Why Are We Here?

 

A joke is e-circulating about a despised Hollywood mogul upon whose death it turned out that there was no one who had anything good to say about him, except that he died.

Reviewing the headlines about the death of Yasir Arafat, you have to think the same thought is passing through the minds of virtually everyone who has ever heard of the Middle East. There is very little sorrow, except amongst the sheep he fleeced, those millions of his victims who were too screwed up to realize he was screwing them and their children’s children out of a future. Himself responsible for the slaughter of thousands on both sides, Arafat also sowed generations of hopeless and poor with the added burden of hatred.

Why is it that the world couldn’t find a way to replace him a decade ago? Why couldn’t he have been bought off? It’s said he socked away several billions he corruptly raked off from aid given in the direction of needy Palestinians. What could it have taken him to retire -- maybe with the other choice being assassination -- and why wasn’t it offered?

You have to think that the world, with all its economic and military alliances bristling with death, might do a better job of unseating virulent despots and of ending and preventing wars. Of course, you have to want the world to be a better place. You can’t install and prop up psychopaths the way the US did, for example, with Saddam.

For that matter, why can’t we end the fighting that is tearing apart the Ivory Coast? I say we meaning the theoretically-developed world. In this case the French, who along with a number of African nations are trying, without much success, to bring an end to the killing and looting.

But then Darfur has been going on for two years. And there was Rwanda. And Croatia. The Kashmir. East Timor.

We call ourselves civilized but we don’t stop the killing. Where is our sense of justice and decency?

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.

 

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