I am seriously beginning to believe that we indeed live in Bizarro world. Despite his reprehensible humanitarian record and abuses against the Catholic Church in his country, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who oddly is a Catholic, attends Pope John Paul II's beatification in Rome. Pope John Paul II must have turned over in his catacomb when the guest list was published. Meantime, N.A.T.O. has come under fire over allegations of targeting Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi during humanitarian/no-fly zone/non-intervention support operations in that country. Then there is the continual international coddling of menacing regimes like North Korea and Iran. When did the bad guys become the good guys?
There is a grain of solace: Osama bin Laden is dead, and at the hands of the U.S. military. Chalk one up for the good guys, whose credit is due for staying the course and tracking him down.
Even with bin Laden dead, must we remain as vigilant globally as the past decade? Probably evermore so. Critics of the Bush Administration argued that by invading Iraq we were distracting from the real mission, that capturing or killing bin Laden was the end game. Yet, it was the resolve of President Bush in pursuing terrorists and those, like Saddam Hussein, who would harbor them that ushered the inevitable day of reckoning for bin Laden under President Obama’s faithful continuation of that resolution. For ten years we have taken the fight to them; and while the head of the snake is gone, the body is still present. We can, and should celebrate, but with vigilant caution – killing one villain has not, and will not, stop the others existent in the world.
Where do we go from here? In the board game Risk, the only true way to win is by sweeping across the board and annihilating your opponents; fall short in Asia, and the person who has stockpiled a gazillion pieces in Australia will sweep back across and annihilate you. The real world is no different. We either sweep the globe of enemies to freedom and peace now, or we get swept by them later. Because while victory has many fathers and defeat is an orphan, complacency has no children.
Now that President Obama has released his birth certificate in long form, can we now move beyond the controversy over his place of birth? Not a chance. Like any conspiracy, even when faithfully debunked, it will persist forever in the annals of U.S. history. Is he a foreign-born, and thereby an illegally-elected, president? Do his sympathies lay with a foreign nation? Is he a foreign agent positioned as part of a foreign plot to overthrow the United States? And so forth.
This recent controversy/conspiracy goes beyond the current president though. The concern, while legitimate, should not be whether President Obama was foreign born or at one point held foreign citizenship. There is the broader issue of presidential candidates’ birth certificates not being released publicly in the first place when running for the office. After all, American citizens – whose birth certificates must be presented in certain instances for even the mundane – essentially are electing the foremost citizen of the nation in the president. Should it not be a requirement that their “natural-born” citizenship, and that of every federal officeholder, is publicly verified before holding such a key position of power and authority?
Is there a Robin Hood somewhere out there? Perhaps a modern-day Internet highwayman stealing from the digital Sheriffs, giving to the less-fortunate residents of digital Sherwood. Hacking financial institutions in order to pay people's bills rather than stealing from them. That is one hacker I would be willing to give my passwords and account information.
Do not misinterpret, as I believe in free market capitalism. The problem is the selfish hubris of corporations and politicians, at every level, that makes it ever harder to defend it. Outrageous fees for services (what is the cost to them for me to print on my printer using my ink and paper???), prices on products skyrocketing with no end in sight and legislation that burdens more than aids. Simply to garner more profits and taxes for them from us.
What is the alternative though? Feudalism, communism and socialism are no answers, their evils well-documented by history. Capitalism has done and created great, unimaginable wonders for humanity. Yet, it too has its evils, economic hardships as devastating to lives and livelihoods as any war. To quote Ferris Bueller – “Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself.”
Is there an –ism still to develop that can progress humanity beyond such a dichotomy? A product always has a specific shelf life, as capitalism itself dictates, particularly if another comes along to corner the market.
