Old Decathlon Olympics Journal

May 14 entered on May 16 - Life is Complicated

May 14th, 2004 entry made on May 16th, 2004

Life is Complicated

Life is much more complicated in today’s environment than I ever remember it to be when I was growing up. I do not believe that this is due to my own personal inability to remember actual events.

I remember segregation and desegregation. It was a very emotionally charged issue regardless of what position or what side of the fence that you found yourself. It was also a single black on white or white on black issue. Racism was rampant. I remember the signs that marked public water fountains and restrooms that declared boldly “White’s only”. As a child I use to ask why, but as an adult I had learned why, and it was called ignorance.

Today our once huge world is now actually very small in reference to the amount of time that is required to travel from where ever you are on this piece of dirt hurling through space to anywhere else on this little piece of dirt hurling through space. Technological advancements have made it possible for anyone anywhere to correspond in real time with people on any continent of the world. The question that becomes so glaring clear in my mind asks that just because we can, should we? Most will respond with an affirmative, “Of course we should.” Certainly business and governmental communications are vital to world economics, being able to communicate with families and friend’s abroad is worth its weight in gold. What do we all gain by global access to any information? Our basic interaction with people in other countries and other cultures is limited by each individual’s personal experiences.

The United States of America is in a war whereby for the first time in the history of our country we attacked first. I do not deny that the horrors of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11 made all Americans everywhere feel threaten and insecure. It was an unprovoked cowardly act of violence at a magnitude that had never before been witnessed by any living soul. It is unimaginable to conceive of anything that could have provoked such an attack. In the days, weeks, and years now that have passed since the first plane struck the first tower, I wonder how much I really believe about what our government knew about this kind of possibility. I wonder if the current President George W. Bush and his gang of appointed government advisors and officials did not intentionally manipulate our rage as a nation in order to expedite a conspiracy to attack Iraq for it’s coffers of oil?

Every thing that I know about the current American government administration that is office today makes me question everything that it does. I know that I am not the only citizen of this country that feels like we were lied to and our rage redirected to justify and attack on Iraq for the personal gain and profit of a few powerful and rich friends of the current administration. I know that I am not the only one that feels that even the news media is bias in their reporting of global events surrounding the current administrations actions.
I personally believe that the current administrations use of the United States military, which has demonstrated that it was and is ill equipped to deal with the institution of democracy on a foreign soil, is a criminal offense. Our soldiers are trained to take orders and fight. Now it has become obvious that our United States military’s men and women who have been sent to Iraq and other parts of the world have little or no formal education in the languages, customs, and the culture of the peoples whose country that they were ordered to invade. The United States military is the best trained, best equipped, and best financed military on the face of this piece of dirt and that fact is undisputable. The technology that made rapid deployment of our military personnel has done an astounding job, but to what end?

As the supreme military power of the modern world what has our country gained from our invasion of Iraq?