Questions

Had an excellent comment left yesterday. It tended to veer into typical peacenik platitudes but some of the thoughts were valid.

I can’t say that we negated Iraq’s right of self-governing by invasion. Currently, of course, they’re not self-governing but that will change. Without our help – and in spite of 10 years of attempts at every form of help outside military action – there was no chance they’d even have an opportunity for self-government so I think our actions were just. Are we proceeding in that same spirit of justice? That I am beginning to question, although I’d advocate harsher methods of dealing with the uprising. A very small group of people cannot be allowed to disrupt the formation of order through unlawful tactics. They’ve got to compete on the same playing field as all the other interest groups and take their lumps with the rest, that’s democracy. That’s the way the game is played.

As for the arguments against force. People understand force. It’s unfortunate, I don’t like to fight any more than the next guy, but that’s the way it is. We aren’t all enlightened yet. We aren’t all that distantly removed from foraging for bugs in each other’s hair by the light of a dung fire. I am sure there are still societies on Earth that do exactly that, even in the dawning years of the 21st century.

Was removing Hitler by force only a “replacement of tyrants?” Maybe in the case of the East Germans and Eastern Europeans but certainly the West benefitted. I’d argue a similar outcome in our forcing the downfall of the Soviet Union through threat of force, the overthrowing of the Japanese Empire through use of force, the destruction of slave owning Southern society through use of force, &c. There are instances where the outcome was only subsitution of tyrants but very few since the ascendance of the United States onto the world stage.

This is not to say we have always done right. Cogent arguments can be made against many of the actions we have taken in our history. Still, in our time, we are the only superpower. Like Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Like it or not, people will look up to us with a mixture of fear and admiration. The jealous will hate us, the oppressed will appeal to us, the evil will machinate against us. We’ve got the responsibility to lead and police the world; again, like it or not. We can either take the opportunity and responsibilty given and run with it – as we have been doing – or shrink from it and eventually collapse under our own weight as the Empires of old.