COLUMN: Bush looks at the wrong issues

Published: Thursday, October 3, 2002


George W. Bush is obviously confused as to what the international role of the United States really is.

Rather than epitomizing Freud's questionable Thanatos — the death instinct, whose validity Freud seriously doubted after directly experiencing WWI — by demanding wars and impetuous missions that will cause unnecessary deaths, shouldn't Bush, as our questionably elected public spokesman, focus more on controlling our borders and maintaining peaceful relations with our neighbors, encouraging peaceful international relations? He should at least address the economy.

Rather than stirring up trouble by resorting to teenage scare tactics and ultimatums, Bush and the American government should step out of Iraq's problems. Our interests are not invested in humanitarian pains, but in hidden agendas that the American people are aware of but refuse to polemicize. Namely oil.

Reading directly from Bush's revision of the National Security Strategy, one is immediately stricken with a sense of fear. Not only because Bush will experience difficulty reading his statements aloud, but also because of the elitist and downright superior attitude that is portrayed: "America must stand firmly for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity. . .the United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere." Statements such as these do nothing but reaffirm American naiveté and make us sound pompous and narrow.

Realistically, the "unalienable" rights guaranteed by the constitution are only applicable to citizens of the United States and, furthermore, only applicable to them on American soil. However fervently we ascribe to our civil liberties, we can never justifiably claim to have the right to project our beliefs onto foreign cultures.

It is ethically and ethnically unsound that the United States act as the world's knight in shining armor when so many of the damsels in distress are cultural hallucinations: we perceive there being a problem because we see the world through tainted goggles which highlight everything that is democratically "unconstitutional."

An American is guaranteed the right to bear arms against perpetrators. Isn't it possible that the founding fathers and John Locke (who basically co-authored the constitution in his 1690 publication Second Treatise of Government) were mistaken in defining objective rights and guarantees? Were they not truly pompous hypocrites who directly neglected the err of their ways to create a better society for the privileged? The Bill of Rights is completely arbitrary and holds no objective value.

While statistics are questionable and misleading they, nevertheless, can be used to bolster this argument. In a recent report the United States was listed as home to 35,957 firearm deaths in 1995. In the same year, only 95 people in Japan fell victim to gunshot wounds. If American maxims taken directly from the Bill of Rights are now being perceived as universally egalitarian, why does this discrepancy exist? Obviously, there's a problem in Japan, because more people should be dying if we've been living under the true political construct during the past 226 years, right?

If the roots of American rights are so firmly grounded in metaphysically sound proofs that rebellious wig wearing idealist reactionaries happened to stumble upon, why are we not forcefully trying to get the Japanese government to permit their citizens to carry firearms? A ban on civilian gun toting in Japan stands in glaring contrast with American ideals. If we are so justified in our convictions, why does our constitution permit that nearly 400 times as many American lives as Japanese will be needlessly cut short each year?

Isn't it about time that we began to truly take action to possibly change elements of the constitution rather than just postulate, suppose and amend? But be careful. America, using the idiocratic logic of the idiocracy that is our government, foreign nations are completely justified in braving the waters and overthrowing our government. Why? Because a rich, dumb imperialist bought his way into office. A foreign led coup d'tat is permissible because they would only be looking out for our best interests. I warmly welcome any country willingness to overthrow our dictatorial process in a fashion similar to the way we hope to disarm Saddam Hussein. If we have every right to protect Iraqi citizens against a ruthless dictator, then any other nation in the world has the same right to protect the American people against a bumbling, idiotic puppet.

Though it may not be as eminent, the American people are in as much danger of a national catastrophe due to terrible politics and hidden Machiavellian agendas as any other country.

So why does Bush, and the ethnocentric majority of Americans, feel that it is the duty of the most powerful nation to create a world utopia? Because it's what we've been spoon-fed from day one of our existence to believe, that the world is our responsibility. By interjecting our values into foreign cultures we only accomplish disrupting the system and though it's admirable that we're willing to help other nations, it's a travesty that we're doing so for money, oil, and to relieve our own consciences. Rather than completely reengineering foreign politics, the value of creating an equilibrium within the current system far outweighs the costs and cultural ruin that a complete and radical shift in design will ensure.