The Global Village
One night you awake to screaming from your neighbors house. She’s being raped. You quickly call the police to report the crime. The police cruise by and tell the rapist, “don’t do that”. Some of your neighors insist you should not get involved.
The next night the rapist returns and not only rapes the woman, but kills her husband. On your insistence, the police cruise by and tell him to “stop it.” Again, a few neighbors tell you not to get involved.
The third night the rapist returns, yet again. He rapes the woman and the children. Finally fed up with the useless police, you and a dozen or so friends run over to your neighbors house and capture the murdering rapist. The apathic neighbors demand you provide proof of the crimes by producing the gun. Unfortunately, it is no where to be found. The ignore the testimony of the poor woman you rescued. You discover the rapist is a multimillionaire who has been bribing the police chief and his captains, thus their refusal to do anything.
The Moonbats on the left are constantly going on about the Global Village. That’s fine. So let us take this story globally.
The people of Iraq are the woman and her family. The United Nations is the police. The United States and allies are you and your friends.
Just as you could not ignore the screams of a woman in trouble, or the brutal murder of her family, a good citizen of the Global Village must act when the people of a country are being brutalized by their own government.
The none of my business attitude is a cancer in society. Desperate screams by victims of violence have been ignored by their neighbors. Refusing to get involved has allowed innocent people to be murdered. When apathy is applied to the Global Village, genocide is the result.
So what if we haven’t (yet) found any weapons of mass destruction? Saddam had them and used them on his own people and on Iran. We’ve found plenty of components with no other reasonable application and it was estimated that he could have restarted his weapons programs in short time.
You can not demand everyone on your block be good neighbors and at the same time hide behind drawn drapes and a locked door.
January 20th, 2005 at 7:05 am
You know, there is a lot of violence in the neighbourhood. And you haven’t take any real action against it for decades. Now, you make up your mind and choose the only neigbour with plenty of cash in the cupboard. (Oh, those oil-fields!) Thanks a lot America, you did a great job.
January 20th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
You seem to forget the facts. It was the United spit Nations which refused to take any actions while the U.S. kept insisting something should be done. As for the oil, we don’t need Iraq’s oil, nor have we received any since freeing that country from a bloodthirsty despot. On top of that, we Americans have paid for most of the costs out of our own pocket and have not asked the Iraqis to pay us back.
January 21st, 2005 at 2:52 am
I hope, that America’s leaders can look forward more than 1 or 2 years. So they will get their money (in oil) in 10 or 20 years. Since nobody asked you to go there, who do you want to pay you? And about human right: there are a lot of countries where people suffer far more then in Iraq. When will you go to free them? They haven’t got any oil! America said that they go to Iraq because of the nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Now it turns out there weren’t any. Now you say you went to free the people. Now it turns out they are suffering more than ever? How many iraqi has died since you took over the country? What kind of facts am I forgetting?
January 21st, 2005 at 11:36 am
Suffering more than ever? Saddam ran torture prisons (and don’t try to compare one instance of American soldiers humiliating prisoners as the same). Saddam had entire villages murdered. Saddam had a prison for children. Saddam and his sons were evil monsters who needed killing.
Now the situation in Iraq is very different. There are still problems, of course, but these are mostly caused by Saddam’s supporters who are now out of power. They don’t want to see Iraq turned into a democracy. They want the old Iraq back, when they were on top and they could do whatever they want to whomever they wanted.
Do you hate the United States so much that you would prefer a murdering tyrant in power in Iraq, still killing his own people?
Next week Iraq will have their first free election in decades. The people of that country deserver this chance to take control of their own destiny. In 1990 your country finally ended the Soviet occupation. Don’t the Iraqis deserve the same opportunity that Hungary waited for so long to realize?
January 22nd, 2005 at 1:07 am
I think you miss the point. I don’t hate America at all. In fact I admire it in some aspects. It is just the fact that Mr.Bush didn’t tell the truth(lied) about the iraqi weapons. Instead of admitting it was not a mistake, but a deliberate lie, he finds a new cause: people suffering. Ok, but what about then in Congo or North-Korea, just to mention two of the most suffering places of the world. When will America help them? Ok, I admit, Irq was not a pleasent place of the world, but firmly was not the worst. If you want to be the police of the world you should go on.
And about this prison for children and Saddam’s evil sons. It is just like a new blockbuster american movie with Tom Cruise and Salma Hayek. Staggering for anybody but nobody has ever started a war because of it.How many evil dictator lived in the 20th century? How many was destroyed by America? Pinochet, Papa Doc, Idi Amin Dada (not to mention any from the former communist region)? And what happened with the good old Fidel? He is really close to you (of course not in the sixties, but in the nineties).
And one more thing. I deliberately haven’t mention what your soldiers did in the prisons. (Though it is interesting, that while Saddam tortured the prisoners, America only humiliated them.) I don’t think it is America’s fault. That is “normal” in war. But who said that war is the only solution?
Finally, if you could mention any other reason than the oil, that it was Iraq and not another suffering country, I would appreciate that.
January 22nd, 2005 at 1:38 pm
When Bush presented his case to the United spit Nations, he gave a huge list of reasons (I don’t remember the exact number, but it was at least twenty). Weapons of Mass Destruction was only one reason, and not one of the primary reasons.
So how come everyone conveniently forgets all the other reasons and scream “he lied”. He didn’t lie. You just fail to remember what he said.
Something else that slips everyone’s mind, biological and chemical weapons were found. Those are defined as WOMD. Components for WOMD were found. Labs for developing and producing WOMD were found. So even if WOMD was the only reason Bush had stated for invading, he did not lie.
Finally, just because we did nothing about past tyrants doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about them now. Part of the reason we did nothing was because of the threat of the Soviet Union. Many of those petty tyrants were mere puppets of the Soviets. Any attempt to remove them would have been considered an act of war against the Soviet Union. Risking a nuclear war was not a viable option.
January 23rd, 2005 at 4:06 am
Oh boy…this one is going to cause a few ructions.
It’s a good analogy, but… I’m a Brit, so some would just call me an ally and use that to explain my backing you up. But my own point would be that I couldn’t have walked past without doing something. I just couldn’t do that myself, and even if it were a gang of thugs, I would still attempt to help. People just see the US as the bully, but I believe they are just misunderstood. Go live there for a few years, I did. Not that I had any misconceptions before hand, but you get to see a multi-national, multi-cultural society that has made its mistakes, but doesn’t have a problem with admitting they got something wrong and changing it (slavery & racism… they got it wrong, but they are fixing it). I lived in Texas for 3 years, and there was only one Texan family in the street/road/close. Maybe they need some help with their Public Relations. There will always be claims of ‘Going to war for profit’, but you are right to claim back some costs, (US & UK firms to provide most of reconstruction infrastructure), and quite rightly so. I’d like to think and hope that ‘we’ as a world would unite whenever there is wrong, but I fear it will be a few generations before it happens. But that decision must also be a globally accepted decision which is why so many are against the Iraq war. Unfortunately there are still some countries that cannot accept the advice of other countries (I so much want to say France…). But heck, look at the relations between Russia and the rest of the world now. We could never have imagined this many years ago no more than we once did about man standing on the moon, so we can but live in hope. Iraq was a hard one to call. There are conspiracy theories abound, stories of countries who had supplied arms and materials (cough.. France), there were some countries deliberately blocking calls for help (cough… France) and there were some that went as far to help Syria help out (cough… France). But I should avoid making statements like the previous sentence, because they only feed the feud but these are the issues that we must resolve and it is not in our nature.
Dang… All I wanted to say was the first sentence, but I snapped. Perhaps what I should have said and left it at, was that I could never walk down the street and ignore the cries for help without dying of remorse and guilt if I ever did. And I hope that I raise my children to have the same respect. That is all I can do.