It Is a Lack of Integrity
If you ever wanted to know how the financial industry and bankers managed to bring the world economy to its knees and how they got away with it, the following video is a must-see.
It also gives an interesting perspective on the efforts of the Obama administration to deal with the crisis and on how media report on it.
I have to admit I was shocked by the implications.
In one respect, we are more fortunate than you in the west. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and watch on television, nothing of the official truth. Unlike you, we have learned to read between the lines, because real truth is always subversive. — Dissident novelist Zdenek Urbánek 1
Scandalous! And why are there so few relevant and hard-hitting questions at President Obamas press conferences? Damage control? Wide spread corruption? A conspiracy? Is it an indication of to what degree Obama is a puppet? Why protect criminals? It seems to be a running theme with the Obama administration.
Bankers create personal wealth through fraud, and then they are saved and protected by the government. Torturers of high rank or station also receive protection. Members of Congress was briefed about the torture, so now they will not want to investigate.
What signal does this send? What future will it create? What kind of world view lies behind these developments?
SORRY HONEY, I BROKE SOMETHING FUNDAMENTAL
Something is broken, and I am afraid it is a fundamental feature of what used to define humanity. It used to be that true ideals and ideologies could inspire the forming of religions, and the creation of nations where equal worth was a central theme. Now, the concept “human nature” is increasingly associated with the seedier side of our souls.
It is the breakdown of integrity – integrity of thought as in having a sense of honesty and truthfulness governing the motivations for one’s actions. This breakdown appears to occur in both humanistic and religious outlooks on life. If you are Christian, you would have to bend your principles into very contorted shapes to justify air strikes on civilians. If you are a Muslim, you have to fundamentally corrupt the central ideas in Islam to advocate terror attacks.
THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR IS…
American military deaths in Iraq are completely dwarfed by Iraqi deaths. The majority of the victims are civilians, including women and children.
Analysis carried out for the research group Iraq Body Count (IBC) found that 39 per cent of those killed in air raids by the US-led coalition were children and 46 per cent were women. Fatalities caused by mortars, used by American and Iraqi government forces as well as insurgents, were 42 per cent children and 44 per cent women.— The Independent, Thursday, 16 April 2009 2
It seems that progress lately has halted in areas of human rights and democratic ideals, at least when it comes to the actual implementation of strategies to promote them. Integrity, rationality, and the notion of equal worth for all people seem to be left out of the process. In military operations in Iraq, about 300 Iraqi civilian deaths per US fatality appears to have been considered an acceptable ratio.
This is supposed to be a modern war, with technology that assures remarkable precision, and still large numbers of civilians are killed. Why then the high number of civilian deaths?
…INTEGRITY
It is a numbers game for politicians; their approval rating decrease in relation to the number of killed soldiers. I am sure most soldiers would volunteer their life in protection of the innocent. If posed the question: What do you choose…
- That we gruesomely kill 300 innocent women and children so that you can live.
- That we kill you.
… then I suspect most would courageously offer their own life.
IT IS CHRISTIAN TO TORTURE
It seems perfectly OK to bend the most fundamental religious ideas completely out of shape. According to a recent survey, the more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists,
Isn’t there a little thing called the golden rule? “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” So, if you are Christian and say torture is OK, wouldn’t that mean that you also give the OK to torture directed at you?
If you condone torture in military and intelligence operations, you also automatically support torture of innocent people, the same way that proponents of the death penalty also automatically approve of the killing of the innocent, since there will always wrongful convictions.
How the Christian right can say they are pro-life when they are for the Iraq war, capital punishment, and when they support torture is beyond my comprehension. Maybe they have chosen to interpret the scriptures in ways that confirm already firmly rooted beliefs, a common practice among conservatives. They might conveniently be ignoring The Golden Rule and putting more weight on passages about the second coming of Christ, making conflict in the middle-east a vehicle for the establishment of the Kingdom of God, even though any strict interpretation of the relevant passages would suggest that the second coming is supposed to have already happened.
CHANGE
The change that was promised by Obama has materialized. It seems not to be so much a change in ideology. The focus has shifted to another war and other civilians that will be dismembered or killed.
“Civilian deaths and arbitrary decisions to search people’s houses have reached an unacceptable level and Afghans cannot put up with it any longer.”
“Five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue accepting civilian casualties. It is becoming heavy for us; it is not understandable anymore.”
“We are very sorry when the international coalition force and NATO soldiers lose their lives or are injured. It pains us. But, Afghans are human beings, too.”
“Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such.”
“Several times in the last year, the Afghan government tried to prevent civilian casualties, but our innocent people are becoming victims of careless operations of NATO and international forces.”
“The Afghan people understand that mistakes are made. But five years on, six years on, definitely, very clearly, they cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power.”
“Our demand is that there will be no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. We cannot win the fight against terrorism with air strikes.”— Afghan President Hamid Karzai, A series of quotes from 2007 and 2008
Is President Obama paying attention? No, apparently not. In 2009, there have again been heavy civilian casualties. 3.
You would be forgiven if you were to ask whether there were two republican candidates, only one flying his true colors.
Why do the right thing? Why even reason about what is the right thing to do? And what is the right thing? Embark on a war that cannot be won?
Or maybe it can be won, if the road is paved with the bones of soldiers, rather than civilians — if the Taliban are the only ones killing innocent women and children.
If you are looking for freedom, if you are looking for truth, if you are on a quest for a world with a little less suffering, you may have to pay dearly to get there, but the only way forward might be the one where you preserve your integrity and stand tall, proud of the fact that the blood on your boots is your own rather than the blood of innocent women and children.
- 1 The Real First Casualty of War, John Pilger. ¶
- 2 Iraq air raids hit mostly women and children, The Independent. ¶
- 3 Civilian deaths in US airstrike overshadow Obama’s Afghan summit, Times Online, May 7, 2009. ¶
