soap box
Categories: life
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During the national student strike against the war, I was asked by someone “Why are you attending class?” Beyond the obvious: “I’m supposed to,” this person insisted that I was like other engineers and “didn’t have believe in just social causes.”
Well, I was running late for class– so I didn’t have time for my a response. I am a firm believer in democracy. Most people have never known any other kind of life but democracy, so they don’t know what it is like to live in any other system. If they talk to anyone who has lived in Red China or some other non-democratic nation, they will most likely hear support for US action against Iraq. My grandparents tell me of the horrors that went through Red China, just like it was typical everyday life– because it was. Imagine not being able to visit whatever website you wanted to. Imagine not being able to cross state lines without going through checkpoints where they search you and your car. Imagine not being able to have more than one child or not being able to send your daughter to school. That’s what life is like in most of the world, and the parts of the world where you can live free, well, it’s because of good old American imperialism.
After World War II, America did something quite remarkable. They took the world’s two most totalitarian nations (Germany and Japan) and turned them into two of the world’s strongest democracies. Are the people of Germany and Japan better off as a democracy than as despotic nations? I’d think yes. The ripple effect is that whole areas of the globe have been stabilized by them. Japan ushered in a stable and democratic Asia, with Taiwan and South Korea joining in. If it were not for American nation building efforts in Asia, I would not have the opportunities that I have today.
Germany is even more remarkable in that most of Europe is democratic now. Even the formal Soviet nations are joining in and thus bringing in stability in that region like no other time in history.
In the world today, there’s only one major developed region without democracy: the Middle East. In the League of Arab nations, none of the 22 members are democracies. What do you think will happen when America does it’s national building with Iraq? Did you think Korea, Taiwan, and Poland were democracies before Japan and Germany were recontructed? They are afraid not of American military power but of American democracy. People will see how truly opposed they were and change the nations around Iraq, and that’s what Powell, Bush, and the other hawks want: future stability and democratization of the Middle East.
Weapons of mass destruction and such are just a smoke screen. It’s all about making the whole region as democratic as Europe. So will people be better off in the American imperialistic system? Will supplanting Saddam for Disney be any better? Well, anyone who thinks otherwise has never lived in the Soviet Union or in Nazi Germany or in China. If all throughout their lives, they have only known Krispy Kreme, Steven Spielburg movies, and Coca-Cola, it’s easy for them to say “War is bad,” and “War is racist.”
“I mean, come on, it’s for oil, right?”
Japan has no strategic resources (anime and video games developed because of American nation building… after all, the original inspiration for the anime we all watch and pirate illegally was Disney), yet the US still committed billions of dollars and many years to build up that nation so that one day they would put American TV manufacturers and automakers out of business. Do you really think it’s about oil? It’s just convenient to think that it’s about oil and come up with conspiracy theories. It’s just easier to admit that than open up your eyes and see how miserable these people live their lives, and how miserable you would be if you were living in a Saddam-controlled Iraq.
That’s my soap box; I’ll get off now. Back to the normally scheduled female android fan service tomorrow.
