the futility of a pig wrestle

I guess we just don’t understand what collateral damage is. Or what the value of peace is. We discount what we don’t have and hence we are not hesitant to drum up strife. Our friend from France is here and recently France saw a gruesome terror attack and murder.  The targets were popular cartoonists who ridiculed all religious dogmas including the Muslims. It was sad. Killing cartoonists is taking things a little too far. It just shows how sensitive we are to being ridiculed. Hmmm. After this we had the normal people who of course want action to be taken against a community as a counter measure. Sigh.

Today while I was driving from work, I heard a podcast about vaccination. When the CIA tried to ascertain if Osama Bin Laden was actually inside the compound at Abbotabad, in Pakistan, they recruited a doctor whose was told to go in and collect DNA samples in the guise of a vaccination campaign. After the news leaked out, vaccinations sponsored programs especially by foreign countries took a hit. It seems, vaccinations were banned enmasse by the Taliban, more 65 health officials killed and Pakistan saw a reemergence of Polio with more than 200 infections. Uff.

Was the CIA right in doing what it did? At the time I read the news and thought nothing of it. I would have said sure. If its mission is to kill a national fugitive then its it, go for it. but when you think of the collateral damage it has on society, on children who will suffer from it, and the generations that will pay… you want to think again. I am sure the argument is not that simple. People will make choices given their immediate goal. Who knew what the consequences would be. Surely there would be more killed if the man wasn’t taken out. These are complex questions to which we don’t know how much impact our current actions will have on future lives. Things are fast evolving and changing. Perspectives are changing and nothing is really straight and simple. What to do in such circumstances?

I am visualizing a  Hollywood movie where the polio emergence in Pakistan thanks to this action of the CIA creates a new mutated virus that enters USA and that everyone stops Americans from travelling anywhere and large walls are built around the country. Trust the Hollywood writers to think of any thing outlandish.

I am not for once, preaching inaction. A man has got to do what a man has got to do. But sitting in the confines of safety it is easy to preach war. What we know of its effects and after effects. Israel is still fighting over the land it fought over many years. Who started it, who felt wronged and who is to blame.

See this video and tell me:

Sometimes it is just best to live and let bygones be bygones. Kill, Finish, attack, nip in the bud, these are terms we bandy about loosely. We whip up sentiment and forget lessons from history. I have no clue why can’t just let it be. Why is it so difficult to be a pacifist, why do we need to take action, especially on moral grounds? Today’s newspapers talk about a Goa minister trying to set up a rehabilitation centre for gays and lesbians. What on earth is that? It wasn’t too long ago when Alan Turing was the hero of England for helping them decode the Enigma code used by German communications. Later he was arrested for homosexuality and then ‘treated’ for it. Today we again call him a great hero and apologise for our moral uprightness.

Stop this morality. I love the simple thing of the declaration of human rights – Man is born free and shall remain free. He is free to do what he wants as long as he does not harm others. That’s it. How difficult is it for the courts to acknowledge this?

BTW – Jispa got chosen for the scholarship interview on the basis of this essay she wrote – the greatest invention was that of the declaration of Human Rights!

BLAH! But thing I have learnt in all this. to laugh off when someone tries to rile you on your views. To not get pulled into an argument. As I always tell – when you wrestle with a  pig, he loves it and you get dirty.