August is a busy month for birthdays. Happy birthday to my brother Rayford, I pray that he is well and that he knows that I love him (sometimes with family, drama prevents rational people from being true to their own ideals and it’s easy not to express the things that should be said).
August is also the month that brought Obama back to NC; he spoke recently before the American Legion about the importance of veteran health care I believe, but I haven’t heard or read his remarks. I was thinking earlier about Obama’s decision not to intervene with the US military in Syria and the decision to leave Iraq. Maybe both instances were mistakes, maybe a lack of US intervention led to the rise of that Muslim group with two names (ISIS and ISIL), but I was thinking about how brave a decision it was to stand behind the notion that the US is not the world’s military. Its hard to deny that Americans are war weary, especially when the reasons for war are so obscure to civilians whose daily lives rarely allow for deep thought on foreign policy. Daily lives that sometimes include sending their children to fight in a war, or actually going to fight in a war. But whether it was a smart decision remains to be seen. As much as I oppose war and violence, both war and violence are tools that can be used to bring freedom to those who are stripped of a decent standard of living. The problem with that idealism, though, is that humanity is imperfect, it is our nature to misuse or abuse, to neglect, to bungle. And when it comes to waging war, a nation must be truly fighting for its ideals in order to successfully achieve ideals of freedom and human rights, otherwise that nation is seen for what it is, opportunistic and hypocritical. We can’t get it right in the Middle East because we keep lying about the reasons that it’s necessary. We say we do it in the name of freedom and democracy, but the common perception is that we are protecting financial interests. I wonder what American intervention in the Middle East would look like if we raged it as a war for financial gains and dropped the pretense of our ideals. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but what I’m saying is that it’s getting harder to fake it, our philosophy that every life has intrinsic value and that all men are created equal, because we are also capitalists which means that we determine our own individual value and where we started can be forgotten, overshadowed by what we earn. The philosophies don’t have to compete, men can be created equal and then rise to whatever level of wealth they aspire to attain, but it seems that its easy to forget the first part, that all men be created equal, otherwise one may be at a disadvantage to achieve any goal they may set for themselves. And this relates to our intervention in the Middle East because if we truly want to impact the region, then we have to do it with sustainable intentions in mind. If we wage a war to protect people from unnecessary persecution as they live their lives, send their children to school, go to work, then it might work because the people will embrace the intervention, but if we just say we’re fighting for those things, then depose a leader only to allow one even worse to gain power because he’s willing to make deals that benefit us financially, then war becomes perpetual and we are seen for what we are, opportunistic and hypocritical. We can’t be two things, not those two things anyway, we either want the money or we want the peace, we obviously can’t have both.
If any of that made sense, thank Wes because we talked about this recently and that conversation has been on my mind. If it does not makes sense, then, it was a long week at work and I’m so close to a three day weekend that I can taste it.
We’re almost to Issue 9. Look for it Tuesday, September 2, 2014, since Monday is a holiday.
Lastly, I hope you’re enjoying the every Simpsons episode marathon on FXX (I plugged that like I’m getting paid for it). I love the Simpsons, I learned a lot watching that show as a kid and I’ve seen episodes I haven’t seen in years.
Enjoy your last days of August and we will see you Tuesday! Go to the beach or something, you deserve it.
PRL Serials 