Ignorance is Stupid

America has plenty of things to be proud of. That is undeniable, and it has been taught to me in school since the 5th grade. However, despite our many admirable achievements, I cant help but disappointed by some of our wrongdoings, the Iraq War for example. Maybe it's because I took it upon myself to dub George W. Bush the World's Largest Moron, but thought it pains me to say so, he was not alone in thinking entering Iraq was the right decision at the time. What bother's me the most is that our involvement in Iraq was simply ignorant. It was ignorant to think we have the right to dismantle a governmental system (though it was abusive) and institute our own kind of government, which we assumed would work for anyone else. It was ignorant to do so without considering the brooding rival factions that would fight after we created such a surge of power. I'll admit, my knowledge of today's politics is limited, but according to the three articles we have just read, our ignorance is most present in our confidence that the West is the best, when really, globalization is leading the the "Rise of the Rest." Kishore Mahbubani's "The Case Against the West" explores the idea that while "the west assumes that it is the source to the solutions of the world's key problems...it is also a major source of these problems." He goes on to reference the Iraq War, which violated internation law by the UN Security Council, and the Bush Administration's incompitence in handeling global issues. To Mahbubani, this exhibits a larger issue at hand, a changing era that the West has yet to reckognize. Non western states are gaining the ability to solve their global challenges, without our Western Principles. The West's repuation is deteriorating as we do not meet many of the standards we hold other countries to, like the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and we remain one of the largest resistances in the battle to stop global warming. Similarly Tony Judt, in his article "What Have We Learned, If Anything?", outlines the half-truths of the West: "the trimuph of the West, the end of History, the unipolar American moment, the ineluctable march of globalization, and the free market." He blames these myths on our inefficient and lackluster interest in the past, and what it has to teach us. His advice for us today; "We need to learn again--or perhaps for the first time--how war brutalizes and degreades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonize our enemies in order to justify that wars indefinite continuace." These rather disheartening articles gave me a heavy heart for the rest of the day. Yes, they focuses on our flaws and negatives. We can't change what we have done in the past, and maybe we wont change what were doing now anyways. But really what we need to do is abandon our narrow view of the world around us and wake up.