Hypocrisy Leads the Way

When our elected leaders take action while in office, they represent our country but do we truly hold them accountable for those actions? The world views us as its citizens on how our leaders represent us. So if hypocrisy is leading our country why would the world not see us as hypocrites, therefore having little respect for us?

Recent events have had us hunting down and murdering Osama Bin Laden and I watched people dance in the street and give their 'patriotic' chants. We are a country who prides itself on a right to a fair trial, we fight for not using the death penalty on mass murderers and we want a child to live from conception. Yet, we danced for the killing of a person, who was unarmed, simply because he hurt us as a country. Does this not make us hypocrites?

We judged Bin Laden on the WTC attacks, a horrible event that killed thousands and definitely deserves justice. So what should be done about someone who ordered the killing of hundreds of thousands of people? Harry Truman ordered the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then waited three days and dropped another one on Nagasaki. When people talk about this, however, they do not say Truman dropped the bomb, they say America dropped the bomb. So since Truman represented us, in reality we as citizen's authorized the killing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese people, mostly innocents. People say that it was war and so it was justified and probably is why Truman's decision has never been considered a war crime. How is it not hypocritical that no 'justice' was ever brought about for the Japanese that died? How does it make us look as Americans to be the only country to drop nuclear weapons on another country?

Russia was one of our biggest allies in WWII, it was only after they became our enemy. When Berlin fell and Russia was still our ally, the Russian soldiers raped 1 million German women. At no time were the soldiers tried and to make it worse 10% of the women killed themselves. Yet later on when they were our 'enemy' we criticized them and fought against the tyranny they caused their people. How many 'enemies' have we had that started out as our 'ally'?

We currently have trade sanctions against Cuba because they are a Communist country. Years ago they were a threat when Russia was sponsoring them but now they are a poor country who is a blip on the radar. Yet one of our biggest importers is Communist China, a country that calls themselves Communists but try to act as though they are not. A country that fines their people when they have 'unapproved' children, which then leads to a large black market for stolen children. So does our hypocrisy from the past put us at risk for the future?

Israel is one of our allies, in fact Bin Laden has said that one of the reasons to attack us is because we are their allies. Yet, it is quite interesting to note that in this battle of terror, how many more Arabs have been killed by Israeli's than the other way around. Does that make us the good guys simply because we say so?

Andrew Jackson during his military days as well as his presidential days led the charge against the Native Americans. We took them from their homes and made them live where we felt they deserved to live. We killed women, children, unarmed individuals, people that were born and lived here. Then when they had the audacity to fight back against this tyranny, we used it against them, calling them savages and basically turning the country against them. Why did we allow, in this country of freedom, its own citizen's to be dragged from their home?

So do the names of Truman, Jackson and Obama deserve to be mentioned along side Hitler, Hussein and Bin Laden? What gives us the right to determine what is and isn't justified 'evil'? Our leaders deserve to pay for the evil they perform and we need to hold them accountable. Until that happens the leaders will continue to lead by hypocrisy and we will continue to be the hypocrites driving them.