The War Problem in America

This may seem trite or obvious, but I see a problem with the United States and war. The problem is that since WWII we have fought four major conflicts and a few smaller brush fire engagements all without the involvement of the people of the US.

Both Korea and Vietnam were fought at a time when we had a draft, which at least engaged that part of the population it affected. Both the Persian Gulf War and the Iraq-Afghanistan war have been fought with regular troops augmented by National Guard and Reserves but no draft.

When our current president was asked what Americans can do to support the war effort, he basically suggested that we go shopping to shore up the economy. That's it. No other sacrifices are asked of us. Participation in the war is voluntary. (Well, sort of voluntary. Lots of people in the Guard and Reserves would like not to take eighteen months out of their lives to go fight in Iraq. But they don't have that option. Some in Congress have called this heavy reliance on the Guard and Reserves a draft by other means.)

Still, for the rest of us, which is most of us, the war is something we can tune into on television, or not, as it suits us. We make no sacrifices. We are totally distant from the men and women who take the risks and pay the price. This is called limited war.

What would it be like if our leaders involved us in the war? Asked sacrifices of us to support the war? Gave us a stake in the war's success or failure? I think it would be very different.

Random Musings

I've been out sick for the past three days--not counting the weekend when I felt well enough to do some yard work. I sort of have an accumulation of small thoughts I want to capture someplace, and this seems as good a place as any. It also seems like a good time, as I'm currently unable to use the system application I need to access for my documentation work. Such is life in the development world.

I got a new attachment to my cubical for the keyboard and mouse. It's a more ergonomical setup than I've had, and I have great hopes that it will help alleviate some of my back pain that comes from reaching for the mouse and typing at too high a level on the desktop. This new thing is a tray that I can tilt up. I also now have a place to rest my wrists while I type. All in all, once I get used to it I think I'll really like it.

A nasty little thought occurred to me about the ongoing debates about evolution vs the biblical accounts of creation. Since Darwin first posited that life on the planet has evolved, there has been much controversy about it, especially from those who believe that God created human beings "in his own image." The idea that all land animals derived from a common ancestor, particularly the notion that human beings and some form of ape/monkey/chimpanzee/gorilla are related, has been anathema to many who opposed the idea of evolution. "I didn't decend from a monkey," is one common formulation of that side of the argument.

The nasty thought I have is that this argument is a throwback to the arguments for racial superiority of the fairer-skinned over the darker-skinned. These arguments go back at least to the founding of the British and French empires in the 18th and 19th centuries. Those arguments were founded in the belief that the "white" races--whatever you conceive them to be--were ordained by God to rule over their "lesser" brown-skinned and black-skinned brothers and sisters. Whites were smarter, nobler, and in all ways superior to the darker skinned natives of the Americas, India, and Asia.

Evolution, with its common ancestors that look little or nothing like us today, was a threat to the notion that the different races came from different origins. Evolution also calls into question, if you examine it seriously, the idea that human beings are somehow intrinsically different from the other animals in nature. Genesis is real clear on the point that God gave human kind, through Adam and Eve, dominion over all the other animals and fishes and plants. For Genesis to be called into question or overthrown opens the door to questioning even the superiority of human beings over other forms of life on Earth.

Also, from a strictly scientific point of view, Darwin's theory of evolution does not hold. Scientists found a number of holes and errors in Darwin's work. I say that not to diminish it, but to point out that modern evolutionary theory, which recognizes Darwin's work, has advanced beyond what was a set of crude ideas to a more scientifically viable model. And still there is work to do.

Oh well, that's probably way to esoteric for most folks and way too trivial for others.