The Perfect Life

Yesterday I posted a link to an opinion posted in the New York Times about the Iraq War. Today CNN has jumped on the bandwagon.

This is the sort of thing that keeps gun control at bay; but it could have been different if Williams had found Hill's gun while Hill was unconscious... Still, good for Hill.

Also, Newsweek had this to say about the Korean hostages. It says a lot about the mentality of the Taliban, Here these people are in Afghanistan, trying to help people (people in general--not asking questions about affiliations with terrorist organizations); this Taliban leader thinks if he grabs some hostages, then he can negotiate a swap (hostages for Taliban prisoners). Afghan president Hamid Karzai is in a tough spot. He doesn't want these foreigners killed, that makes relations with South Korea more difficult, but, at the same time, if he goes ahead with the trade, it only encourages terrorists to kidnap more hostages. Maybe that's better than suicide bombers...

That's something I'm curious about. I know that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, suicide is considered to be a major sin, as in the fast-track to Hell kind of sin. Does Islam not believe that? Or are suicide bombers considered to be soldiers for the cause, and their deaths thought to be the responsibility of the enemy? I don't know. I do know that the Bible says that every way of a man is right in his own eyes; basically we human beings are clever enough that we can find a way to justify virtually anything. A lot of times we can find ways to do despicable things, and then turn around and blame someone else for 'forcing' us to do it.

I commented the other day about the us-vs.-them mentality. One of the effects of that mentality is a tendency to blame someone else for what has gone wrong in one's own life (whether that person was a contributing factor, or just a convenient scape-goat). "I didn't get a Wii for Christmas. Santa must believe the lies that my brother told about me." [This is, of course, a particularly efficient blame game. It isn't entirely Santa's fault; little brother lied, so it's mostly his fault. Except, of course, that not everything that little brother said was a lie.] "I didn't get promoted at work. That jerk Larry must have told the boss that I was slacking off." [Why? Was Larry the only one who knew that you were slacking off?] "I didn't get a good grade on my English term paper. My teacher just doesn't like me." [Maybe if you had put a little more effort into it, instead of trying to write your paper during the commercials...] Let's face it, when it comes to the blame game, most of us are very quick to look anywhere but in the mirror. Granted, there are a lot of times that other people contribute to our problems, but, generally, we can work our way through our problems, if we just work. Granted, once one problem is solved (or at least out-lived), there's another one on the doorstep ready to take its place, but let's face it, we human beings would never be happy unless we had something to keep us occupied (and I don't mean television, although that can work for awhile). We can't stand boredom, and we could never be happy living 'the perfect life.' It just goes against our nature.