Here's my two cents: Be careful of inflamed rhetoric on both sides. Be careful of propaganda on both sides. Who is Osama bin Laden and why does he act the way he does? Does any of us really know? I read an in-depth profile of him a year ago that filled in many details of his life and motivation, details I never heard on the news. Would it justify this recent action? Of course not! Nothing would! But my point is, what you hear on the television news is not necessarily the truth. Sometimes it's just a piece of the overall picture.
Remember, Noriega was a U.S. ally, until the U.S. tired of him and made him enemy #1.
Remember, Saddam Hussein was a U.S. ally, until the U.S. decided not to use him any more and made him enemy #1.
Were Noriega and Hussein bad men? Absolutely. Were they the only bad men running countries in this world? Not at all. There are plenty of men we are told to view as good leaders of countries who may tomorrow be propagandized into enemy #1.
In recent years, it's been bin Laden. Does he deserve it? Seems that way. But life is often not nearly as black and white as the propagandists wish you to believe. For all we know, bin Laden had nothing to do with this whatsoever (who among us can say with certainty that we know otherwise?). That this is just a smokescreen, to give the American people a ready target.
But let's say bin Laden is behind this attack. Does he deserve death? 100% yes. Bomb him now. And should we then bomb the Arab world? Let's bomb Saudi Arabia, shall we? After all, bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia (our ally in the Arab world). Oh no, let's bomb Palestine instead! Why? Because those people were cheering in the street! Why were they cheering? What propaganda had they been exposed to that molded their thinking into accepting an act of terror as a good thing in the big picture? What thinking had molded their minds into viewing America as a land of evil that deserved punishment? Unless we lived among them, we probably can't fathom how that could happen, and yet it did.
So bomb 'em all to hell for pissing us off with those video images! Yeah, that's worth a death sentence. Oh wait, didn't Americans cheer all those smart bombs that we used on Iraq, enjoying that video footage of missles that seemed to go up to a house, open the window, and then go in a blow up? Weren't we all cheering then, even though some innocent civilian targets got hit in the process?
Empathy is hardest when the person is different from us. My god! They don't speak our language, they don't think like us, they don't embrace democracy! How awful! Kill 'em all!
Sorry, the world is not that black and white. Those who committed, planned, or aided the terrorists who commited yesterday's attack deserve a swift death. For the rest of the Arab world, or any other part of the world, let's show a bit of restraint before we start dropping nuclear bombs. Things are never as simple as the government wishes us to think or the news media propagandizes us to believe. The more you read about the world, the more complex it becomes.
