by Juli Schatz

Created on: May 15, 2008

How can this even be a question?

Our current "leader" sees fit to spend a billion dollars a week to wage war in a country whose majority of the population (at least, the most vocal) doesn't want us there, where we are doing nothing more than wreaking havoc while we claim to be securing peace in a nation that will NEVER know peace, much less want it, given its 2000-year history or violence amongst its various people and sects.

Political strife and civil unrest exists in Darfur, as well - to a far lesser degree but to a far more harmful outcome. Millions of people starving, hundreds of thousands dead from starvation, genocide, disease - and a fraction of what we are spending in Iraq is directed to the people of Darfur. The TOTAL spent on "humanitarian food aid" by the U.S. to 30 countries worldwide - a week-and-half's worth of what we're spending in Iraq to make the word safe for democracy (read: protect the Bush family's oil interests, along with those of their cronies).

As with so much else in our society, our priorities are skewed. In between visits to the Hamptons and jaunts out on the family yacht, Skip and Bunny Hifalutin bemoan the fact that their little Johnny isn't getting enough attention for his special needs in his white bread suburban school with its shiny floors, always-stocked cafeteria and million-dollar gymnasium or football stadium, while 20 miles away, their peer attend classes where lead paint peels off the walls and who come from homes where there was no breakfast on the table that morning.

We ignore suffering by our fellow human beings across the street and around the world, finding it easy to point to the Sadams of the world and criticize their method of government. Yet our own citizens are living in cardboard boxes in our nation's capitol; our own children are subjected to substandard living conditions and cannot get a proper education (as promised by our forefathers and our Constitution); we allow our elderly to be abused, abandoned and forgotten; and we provide our criminals broader, more generous rights than we do their victims.

An editor for Time magazine earlier this week asked the question, should we use force to invade Myanmar to provide humanitarian aid to victims of the cyclone? The answer there, too is yes, just as it yes that we should use force to end the suffering of the people of Darfur.

War is a foolish waste of time, effort and human life. Use of force is an entirely different matter when used for humanitarian purposes, where there is no other alternative to avert or stop a crisis than to take forceful, even if unwelcomed, measures by the stronger power. The junta in Myanmar are dangerously and frighteningly short-sighted, as are whomever are in power in Darfur. Neither governing body seems to understand, nor is willing to admit, that there is no government and is no power if there is no one to govern or hold power over.

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