In my part of the world, here in Norway, my generation grew up with American television and American popculture. Most of those things I loved when I grew up were American things. A lot of those things I still love today are American things.
My brother studied in the USA for a year, lived with this American family. When he came back, he reminded me of one of these vain American characters in the TV series. That's all I knew at that age, about America on the surface. I was even a little scared of him then, because he were so American.
He would say that things are different in America. I would envy him of course, for his time being there. Thinking it would be like those American TV series. He said that when he came down there, the family would cheer and have banners and flags for him. When we picked him up at the airport it was nothing fancy like that. My brother said he missed the American ways as much as he missed the Norwegian ways. Of course people are different depending on our personality, but like my brother said; I think the Americans would see Norwegians as a cold people. I think that also says a lot about why Europeans and others, see things in the Americans that the Americans dont see in themself and opposite.
My brother claimed that the Americans in general were good at sharing, but not so good at learning from other cultures. He brought with him a Norwegian cheese cutter as a gift and they would call it cute, hang it on the wall and never use it. American football was the correct way to play football. A boy with an ear ring would be gay. If you had a talent in school you would be put on front, if you had problems, there wouldn't be much of a support. He said there were huge class differences pretty much everywhere.
People are different and it's ignorant to say that everyone and all places are the same. It's ignorant to say that we should all be the same. What I am saying is that; I think we have a strange relation to America, we are feed with American entertainment, yet it says very little about it's people. We love to critisise the American popculture as much as we love to love it. It's easy for us to think that Americans must know very little of other cultures, we like to think we know a lot about American culture (because of TV), but we also know that we know very little about the culture of a country like Iraq. I think many people in my country thinks Iraqis are barbarians. It's easy for us to feel that the Americans are civilised people (because of TV), but also vain, vulgar and selfish.
Because of this it's not so strange for other countries, like mine to fear America. It's not so strange if other countries like Iraq would envy it either.
I personally dont think Iraqis are barbarians or that all the Americans are vain and selfish. It's just that I think we should try to be aware of that things will often look very different from an outsiders perspective. When Bush speaks he should also think about that a whole world listens, not everything that sounds good in American ears will sound good in foreign ears. I have come over a lot of American websites that seem to only mention a concern for the American soldiers, to me it seems selfish. I dont think it's right to hail any country in a war, in my eyes it drags down whatever the cause for it was. Nice looking posters that promote a side, makes you look greedy. I would hope for the lives of both parts in a war. That is what you do if you have any respect for human life.
As I have mentioned earlier on many occations; The right thing would be to bring Hussein to a court system and put him trough trial there, it would be something we all would agree too. We would work with this together. It would a more modern truthful justice. We would get ahead of that old fashioned cowboy and indian way of getting rid of the bad guys. It's just not right that one country decides to do it what it wants outside it's own country.
In our so called modern days it's sad to hear that people cant see other solutions than war to world problems. What it really comes down to is that war is so old fashioned that it must be considered as one of the most stupid things humanity do today. Why should we even deserve to have a future? We use billions of money on destroying what we create, only to rebuild it. On the other hand we destroy the environment and things we can never rebuild. War and human suffering is one thing, another thing is that few billions are used to try to keep humanity from destroying the things that really matter. Few billions are used to protect the human rights, while a lot of billions are used to attack it.
To me it seems obvious; people make war because it's become a habit, we love to compete, fight and win respect by trying to tell other countries that our ways is better than yours. As I have said before; I dont think people start wars because they want to make things better, I think they do it for selfish power loving reasons.
I think; that thinking freedom is won with guns is short-sighted. Guns is just a tool, it would be nothing without the people. If the people really want freedom they can use different tools to gain it. Just as they can destroy a flag and give the country a new one. Guns are a good excuse to win freedom some would say, others would say that freedom is a good excuse for using weapons. So the gun and the word freedom is obviously abused tools used to promote a political side. Justice is something else. Personally in this case I'm more interested in justice than freedom or guns. War is not about bringing the accused into a court system and giving the people justice for what has been done. War is all about winning and losing and that those that win will take over and run things from there.
Freedom won with guns is not really interesting when it comes to political matters. A serialkiller would maybe say that he felt free after he had killed, it's interesting in psychological matters, but we cant run the law systems after this morality.
If you thought that your neighbour planned to bomb your house and you shot him before he did it, you cannot justify your act by saying he planned to bomb you. You would be brought to jail for such offences, even if it was found that he had planned to bomb you. It's double standards that a country can get away with it, but not a simple individual. It tells us that the freedom of the government is a lot broader, than the freedom of the individual.
I really feel mad today. Humanity is a fragile and good thing in some tiny small moments and it is the most terrible thing on the surface. I like to close my ears now, close my ear to the supporters of war. Nothing good can be said beyond this. I have seen what I wanted to see and that is enough for me.
Things will obviously not be forgotten.
Would you like to be that boy? Would you like to be the one to tell him that he had to be sacrificed so lives could be spared? Why do you think you deserve to have parents or children? What makes you special, god worthy and glorified?
I guess you can just tell yourself that those on your side didn't do this, that more people would have suffered, if this was not done. If so, I guess you also would be a suitable person to tell these things to those like that boy. The fair thing would be, if you were there.
