A Serious Post, For Real

I mean it. I'm even posting in reddish brown to be more serious. This is the last post of October 2006 that I will write (we'll see) and I want it to be serious. I've been off for so long that it's getting old. I do not even have time to read the news anymore. It's driving me crazy. So, I've got something to talk about and it's serious.

Principles are rarely consistent. People will believe strongly in something, but only in one example and not in another. Yes, I'm going to talk about the War in Iraq. We've all heard a lot of discussion on the immorality of the U.S. in this matter. We took over another country, we wanted oil, there were not WMD. The list goes on. I'm not really for the war that much, so I'm not going to point out that Iraq disagrees with us on important decisions quite often, oil prices have not decreased enough to mean anything and there was evidence of WMD potential. I am going to point out something entirely different in fact.

Fidel Castro gets more respect that our government. This is because he promised to bring democracy to Cuba and then turned it into a communist dictatorship (I guess?). People's lives in Cuba could be improving, instead they are not. How about the Soviet Union? Talk about taking over another government or two! They only conquered their neighboring countries and caused the deaths of about 100 million people. But nobody talks about that. Then there's China, why doesn't it bother anyone that Google censors searches on human rights coming out of China? Why don't we ever hear comments on the secret concentration camps that political prisoners in China have vanished into? Why is our understanding of the world and the wrongs that occur so focused on one country?

You hear people talk about how wrong it was of the U.S. to go into Iraq and depose it's ruler. They say it's because that's just a wrong thing to do. In the next sentence you might hear them praise Castro or even the Soviet Union (I'm serious, I go to a public university). This makes no sense to me. If you're going to have a principle you should hold to it consistently. Otherwise it's not a principle.

I'll grant that you might not always show evidence of your belief, we're only human. However, this large of a gap is completely illogical. It means one thing and one thing only. You do not like the U.S. in particular and the things that it does.

I do agree that our actions in Iraq have set up a huge moral dilemma. A moral dilemma that ought to be considered just as seriously as consistency in principles.