other tribe. I see “Support the Troops” signs everywhere. Who says that supporting the troops is not bringing them home so they can at least have the choice of being killed while driving a car around town suddenly hit by a drunk driver, instead of forcing them to carry 100 pounds of survival gear around a strange country being moral policemen afraid of what is around the next corner.
What about the war on terror? It is such an undefined quantity that the US government has to tell the people who to kill and who not to kill. This often varies with who is in power at the moment.
What made it so morally wrong when Idi Amin butchered the other tribe in such large numbers so that his tribe could always be in power and at the same time what makes us so sure we are morally right in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Pakistan, and Somalia to kill so many people that merely do not think as we do?
We invade their country and proclaim that Democracy is the only way to govern. Why can’t they see the light? When the student is ready the teacher will appear. Maybe we’re trying to push the 21st Century on a 10th Century culture. When the people of Iraq & Afghanistan are ready for change, change will happen quickly. Look at the Berlin Wall as an example.
America has always believed that might is right with respect to foreign policy. We seem to love war and being the world’s policemen, though no one is asking us to be that. It is supposedly good for finances, except for this war on terror, which is the first war that we openly started. We usually play at war with CIA/NSA supporting one side against the other until one side eventually wins. This time, however, was different. We actually invaded another country because we were told that they were bad enough to give us problems in the future. Once we were in the war, we found that they weren’t as bad as we thought, but by then we had destroyed their government and had the “moral” obligation to stay and make a new “democratic” government in its place. We did all this without asking the real people if they wanted democracy in the first place.
Now, with a change in American leadership approaching, we seem to be headed on the way out of Iraq, much the poorer for the experience, financially and morally.
We will leave Iraq with a very weak government made up of different factions that do not want to work together and in fact kill each other behind the scenes. The infrastructure of Iraq is still destroyed with different religious sects bombing one another at will, each trying to terrorize the other into submission. This will only get better when the actual Iraqi people want it to and not before. Right now, the Iraqis’ want us out, along with our assumption that democracy is the only way to govern, preferring “civil” war as somehow better than our alternative (What is so civil about a war inside a nation anyway?). Theocratic Dictatorship is all Iraq has ever known to be a way to govern, where the religious thug of the moment rules supreme. It seems that any way to get rid of us occupying their country is preferable to us staying there influencing them in ways they do not care for.
I think there is a lesson for us somewhere in this parable, but in our “moral police” mode, we are the “experts” who are teaching them the lessons so our minds are closed. There is something about morality and learning that are diametrically opposed.
For all our morals, we will leave a war torn country even more so than before we came in, knowing we were right to do so; believing that we had “the way”, the righteous way. With Sadaam in charge, the war was limited to dissenters who openly opposed him or angered him. Everyone who knew their so-called “place” could walk down the street without fear of being shot, raped, or molested. Now as we, the crusaders of democracy, leave; everyone lives in fear of being shot, raped, and /or molested. How this is better than it was before is a tale for the politicians to spin. And spin they will, just like Vietnam and Bosnia. It seems we will never learn when to leave well enough alone.
Here we sit with largest, best funded, openly warring army in the world. I wonder where we will use this awful power next. One thing is for sure, there will always be some dictator who thinks he can kill another tribe, committing human rights violations galore such that we, in our “righteous morality” call it wrong and then a new wave of “moral indignation police” wars will begin again.
I wonder how we can consider Guantanamo Bay morally right with its own human rights violations in play. How can we, on one hand, condone water boarding torture and then make an about face when some very poor African nation declares war on half the people in its sphere of influence, causing us to police them up with our own version of righteousness.
I guess I just don’t understand “American Morality” and that is why I wrote this tale.
posted by Mike Liesveld @ 10:19 AM
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