Well, Which Is It?

Normally, I am not one to comment on politics.

I'm not really even going to do that now. You will notice that I do not state my specific personal opinions on the matters which follow (although, for the record, I tend to be fairly but not consistently isolationist where international policy is concerned).

However, I simply can't help myself from ranting just a tiny bit on the inconsistency of international policy that some of the liberal talk show hosts are espousing (I listen to both liberal and conservative talk radio and love alternately getting irritated with both sides).

One the one hand, the liberal hosts hate the war in Iraq. They love to go on and on about how incredibly stupid it was for us to go there in the first place and that everything ever pertaining to our involvement in the war was a giant mistake. To listen to them describe it, we should have kept our noses completely out of what Sadaam Hussein was doing, as it was none of our business to get involved in.

Recently, on the other hand, I have heard from them more and more calls for our country to boycott the Olympic Games in Beijing based, primarily, on China's political entanglement with Tibet. China's human rights violations, in their opinion, should keep us from participating in the activities coming up this summer.

I understand, of course, that boycotting the Olympics is a completely different thing than declaring war and taking out a dictator. I also understand that the road to our involvement in Iraq was quite complicated. However, isn't this point of view a slippery slope of inconsistency?

Do we or do we not take action where human rights violations are taking place? Are we the world's policeman with all the horrors and honors and responsibilities that go along with that, or aren't we? Which is it, people?

If we really believe that China's actions are so abhorrent that we cannot associate with them athletically, how far is that from the view that we should take military action to stop them? How far is that from the very first reasons we got involved with Iraq to begin with?

Don't worry folks, I don't expect any actual answers to this mud. I just thought that today I'd deliver some political food for thought, as a little break from all the cute photos of my kids and stuff... :-)