The Mac Address

[i]i’m curious as to whether or not Iraqis identify now (since the world media lumps them together as such) as members of a nation, or if it might not be better the way that it was before England created Iraq. perhaps it’d be better if each group was allowed its own state, which seems to be the only way that peace will exist between Israelis and Palestinians (the people on both sides know it, and are willing to accept it, but their damned extremist, stubborn, egomaniacal leaders won’t allow it), though look at India before and after the British occupation (and the division of India and Pakistan); things could have been better when Muslims and Hindus lived together and had to deal more personally with eachother. it’s easier to fight from behind an abstract nation/religion/culture as a component part of an army in uniform than it is to deal with someone different than yourself on the street when neither of you immediately threatens the other. the reason for personal, physical violence is not so easy.

the fact that we don’t really understand Arab culture all that well, and that Iraq hasn’t really threatened us (though they’ve not complied with our rules) indicates to me that we probably should leave the Arabs’ problems to them to solve unless they ask for our help, in which case the American voters should have an immediate say. how would we feel if foreign nations stormed our shores looking to impose their order militarily upon us when all that we did to “provoke” them was to be different, and to try be well armed to defend our homeland and way of life? afterall, many cultures/countries have existed for far longer than ours, and some surely think that they know better. the Russians and Chinese never attacked us, and with their resources (nuclear and otherwise) they are still much more capable of a crippling attack.

some cultures are cultures of war, and ours might be one, but it’s up to us to decide. look at the Aztecs, who believed that they would not survive unless they pleased the gods by fighting constantly and sacrificing. they met their match (as an empire) when another culture of war, the Spanish, invaded. they fought amongst themselves (over whether or not Quezalcoatl arrived), got foreign diseases, and were an easy conquest. Spain’s empire was largely put out of commission when the British fleet crushed their Armada, and the Brit’s empire declined later (we kicked them out, and they withdrew from India when colonization failed). imagine if we’d have let Stalin take over Europe- not only would the French, Dutch, Italians, etc. have been speaking Russian before they learned German, (after Russia stopped Hitler’s Nazi empire) the cold, swift, salty little river know as the English Channel would not have stopped the Russian juggernaut from taking England for as long as it kept the Nazi’s at bay. still, sociocultural and economic isolationsism, gov’t corruption, and a bad decision to take on the US in the cold war/nuclear arms race ruined the USSR, and annexing (or trying to do so) the rest of Europe prolly wouldn’t have helped them (if it didn’t make things worse). the Maya similarly built themselves into decline by living too luxuriously and depleating their natural resources before they could renew themselves. perhaps the Roman empire simply overextended itself.

what’s the lesson? i think that it’s to live modestly, but our damned gov’t/media has its own separate agenda (nwo), wants to scare us into war at every turn, make us feel as though we’re spreading freedom and democracy, and American modesty is nowhere in the plan. after “defending” Afghanistan (after virtually losing Vietnam) from the USSR, we nearly had WW3 when Russia retaliated by installing nukes in Cuba. unfortunately, despite what they say, the gov’t/media isn’t really interested in our security and freedom for which we work/live/pay; not when they tax us as they do and unnecessarily work our soldiers to the bone for pennies over world conquest. those paranoid, fanatical, bored, rich f*cks want to take us for all that they can for sport in the height of their personal / psychological crises, and to see just how far they can go before we snap, or if the rest of the world does first. their hands and consciences are clean as long as they don’t fight, and most won’t live to see the rest of us suffer, so they don’t care. if they want to gamble with theirs, fine, but not with mine and most everyone else’s; at least not without our vote.[/i]