On Dominance vs. Principle

With Obama's recent overseas trips and the release of the Bush administration's torture memos, we are once again embroiled in a debate over the effectiveness of brute force versus holding to our principles. I feel that this is an important debate to have, because as a nation and as a species, we need to deal with our history/legacy of violence and domination so that we can finally move into an era where the consensus is that we serve ourselves and others best when we treat everyone with dignity and respect, no matter how hard it might be to do so.

Some claim that the best - or only - way to deal with those who oppose us is with brute force. This can manifest as anything from "the silent treatment" to torture to a nuclear holocaust. The idea here is that in any given situation, there are only two possible outcomes - I get what I want, or I don't get what I want, and if you aren't helping me get what I want, then you are at best irrelevant and at worst an obstacle that must be destroyed.

The irony of this sort of approach is how self-destructive it is. It assumes that some people are so disconnected from us (whether because of race, nationality, religion, or some flaw in their character) that they no longer deserve to be treated with the same dignity and respect that we would like to be treated with. But in order to treat people that way, we have to abandon the very thing that actually unites us - our common humanity. As soon as we abandon that, we show our opponents that their worst fears about us are, in fact, correct, which simply validates their belief that treating us with dignity and respect would be a waste of time. As a result, they will feel that their only recourse is to try to win the war of dominance by whatever means possible. When you are as big and strong as the United States is, the only way for anyone else to win that game of dominance is through ideological rigidity, propaganda, and terrorist acts. When that happens, OUR worst fears will be validated, and we will believe that such people have no souls, thus justifying further acts that dehumanize both them and ourselves.

The only way for this to end is for at least one side to stop trying to out-dominate the other, thus cutting short an endless cycle of escalation that can only end in destruction. The history of war, conflict, and misunderstanding between the world's nations and cultures is long and rife with unspeakable suffering, and that makes each side feel incredibly justified in insisting that the other side must swallow their pride first. But as long as both sides are holding out, neither side is doing the one thing it can do to end the conflict, with the only possible result being more conflict.

It is only when we reconnect to our own humanity that we can start to see the humanity in our antagonists, and it is then and only then that we will start to treat each other as we should. The irony again is that once we give up a "me-first" attitude backed up by brute force, we create an environment in which we are more likely to get our true needs met, and eventually, if we all commit to staying the course even when it gets hard and some faction or other inevitably freaks out, everybody wins.