A National Interest in Death?

I had another piece on a very interesting spat between the Philippines and China planned for today, but the situation in Syria has really captured my attention, so I will be postponing the Philippines-China story until tomorrow.

Though intervention is a multi-faceted question,Most countries base their decisions to intervene in international conflicts on whether these conflicts are in the national interests of the perspective intervening country.

 I would argue that the national interest question is actually a poor method to use when deciding whether or not to intervene in a conflict.

By not intervening on grounds of national interest, governments are saying that they have no national interest in the conflict.

Yet, these same governments also send a contradictory message that says “Our government has an interest in indirectly causing the death of thousands more people.”

 That’s no message that any government in the Western world should care to send to the international community.

I urge the international community to beware of the unintended messages they send.

In Death, We Celebrate?

The recent deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Muammar Qaddafi have created an interesting question “When do we celebrate a person’s death, if ever? Most Christians would probably say “never” while if you’re a person who had their lives impacted by Bin Laden or Qaddafi than you feel justified by taking to the streets in celebration.

 It would be just as morally wrong of me to stand in judgment and condemnation of people whose shoes I can never stand in. The scenes of Gaddafi’s corpse aired on worldwide newscasts are frankly overkill personally, but some people need those images for personal reasons.

I came to my determination thinking about the hours after the September 11^th 2001. Throughout the Arab World, revelers burned American flags and effigies of President Bush in the streets. As Americans, we hated these displays. Therefore, why would we then turn around and celebrate someone else’s death?

 If we’re looking to prove that we’re better than the Bin Ladens and Qaddafi’s of the world than we need to show that were better than the savages. Defeat evil and negativity through good deeds, not by celebrating death.