A) Afirca is not a country.
B) How can people in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Somalia etc rise up against their oppressors with no funding and no weaponry. Women in Zimbabwe protesting PEACEFULLY recently were arrested and held for 48 hours for speaking out against Mugabe, his main opponent is up on two counts of treason. He escaped the death penalty last week but will he do so twice. There is no means to protest or rise up effectively. Rational, western influenced resposes don't work against irrational dictatorships which verge on archaic despotism.

Funnily enough I was having a similar conversation today about the Value of Life. A member of a british pop group had said something inflammatory about September 11th. IMO it wasn't inflammatory just badly put. He had said something along the lives of "How are the lives of 10,000 Americans more important than the lives of X,Y and Z killed in other countries." Unfortunately, not being a great mind by any stretch of the imagination the British media murdered him for it.

To a certain extent though it is true. 10's of 1000's of Rwandans were killed in the civil war there as well as in places like Somalia and Iraq. Yet the media take the same naive and mythical approach as in the post above and put the lives of the local above lives lost elsewhere in the world.

Mass loss of life and Xenophobia should be mourned in the same way no matter what the country yet I found myself participating in a minutes silence for the life lost in New York, the same time I spent mourning the Queen Mother, Princess Diana and bloody Brian Clough!!!!! By this eqaution, the Queen Mother dying of old age or a well respected Football Manager dying of stomach cancer in his sixties, to the British Media at least, is equivalent to 10000 faceless (to those that weren't related or acquainted at least) Americans dying as a result of an act of terrorism.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Captain, but when I read your opening, I didn't read it as an anti-war thread but as an anti-hypocrisy thread. If the Amercian Government deem it necessary (which in my view it was, I'm just sorry the job wasn't finished 10 years ago when televised war was new and exciting......) to invade Iraq to depose Saddam Hussein, then why didn't they just say so, and by that reasoning, I totally agree, they should be deposing oppressive dictators all over the world, I guess militarily speaking it's just not possible. America only want to police the terrorists when it effects their own turf. I wonder how badly Bush would have wanted Bin Laden's head if he had crashed the planes in to the twin towers in Kuala Lumpur, or the Post Office Tower in Central London, the loss of life would undoubtedly have been just as severe, but would it have been as significant? Would 9/11 then be such a significant date throughout the Western World?

While I'm on the rant track....

I still stand by the idea that there is no such thing as a justified war. And I challenge anyone who dissagree's with that statement to find one instance, in the history of mankind, where a war was waged for just, and moral purposes.
"The love you flaunt is made possible only by your privilege." Todd Gitlin.

What do you define as just? Protecting Europe from being overrun by a fascist dictator who would have purged every country he commanded, of racial minorities and those he did not consider to be part of his perfect race, persecuting and premeditating the genocide of millions of Jewish people across Europe. Was it "unjust" of the British government to fight for the freedom of their country? Was it morally wrong to oppose a man hell bent on the genocide of one race? Hell no. And no country's win wars? Not true in my book. Had it not been for Britain intervening and trying to end this madmans purge across Europe I would not be living in the democratic nation I live in today. Morally the Alliance won but really the only winners of WWII, and in modern warfare the only winners of a war outright were the USA. It hardly got scratched and the money that Britain owed the USA afterwards dragged it out of a Depression and in to the 20th century. 1945 was when the 20th century started for the USA. Anyway, do I mourn the lives of the MILLIONS on MILLIONS that lost their lives during WWII, mostly European and Asian, do I value them as much as I value the lives of those that died on September 11th.....yeah, there's a minutes silence once a year.......

Truth, Beauty and Love are so passe. It's pre modernity unenlightened rubbish that doesn't apply to the modern world. Morality and Justification are easily worked around. To me the life of a schoolgirl murdered in Nottingham has no greater value than the value of a firefighter killed in the Twin Towers or an Iraqi killed by a wayward missile. They are all of equal value to me and deserve my sympathy.

I realise my post is slightly disjointed and could be viewed as controversial but I am sypmpathetic for the lives lost on September 11th, very much so, but I wouldn't value a single life there over a single life anywhere else in the world. Our mourning and the way we value life as a society is totally media influenced.