November 6, 2002
SAVE THE WORLD, KILL THE GIRLS:
Playing Population-Explosion Politics: Bush panders to right by pulling back from a key accord, imperiling us all. (Robert Scheer, November 5, 2002, Los Angeles Times)More than any other in recent memory, this administration is marked by a foreign policy driven primarily by a domestic agenda.To seek the votes of the right-to-life caucus by mucking about with the excruciatingly complex and difficult task of reining in world population is as dangerous in its effect as it is tawdry in its motive.
And, once again, our arrogant unilateralism will cost us strategically as well as morally. When overpopulated China, India and Indonesia, as well as nations in Europe dealing with myriad crises arising from immigration, all react bitterly to this latest American isolationism, can we be surprised that they are hesitant to support Bush's jihad against Iraq?
Of course, this won't bother the aggressive claque of right-wing think-tankers currently running the foreign policy of the most powerful nation in the existence of humanity, who seem to think that power makes us God.
We are not God, and our power must not be abused. At a time when the gap between the rich and the poor is dangerously increasing, when vast armies of the desperately poor are crashing through national boundaries, it is irresponsible in the extreme to sacrifice world population stability on the altar of domestic political advantage.
If this weren't so vile it would be hilarious. Note that by refusing to decide who should live and who die in places like China we will be playing God. You'd think it would be the other way around wouldn't you?
Posted by Orrin Judd at November 6, 2002 9:42 PM
Scheer doesn't even have the foreign policy players right. India's support for Iraqi intervention is quite strong and would be stronger if we would come out similarly strongly about India's right to intervene in Azad Kashmir (Pakistani sector) to control cross border terrorism. If anything, New Delhi is rooting us on in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Scheer is writing garbage to fill a deadline, and he didn't want to write about the elections in any responsible manner.
Orrin, you rock. (In China, you lock.)
By the way, I lived many years in Taiwan. There is a healthy acceptance of whichever gender fate deals a young couple there these days (has been for some time). There is also a healthy moral abhorence of abortion among women there.
I could talk for hours about why this is. I used to kid the Taiwanese by asking them who they as a culture thought they more resembled, the Americans or the Mainland Chinese (they are more like us, of course).
Make no mistake. The Chinese are a post-Buddhist nation, but they'll be cloning all the missing wives they need in a few years in the name of social stability. They also are VERY intent on getting to Mars before USA and populating the Red Planet with 100 boys for every 100 girls.