-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.thequill.net/king.html <A HREF="http://www.thequill.net/king.html">In the Land of the Blind, the One- eyed Man is K </A> ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In the Land of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King In a world with a world wide web, who's obligation is it to make us an informed citizenry before national life and death decisions are made for us by the government? Essay by TheQuill� 21 March 1999 Gone forever and ever are the millions of Americans who reside in remote places in this country without instant access to world wide news. The world wide web has fixed that. At the time of writing this essay, something on the order of half the households in this nation own a personal computer. That means that roughly half the people in this nation need only log on to find out what's happening on the other side of the world, as recently as a few minutes ago. What this means, of course, is that we're running out of excuses to plead ignorance and "let the government take care of it." After all, what's the point of having a democracy if we're not prepared to participate in a meaningful way? And what of the government? What is its obligation to the governed when all that information is floating out there in cyberspace? I would suggest that it's a two way street between the government and the governed. We owe it to each other to make those guys tell us what's going on. And they've got to keep us informed, lest they take the risk of us finding out that due to our new ability to access the web, we know when they're straight with us and when they're not, and we can vote them into new day jobs in the next election. So, you say, how does this principle play out in the real world, and why should we even care? Well, let's look at a real, live situation; something called, "Hey, let's bomb the Serbs next week." Do you know why the government wants to? And do you have an informed opinion on whether it should? Probably not if you're in that eighty or ninety-something percent of people who don't have a clue. Ask most Americans what the Balkans are, and there's a better than even chance that the response will be, "Huh?" Even if the name "Balkans" sounds familiar, most people in this country have no idea that the Balkans are a major mountain range in the Balkan Peninsula. "Balkan Peninsula" you say? Where's that? Well, if you've been reading the papers lately, or even watching TV on those rare occasions that Monica Lewinsky and her weight problem are not the main topic of discussion, you might learn that there's a war going on in the Balkans, or at least in a significant part of it. The name "Serbs" ring a bell? Or how about "Croats?" Or "ethnic Albanians?" Starting to sound familiar? Well, they should. Because our President's about to commit American military power to that region of the Balkans where all these people have been trying for eternity to "ethnically cleanse" themselves from each other. Ethnic cleansing. Nice, neat, tidy term. Has kind of a melodic ring to it. It sounds like the ethnic cleansers merely propose to take a shower and then they'll be cleansed of those "ethnics." But, why don't we call ethnic cleansing what it really is. Murder. That's right. Murder. These people are trying to murder each other in the name of cleansing themselves - ethnically, that is. They've been at it quite actively now for a number of years. Before that, more or less actively, off and on, for a couple of millennia. These folks are literally born into murderous hatred for each other. Apologizing in advance to the serious scholars, here's a little history on the area to put this essay into perspective: Early in the 20th century, the Balkan Peninsula, with literally hundreds and hundreds of years of fighting to its sorry credit, was divided into several small nations which, after World War I, went on to be contorted into a larger state, Yugoslavia. If anybody ever thought that was a good idea - forcing groups of different ethnic heritages to live together after eons of fighting - just look at the Rolls Royce of the Balkans that came out of the amalgamation, the Yugo. That was about the best they could do; build a vehicle that nobody wanted. The rest of their time was spent hating each other from the old days. With the end of the Cold War, Yugoslavia self-destructed and again, the Balkans wound up with a bunch of small countries, none of them bigger than New Jersey. The roughly even split of Serbs, Muslims and Croats in Bosnia and Hertzegovina was a perfect formula for a war funded by greater Serbia, which has the largest population in the area. And, as you will remember, that's what happened, atrocities and all. And now it's Kosovo, a region in the southern part of Serbia which is populated by more Albanians than Serbs. The Serbs want to change that and get rid of the Albanians. Maybe they have an idea for setting up a new Yugo factory there and trying again. Throughout the Balkan region there are Serbs, Croats, Albanians, Muslims Christian Orthodox, Roman Catholics and more. Put another way, there's a hell of a lot of people with a hell of a lot of different ideas about how one is supposed to live on this Earth and with dramatically different notions of who among them has discovered the best route to eternity when this one act play is over. And they speak different languages while they're trying to prove their points, all the time with gun or a bazooka or hand grenade or some other nasty little killing device in hand aimed at the person they're trying to convince. Unlike the diversity of this country where the English language is the glue that binds us by our differences, these Balkan folks have not the slightest notion of glue that binds anything human. So, they continue to carry on their centuries of war, unable to come to the obvious conclusion that killing each other is, and it has throughout history been, the single dumbest activity in which mankind engages. So now, here we are. The Balkan people want to keep it up. They refuse to make peace. And now, our government proposes to go in and start bombing the Serbs, because this week, they're the bad guys. And, in case you hadn't noticed, nobody in our government has made a serious effort to inform us as to why we should be prepared to risk American lives to drop bombs on people who've been bombing each other for so long and who will continue to do so long after we've lost a few planes and, more importantly, their pilots - American servicemen. Nobody in the government, it seems, has yet made the case for going into what appears to be an unwinnable war. So, the question becomes, how many body bags do we have to see returned to Dover Air Force Base before we begin the na tional debate on the case for going into the Balkans? Interestingly enough, you've got Bill Clinton in one corner, setting us up for the attacks over Kosovo, while at the same time, you've got Bob Dole in the other corner, claiming that Slobodan Milosovic, the Serbian leader, can't be trusted and we should go in there and bomb them. So, as you can see, if both Democrats and Republicans want to run off bombing the Balkans, this really isn't a partisan political debate. But that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a national debate. The real problem, of course, is that there doesn't seem to be any debate. Maybe there is a legitimate case for what the government is proposing. But how are we to know without listening to that debate? No question about it. When Ronald Regan did his "star wars" shtick and scared the Commies into imploding, we probably did take on a good deal of responsibility to make sure that the World didn't destroy itself. So, there's a reasonable case that can be made that we have an international obligation, if not a national interest, in keeping an eye on things to make sure they don't get out of hand. But, if we're going to step in and stop the kids from killing each other, and all we can expect is that they'll turn on us and try to kill us instead - until we leave them alone so they can go back to killing each other again - then my friends, we've got to talk. It's an outrage that our government - either political side of it - treats us like we're still living in the land of the blind. The world wide web has given us an eye into reality. Everything has changed in this world, and the way our representative democracy functions must change also. Each of us has an obligation to access all this information and make ourselves an informed citizenry. Equally important is the obligation of the government to keep us apprised of the underlying reasons for its life and death decisions, not just its conclusions. With more information, more national debate is called for. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening. We're getting less, not more. And this Balkan business is a good example of the problem. It's the disconnect that everyone talks about. The time to reconnect is now an imperative, because there's too much information out there on the web and the growing number of us who have access to it are beginning to ask questions. We should want to know - indeed, we have an obligation to learn - exactly why America's going to commit lives and resources to a fight that never ends, and at what price we're expected to do it. We're no longer in the land of the blind. But if we're going to demand that our government inform us, the first step is to inform ourselves. Then, we will have earned the absolute right to demand the national debate we deserve before we have politicians running amok with American military power assuming they're the only ones who can see what's happening. � 1999 TheQuill� ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. 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