<we've assigned relativity to homicide>
I'm not talking about when different acts have been committed, like negligence vs. premeditated murder. I'm talking about when the exact same crime is committed (or contemplated), but it is punished or applauded, depending on whether it's Us or Them on the recieving end.
Assassination never really went away, as a political tool, but for several centuries, the leading nations of the world (more or less) agreed to a collective code, banning assassination. At least, they gave lip service to the rules banning it. It wasn't respectable, nobody openly boasted about it, when they did it. When Kennedy tried to kill Castro, he didn't give a press conference about it.
Now, it's become respectable again. And it wasn't Al Queda who did that. It was us. We have specifically targetted the leaders of Libya, Al Queda, Afghanistan, and Iraq. And, far from showing any shame about it, far from denying it, our leaders stand in front of cameras and boast about it, and discuss the clinical details. In the case of Libya, and this was long before 9/11, we missed the leader, and just killed his infant daughter.
Now, imagine for a moment, that Al Queda had tried to assassinate GW Bush, and missed, but in the attempt, killed his children. What would be the response of the American people? There would be universal outrage. Everyone would consider this proof that there is no point in accomodation, no point in negotiation, those Others, the Enemy, they are not human, they must be hunted down and killed. Yet, when we do the exact same thing to Them, (as we have, repeatedly), it is universally accepted (in our country, only in our country), as reasonable and acceptable. This is the moral relativism I am talking about.
Now, even if you have no problem with the morals of this relativism, you ought to have a problem on practical grounds. When other nations see us doing this, they decide that the U.S. is the Rogue State that must be contained, not N. Korea or Iran. Sure, N. Korea shoots down airliners, and other very nasty things. And the U.S. makes up reasons for going to war (where are the WMD?), does ShockAndAwe, and then holds press conferences about our strategy of "decapitating" the Opposition leadership. Equally nasty. You may not see the equivalence. Few Americans do. But every opinion poll outside the U.S., says lots of people do.
We cannot win our war without Access and Information, and that means willing allies. The cooperation we got, all over the world, after 9/11, has largely ended. It is Unilateralism, it is the unwillingness to obey any rules (except the ones we make up for ourselves as we go along), that loses Access and Information for us. |
