* For once, seeing headlines referencing U.S. troops and a foreign assignment didn’t yield a sense of foreboding and geopolitical hand-wringing. Knowing that President Barack Obama will be sending the military and medical supplies to Ebola-ravaged West Africa is a reminder that America’s capacity to help and do good is alive and, well, necessary.
* Remember, probably back in a sociology or anthropology course in college, being introduced to “ethnocentrism“? As in a sense of superiority over other ethnic, racial, religious or cultural groups. Who would ever defend that?
Then you read about those young Iranian men and women sentenced to lashings and (suspended) jail terms for participating in a video deemed indecent by government hard-liners. The video, we learned via YouTube postings, shows them dancing together to the music of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” in sunglasses and goofy clothes on Tehran rooftops and alley ways.
But, no, the silly duds didn’t include headscarves. Major Islamic Republic oops. And that–plus dancing–is a LASH-able offense.
So much for the norms of relativism and tolerance. Some things are relative, some things are absolutes. Some things are just culturally and religiously different–always have been. And some things are just, well, stupid and cruel.
That’s as elevated an approach as this matter deserves–and we haven’t even touched upon blasphemy crimes and punishments. Somebody has to say it besides Bill Maher.
* ISIS is verifiably demonic and barbaric. But they are also unnervingly conniving–and the release of those 49 Turkishhostages has unsettling subplots written all over it. Officially, Turkey is saying no military actions were taken and no ransoms were paid. That pretty much leaves only a Faustian deal with the ISIS devil to explain how the Turks achieved their release.
That could mean a less-than-significant role for Turkey, a major Middle East player, in the international coalition that the U.S. is trying to build against ISIS. It could also mean frustrations for NATO in what it would ask of its most important, militarily-potent, non-American and non-Western European member.