Czar Red #4

I’ve struggled with this question since I’ve reached the age of reason.

I am driven by a deep unexplainable desire to create universal principles to guide my thoughts and beliefs. Everything is right or wrong, black or white – I will be damned if I find a gray. Unfortunately for my binary needs, it is rare to find any issue that simple. The complexities and caveats prevent me from applying the firm standard I so desperately crave.

For example, what does genocide really mean? Are we only concerned with the physical genocide or cultural too? If we broaden the definition of genocide to include the destruction of a way of life then the damage to the purity of the Aryan way of life justified Hitler’s war.

The result of this fuzzy gray area is an inability to not only create firm principles but also to choose a leader to enforce them. I don’t trust anyone as president to make the correct choices – that includes me. Humans are neither infallible nor safe from the corruption of power. The only seeming solution to this problem is to listen to the masses – the collection the opinions and desires from many people and attempt to synthesize them into a "good" military policy. Of course, the majority too is often wrong but at least this increases the potential for the correct voices to be heard.

As an aside, I don’t understand the slogan – bring our troops home. I also don’t get the argument that we should send our soldiers to safe places. Since we don’t have a draft, all of the members or our military have voluntarily chosen this career. It is hard for me to rationally be sympathetic for them when they are sent to fight a war because they signed up for that task. In the same way, secret service agents shouldn’t be surprised if they take a bullet for the president.