Things are looking, essentially, like we’re going to strap on the guns and go a huntin’. The ostensible reason is Saddam Hussein has Weapons of Mass Destruction that he might let loose in the Gulf Neighbourhood Playground.
In a children’s context: There is a neighbourhood bully who is scaring the shit out of the rest of us kids. He thumbs his generous nose at the parents (the UN) and the daycare workers (the weapons inspectors) and tells all the other kids that he’s got a big booger in his nose that he’ll hock up and gob on anyone who doesn’t join his team. OK, so what do we do now?
Simply put, all the other kids are getting together and the biggest kids are going to beat the crap out of the bully, then kick him out of the playground. Very Lord of the Flies, but that is how it works at a child level. It has worked that way, the playground dynamic, since the dawn of time. Except when its country against country we give it names like The Great War, or World War II, or the Korean Conflict, or a Police Action, or Desert Storm, or Peacekeeping.
We don’t really need to examine the ‘real’ reasons for the coming conflict, as they are simple to state: Big Oil, Big Business, Big Economy Boost and Distraction From Shit We Haven’t Fixed At Home. Thinking too much on this can make you too jaded, so in the interest of mental health, let’s just stick with the playground analogy. Otherwise, we’ll wind up posting on alt.conspiracy.gulfwar 100 hours a week.
Let’s follow this to its logical conclusion: The bully gets his ass kicked and everyone who takes him on, gets to put boogers in his hair, make him cry and give him a wedgie that he will never forget. Now, the good kids run the playground and the rest of the kids who didn’t get into the scrap can say they were with us all along.
We’ll feel good about doing something for ourselves. The bully will go away. The playground will return to its usual level of fear and panic and unpleasantness.
Except over in the other corner of the playground, we’ve got some Korean kid that doesn’t have a bike, or nice clothes, but he’s got a bottle rocket and some matches.
Humankind always needs some kind of bad shit happening to keep it angry. I have yet to see one societal group, either contemporary, or historical, who have lead the pacifist path with consistency. The Playground Ethos always applies
RoadDave 