Addictions
Saudi Arabia = ally IS LIKE crack dealer = friend.
- posted by Chris @ 3:41 PM

 
What did we learn from the Crusades?
Remember those campaigns to rid the Holy Land of non-Christians? Not Christianity's finest hour, my friends, and worth thinking about a bit now. All mono-theistic religions that I've looked at have some kind of brutal period in their history, when the faithful fought against other ways of thinking, justifying war and its horrible cousins -- torture, rape, murder -- by claiming "god's" blessing upon their cause and their "way". And organized religion has sponsored, encouraged, financed and blessed warriors who slaughtered innocents in the name of god. (It's another discussion entirely about what god might think of this.)

What does organized religion need to do instead? Bring its moral force to bear strongly. Can an individual Christian, Muslim or Jew take on fellow followers of the faith and change minds, hearts and actions? I don't know, but it needs to be tried.

Humans are wired to get along, for the most part, and we're susceptible to going along with the easy way instead of the good way. Let's try harder not to get sucked in by what's easy. Compromise can be destructive when practiced in immoderation. If something's wrong, speak up. And keep speaking.

I'm learning, the hard way, that I'd rather be alone than be part of a group or an idea that erodes my spirit and brings apocolypse closer every day.
- posted by Chris @ 10:11 AM

 
There's no "rogue" here ...
Merriam-Webster defines rogue:

Main Entry: (3)rogue
Function: adjective
1 of an animal : being vicious and destructive
2 : resembling or suggesting a rogue elephant especially in being isolated and dangerous or uncontrollable

Stop calling those American service people "rogue"! Misguided, ill-trained, unsupervised, perhaps even amoral ... but they aren't "rogue". Tossing that term into the mix suggests that there aren't plenty more examples of poor decision-making at all levels of our involvement in Iraq. Calling them rogue marginalizes what is happening to prisoners at Abu Ghraib -- and it doesn't help us address the systemic problems faced by an occupying power trying to gather enough intelligence to show us the way out of this political morass. Language has power. Let's use it to illuminate, not obfuscate.

Oh, just another thought: "I was just following orders" is NOT an acceptable defense.
- posted by Chris @ 9:04 AM

 
Human nature
Good people can do bad things. Bad people are likely to initiate bad things. There are bad people everywhere ... and good people who get sucked into their web, for whatever reason. (And sometimes it's not even someone else's web ...)

And the president's protests that this is not how America does things? Well, we in America do do these things. Our prison system may not have the same kind of torture cells as Saddam's, but our prisoners are victims of abuse and rape. Guards abuse their authority. Prisoners set up their own fiefdoms, which often extend beyond the boundaries of their confinement.

This is human nature. This is what humans do with power over other humans.

The difference between America and a regime based on torture and fear? Yes, there is one, usually. We're not promoting those who perpetrated the abuse. We're punishing them. It's too bad the difference is in the reaction, not in the interaction ... but what can we expect when we spin up our military to confront an enemy, and then ask those same people to treat the enemy like fellow human beings, even as they are still being shot at and killed?
- posted by Chris @ 9:43 AM