Society or Pestilence?

For some time, I have felt more comfortable thinking of my political affiliation as Democratic rather than Republican, even though Republican is how I’m registered, because, generally speaking, I believe more of how Democrats view the role of government. No one’s ever asked me to explain why I maintain the affiliation that I do, but if they did, I’d say that its more likely that I would agree with most of what any Democratic candidate held than any Republican; therefore, since my vote counts for very little, it makes more sense to me to cast that pittance for the best possible Republican running in any primary than for any Democrat. In that way, when the final matchup comes in the general election, I’m doing my small bit to ensure that it can be a Democrat versus the best Republican, thus improving the odds that I’ll find the candidate acceptable. Still, the idea of being registered one way, and voting another, has struck me as odd - not to mention, getting fund raising letters from both parties – until the other day, when I realized that there’s a label for people like me: Liberal Republican. I like that.

Given my liberal bias, therefore, it was quite surprising to find myself saying, this morning at the breakfast table, that we ‘should kill everyone in that country; kill everyone in sight, whether they are just passers-by, or actively malicious; given that they were all sub-human, as demonstrated by how they act, and how no amount of effort seems to be moving them more than an iota toward community in the league of humans. We should just give it up, and kill them all. Send them all to Allah.’ The country in question, of course, is Iraq, and the trigger for my vehement outburst was in reading an account of a mob that killed four contractors who had gotten lost, including this grisly description, from the Post’s article:

Two contractors who were not killed in the initial firing were dragged from their vehicle, and one was shot in the back of the head, the newspaper said. The crowd "doused the other with petrol and set him alight. Barefoot children, yelping in delight, piled straw on to the screaming man's body to stoke the flames," according to the report.

Yelping in delight? Is this a description of a country with which we want to be associated? Is this a description of a society which is more good than not, more worth saving than not? Or is it a description of a society that has since medieval times changed its weaponry but not its mores? Because for every image I see and story I hear of the fine, decent, basic humanity of these people, it seems that I hear five or ten of their viciousness. It may only be one of a hundred who does that; only one child yelping, not a thousand, and one deranged, or yelping in paranoid fear of what would happen if he did not ape his masters -- but the image is there: these people are not yet ready for contact with Western civilization. Their values are too different, their acceptance of violence too casual, their leaders too thuggish, their concept of justice too barbaric.