Remember Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs that proposes that humans have to have certain needs fulfilled before going on to the higher ones? They are: Physiological, Safety, Love/belonging, Status, Self-Actualization. In Iraq, for instance, it’s my opinion that we had a great shot at introducing freedom to an educated people who were ready to take it. However, we failed to get the water and electricity turned on in order to fulfill basic biological (physiological) needs, and later, we failed to provide for a sense of safety in Baghdad, the heart of the country. Tempers flared among the people, and now they will look to corrupt officials who can funnel services to them, and militias who can protect them. Freedom is the least thing on their minds when their survival is in question. In the meantime, just like in the former USSR, memories of living under totalitarianism fade while the struggles of the present override everything else.

This morning, our pastor preached an anti-war message. I’m still trying to get my rebuttal together…however, part of what I was going to say was that it takes more than being anti-war to bring about peace. Hizb’alla, al Qaeda, Hamas, Stalin, Castro, even Al Capone, all figured out that hungry people will ignore your foibles if you throw a sandwich (or appropriate substitute) at them. So, if we want to stop the fighting, we need to take away the attractiveness of men who will trade food, water, electricity, and some semblance of security for a spot to launch rockets.

For the anti-war crowd, it’s a lot easier to simply throw verbal jabs at the Administration and the military than it is to figure out how to help in fulfilling those needs that “the enemy” has so successfully exploited.

This could well be said about Americans, too. Dig these numbers, Arnold:

15.5% had earned a bachelor’s degree but no higher, compared with 13.1% in 1990.
8.9% earned graduate or professional degrees, compared with 7.2% earlier.

That is to say that it never occurs to over 90% of of all Americans to “dream of going to Boston University to get a degree in medicine in order to return to help their own.”

Source: Report: Greater percentage of Americans educated

Was Iraq sovereign? The recognized government there came to power through a series of military coups and had no respect whatsoever for the people’s franchise. (Sham elections are worse than none, because they contribute to an illusion of legitimacy where none exists.)

As for the rest, I think the old saying is “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

To me, swaddling has always been antithetical to freedom, but boundaries and structure seem to be things many people crave.

Israel never negotiates with terrorists and is willing to suffer great losses in order not to set a precedent that would ultimately erode Israel’s chances of survival in the middle east against already overwhelming odds.

Israel has always been willing to suffer great sacrifice and greater cost to preserve her always tenuous sovereignty, in case anyone chooses to remember. The former Soviet Union was this way too, back in the day. Now we are, or aren’t we? What are we willing to suffer and what costs are we willing to shoulder?

Life is regimented in Israel and there is mandatory service, though I believe that Israelis have a definite sense of freedom, of liberty.

Mind you, I believe in absolute sovereignty. I believe it was wrong for us to invade Iraq, a sovereign nation. I also believe that sovereignty may be absolutely protected, as in the case of Israel’s committed response to Hezbollah and its host country, Jordan.

Yes, I am committed to Cuba’s sovereignty, too. None of our business.

I do not support the export of “democracy” and “freedom” (meaning Capitalism) to sovereign nations that don’t ask, especially if the majority of folks embrace it.

If they don’t ask, we Americans need to solve poverty, crime, sickness, classism, racism, illiteracy, and sexism first, before we export freedom, wealth and equality.

Heaven forbid we Americans come across as hypocritical.

I don’t believe in Crusades, invasion, or insurgency - I don’t believe they work in the middle or long term. Only cultural intervention works over time. Bay Watch and Madonna, for example. I believe that protecting the freedom of sovereign nations is job one.

The rest is surely none of our business.

Trouble is, freedom is a fuzzy word. We Americans use it to wrap up a whole family of values and ethics, like civil rights and elected leaders and privacy and guarantees of governmental non-interference in our affairs.

An alternate interpretation of freedom is the notion of being free from want. That’s where the socialists really have a field day proclaiming that the totalitarian states of the dark years of the mid-20th Century were more free than the west because everybody was guaranteed a job and a place to live.

Our counter-argument, of course, is that although it provided everybody with the minimum, that system deprived them of the freedom to go out and obtain more for themselves.

Whatever. Point is, sometimes “free” can be a point of debate all by itself.

Everybody wants to be free. Not everybody agrees on what “free” means.

Here’s what sometimes keeps me up at night: To what extent are some of the folks out there beyond our borders just plain WRONG about their notion of “freedom” — yes, hello, Taliban, I’m talking about you — and to what extent are they just adopting a viewpoint that, while it differs from our own, is fundamentally pretty valid?

I know that there are both kinds of people out there in the great wide world. I’m not sure in what proportions they exist.

This matters to me because I want to be sure we’re waging war against the right ones.