[cryout-multi][cryout-column width=”1/4″] [/cryout-column] [cryout-column width=”1/2″]
BS ‘n’ About…
The United Nations
It is time to evolve beyond the nation states that have arisen out of our warlord past. We need to evolve to some form of one world government without losing our individual cultural identities. We need to let the court of world opinion replace the battlefield as our favorite means of communicating with one another. It is time to find a way to live in peace.
Borders don’t make much sense anymore anyway. None but the most backward of countries can exist without an intricate network of trade relations. None but the most repressive of regimes can exist outside the court of world opinion. A case of SARS on the other side of the world yesterday is on our doorstep tomorrow. A failed bank in some Banana Republic can domino it’s way right back to Wall Street. We all drink cokes and drive Hondas. We all carry diseases and jump on airplanes. We’re all subject to Mike Wallace showing up on our doorstep. We’re all in the splatter pattern of someone’s nuke.
The sovereignty of nations makes it almost impossible for an Information Age society to protect itself from threats beyond its borders. The old ways of settling our differences just don’t work anymore. Armies can’t resolve another country’s internal problems. (See Iraq) Ideology is no protection against capitalism’s onslaught. (See China) Prosperity and self-indulgence won’t insulate a people from the tides of history. (See America)
Too many of the issues that affect our very survival are global in nature. Too many of the projects we need to undertake are too critical to be entrusted to the self-interests of individual nations or businesses: Peace in the Middle East. The Environment. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Space exploration. Global warming. Population control. Cloning and bioengineering. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Capitalism, perhaps more than anything else, is making borders obsolete. As corporations spread their multi-national tentacles, they are able to circumvent the laws of any country, buy the laws of most. Governments come and go but corporations are eternal. Left unchecked, capitalism’s dominance of our near future will be as great or greater than that of Rome on Antiquity or the church on the Middle Ages. A government supposedly answers to us, its citizens, but corporations answer to nothing but their own bottom line. Greed and excess will steer the rudder of history.
Evolving to some form of one world government is the only hope we have of moving forward with any kind of plan, of ever doing what is best for humanity as a whole. Until we do we will be dominated by our differences and our fear of them. Life will be an Us vs. Them proposition that no one will win. We’ll continue to see Frenchmen, and Iraqis, and Russians instead of farmers, and accountants, and mothers.
Iraq, and the messes our leaders have gotten us into there, gives us, the American people, an opportunity to make a stand for the farmers, and accountants, and mothers of our world. Even with its recent tarnishings, America holds a pre-eminence in world affairs unseen since Roman times. We have family in every nation on Earth. The near future will largely be what we make it.
And that future begins in Iraq. We, the People need to use the free press, the ballot box, and the Amendment process, if necessary, to form a government which reflects the lofty principles upon which this nation was founded. We talk a good game, but if we’re honest with ourselves, none of us has ever given a damn about the Iraqi people. Not our government. Not us. Never have. Still don’t.
But we broke Iraq for the farmers, and accountants, and mothers, so we gotta fix it. That will never happen, and we’ll never get the rest of the world’s support, as long as the leaders on all sides engage in an ideological pissing contest. It will only happen when Iraq, the rest of the world, and most of all, us, the American people, feel in our hearts we are there to do the right thing. …for the farmers, and accountants, and mothers.
The Middle East is everyone’s nightmare. As such it presents an incredible opportunity to unite the world in common cause. There isn’t a self-sufficient nation in the whole region. Not That Long Ago they were scrabbling a living out of the dirt and throwing rocks at each other. Today they use Information Age technology to settle Stone Age disputes.
Power politics and oil money have upset a lot of things that have been held in delicate balance for thousands of years. We’ve created a monster. Unless we do something about it, the Middle East is sure to dominate the first few paragraphs of mankind’s obituary. Until we do something about it, it will be the beginning of the End.
Any chance America has of getting out of Iraq with our dignity and principles intact must surely involve rebuilding the bridges we’ve burned with much of the rest of the world. We need to show our ally nations and the cultures they represent the respect they deserve. The same with those we call our enemies. Most have been around for thousands of years. As a young nation we would do well to work with them rather than against them.
There would be no shame in admitting we need them, admitting we all need to work together on this one. It might mean making the biggest commitments of manpower, resources, and capital to get the ball rolling. It might mean our sons and daughters in uniform will have to don sky-blue armbands and work alongside the sons and daughters of the other nations of our world. It might mean having to learn to live in peace.
- [/cryout-column] [cryout-column width=”1/4″] [/cryout-column] [/cryout-multi]