The Obstructed View: What if Kaddafi Were Governor of Wisconsin?
The Obstructed View: Random Thoughts From An Idle Mind
by Sam Osborne
What say we all about involvement in Libya?Would the American public stand by and have a hands-off position if Kaddafi were the Governor of Wisconsin and treating the residents of that state as he has those in Libya? If one’s sense of empathy and involvement in mankind stops at ghettos edge, city limits, county line, state border, or national boundary, maybe so.
We need not be the world’s policeman as long as we are not one of the world’s criminals. The likes a Kaddafi came to power because of western mankind’s involvement and exploitation of people in other lands, or selective hands off when some other bastards were doing it. Our land long ago stopped being one of Earth’s exploited colonies.
Fairly long ago, residents of this part of the New World formed a capacity to embrace ourselves within a fractured mass that has jointly been, and will continue to be, guilty of the sins of commission and omission, be damned if we do and damned if we don’t, and ever the sufferers of unintended consequences for whatever we have or have not done, or just overlooked. Against this background and in the face of more of the same, should we be militarily involved with what we have helped to create? We are, whether we like it or not, and will make the best of a bad situation, and as Harvey Cox (who borrowed from Sartre) observed, “Not to decide is to decide.”
The purity of any attempt to be good for goodness sake will be oiled by one satisfaction or another – be it barrels of crude pumped from Libyan depths, or the more egregiously corrosive kind used to absolve oneself of sin: the holy oil of the holier than thou.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but this morning from where I am sitting high on the horse, I insist that we do and only do what is right as right will be.
Meanwhile I am going to read a bit of poetry that from my very youth I have found very inspirational; it suggests to me that if I were to ever fall off of my high horse someone would certainly come along to help a fine chap up:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
~ John Donne. 1624
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
~ John Donne. 1624
Sam Osborne
West Branch, Iowa
Sam
Osborne, former editorial writer and Opinion Page Editor,
Iowa City Press-Citizen; former college professor and Business Department chair,
Ellsworth Community College; and currently out to pasture drinking too much
coffee. His commentary, The Obstructed View, appears on this blog occasionally.
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