When You Don’t Know What To Do, Do The Right Thing

Posted by Sonja Ebron

Like most people, I find the Golden Rule an indispensable companion to living well. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and “wish for your brother what you wish for your self” are among countless expressions of the Ethics of Reciprocity found in all religions. The trouble comes when we feel we need something and believe we can’t get it fairly. At those times, the temptation is to rationalize a double standard, but it always comes out wrong in the long term.

American history is replete with such examples, from genocide of the original inhabitants and enslavement of African people to the coups, assassinations and general warmongering of the last 60 years. We are so blinded by our past that we can’t adequately gauge our future. That’s what so dangerous about our continuing misadventure in Iraq.

On what deranged planet does ending the Iraq war mean the permanent presence of 50,000 foreign troops with control of the airspace? Exactly how is a multinational bidding war for Iraqi oil rights better for Iraq than the state ownership they used to enjoy? We expected nothing about Iraq to make sense under George Bush, but Barack Obama knows better. We know — and the Iraqis know — this ain’t right.

It’s also untenable as a peace proposition because there can be no peace without justice. How can we expect “insurgents” or “terrorists” or whatever we want to call them to stop fighting while Western oil companies drain their national wealth under a puppet government protected by a larger and better equipped foreign military force than their own? They don’t believe our hype; they’ve been through this before, in the four decades leading up to the 1958 revolution against British occupation. Far from ending, our war on Iraq is not even beginning to wind down.

True, global oil production is peaking and the global economy is collapsing in response. Yes, we need the oil some kinda bad and don’t know how to secure it while we wean ourselves off it. The world’s biggest oil junkie needs its fix, and Iraq is the unwilling dealer. But I was taught that when you don’t know what to do, do the right thing. We need to get out of Iraq — now — because it’s the right thing to do. For one, no junkie gets off his drug by robbing his dealer. That only delays the healing. For two, the Golden Rule isn’t just good ethics; it’s moral law that means you bring in what you send out. We are destroying our future as a nation by our actions in Iraq.

Our president would do well to remember, as he likes to quote from Martin Luther King, that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.”