There is an episode of the original Star Trek television series in which a rock-breathing creature, just on the heels of a "Vulcan mind meld" with our friend Mr. Spock, burns a message into the rock "No Kill I." Captain Kirk reads the message out loud and asks if the creature, called a Horta, meant that they shouldn't kill her or that she wouldn't kill them.
I was thinking about this episode today. I had just dropped my father off at his doctor and decided that since I was driving my mother's car and she rarely checks the gas gauge, I ought to fill her tank up with gasoline. So I pulled into our regular service station to get gas. I noticed a car parked near the office with both back windows obscured by 8.5" X 11" papers with the words "No War With Iraq".
I was just as confused as Captain Kirk. Was this a call for us to ignore the war that Iraq has already de facto declared on us? Or was this a request for us to not defend ourselves and allow our country to be ruled by a foreign potentate?
There seems to be a huge movement these days for peace. That would all be well and fine, except for one slight little detail. It isn't our decision. We may want peace, but Saddam Hussein in his little Twilight Zone version of author Leonard Wibberly's Duchy Grand Fenwick in The Mouse that Roared won't allow us that luxury.
It is really hard for those of us who grew up in the Vietnam era in the United States to understand this concept. We "flower children" find it so easy to blame all military action in the world on American (?US-ian?, as my family would say) imperialism or mercenary concerns. We certainly have seen ample examples of this sort of colonialism in ourselves and in other "Western" countries. And, I must add, that man in Washington who thinks he was elected President is trying to use the smokescreen of the Middle East crisis to bully through his reactionary domestic policies (something we have to be very wary of and strong enough to prevent) and this I not only don't approve of, I worry about on a daily basis.
However, to allow politics and past US foreign policy sins to blind us to the necessity of defending ourselves and the world, to allow this to prevent us from giving the gift of freedom to the people of the Middle East region (most of whom are ruled by dictatorial despots, some theocratic in flavor, others secular, but totalitarian nevertheless) would be to commit an unpardonable offense against humanity and the world.
We must establish our role as the leader of the free world. We must live up to our billing and uphold the moral and ethical values of liberty and freedom for all people. If we don't, we'll be condemning not just the people of Asia Minor and Northern Africa, but also ourselves and the free world to a Stephen King vision of Orwell's 1984.
Don't permit this to happen.
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Debbie Lynn is a graphic artist and writer living in central New Jersey.
I was thinking about this episode today. I had just dropped my father off at his doctor and decided that since I was driving my mother's car and she rarely checks the gas gauge, I ought to fill her tank up with gasoline. So I pulled into our regular service station to get gas. I noticed a car parked near the office with both back windows obscured by 8.5" X 11" papers with the words "No War With Iraq".
I was just as confused as Captain Kirk. Was this a call for us to ignore the war that Iraq has already de facto declared on us? Or was this a request for us to not defend ourselves and allow our country to be ruled by a foreign potentate?
There seems to be a huge movement these days for peace. That would all be well and fine, except for one slight little detail. It isn't our decision. We may want peace, but Saddam Hussein in his little Twilight Zone version of author Leonard Wibberly's Duchy Grand Fenwick in The Mouse that Roared won't allow us that luxury.
It is really hard for those of us who grew up in the Vietnam era in the United States to understand this concept. We "flower children" find it so easy to blame all military action in the world on American (?US-ian?, as my family would say) imperialism or mercenary concerns. We certainly have seen ample examples of this sort of colonialism in ourselves and in other "Western" countries. And, I must add, that man in Washington who thinks he was elected President is trying to use the smokescreen of the Middle East crisis to bully through his reactionary domestic policies (something we have to be very wary of and strong enough to prevent) and this I not only don't approve of, I worry about on a daily basis.
However, to allow politics and past US foreign policy sins to blind us to the necessity of defending ourselves and the world, to allow this to prevent us from giving the gift of freedom to the people of the Middle East region (most of whom are ruled by dictatorial despots, some theocratic in flavor, others secular, but totalitarian nevertheless) would be to commit an unpardonable offense against humanity and the world.
We must establish our role as the leader of the free world. We must live up to our billing and uphold the moral and ethical values of liberty and freedom for all people. If we don't, we'll be condemning not just the people of Asia Minor and Northern Africa, but also ourselves and the free world to a Stephen King vision of Orwell's 1984.
Don't permit this to happen.
--------------------------------------------------------
Debbie Lynn is a graphic artist and writer living in central New Jersey.