Many look at the those people who service and build PCs as technological geniuses. That's not always the case. Myself for example. I grew up helping my father and older brother work on cars and trucks. I've assisted in changing engines, transmissions and everything in between. So I should be an ace mechanic right? WRONG. I wish I was. It would have saved me a lot of money over the years but the fact remains that with all of that experience, I can only change oil and spark plugs. Point being: I'm not at all mechanically inclined. I never had a PC in my life until the spring of 2000. I would purchase various computer magazines and I found PCs fascinating. If my computer was running slow, I wanted to know just WHY it was running slow and how to speed it up. So I learned how to upgrade my RAM. When I wanted to upgrade my optical drive, I did that myself. Little by little, I kept reading and modifying my PC and eventually it no longer had any of the original parts to it. The point is that if I can build a PC, I think ANYONE with half a brain can learn how to build a PC.

What's wrong with purchasing a PC that's already built?

Nothing. Purchasing a PC has it's advantages and disadvantages. Let's discuss some of them.

The advantages to purchasing a PC are as follows…. A New PC is likely to include a warranty and possibly “in home service”. If you are building a PC, only each individual part has a warranty. A hard drive company for example will NOT remove your hard drive for you, transfer data, and re-install your operating system. It is up to you to do all of that. A purchased PC will be all optimized when you hook it up. If you are building a PC, YOU will have to set up your BIOS and (in most cases) update it (and that can be a bit tricky for a newbie). You shouldn't have to update your BIOS or do much tweaking at all on a purchased PC. Some companies like Dell and HP for example mass produce some particular PCs and offer them for a MUCH lower price than you could likely build one for.

Now the disadvantages of purchasing a PC are as follows…..Nearly EVERY major PC manufacturer receives compensation from companies like AOL, AT&T, McAffee and SEVERAL other computer product and Internet service provider companies. In exchange, your purchased PC will come with a BUNCH of programs that you have no use for or “trial” versions of certain software applications. Many of these programs are set to run constantly in the background and unnecessarily task your CPU and RAM. When I set up someones newly purchased computer in their home, It takes me about 15 - 20 minutes maximum and then another 45 - 60 minutes getting rid of all the useless stuff that the computer is ridden with and stopping things from constantly running in the background. You know those Dell PCs that you can get for as low as $299? Yes, it's true. Dell can offer you a fully functional PC for under $300 in in many cases, ship it free to your door. YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR friends. These low-end PCs are loaded with the cheapest processors, in most cases you have to stick with integrated video, they are not upgradeable at all (no, wait, I think you CAN add another RAM stick, but that's IT) and they cram as much crap in these tiny cases as they can, thus minimizing air flow (heat KILLS PCs). Can you upgrade your purchased PC? You can't tell from looking at it online or in the store and don't expect the sales person to be completely honest with you. I had a customer at one time who's integrated sound in her purchased PC died. She wanted me to install a sound card. No problem. I opened the tower to find that the motherboard only had ONE PCI slot and her dial up modem was plugged into it. Lucky for her, she used high speed Internet so we removed her dial up modem and placed a sound card in that PCI slot.

Now in case you haven't noticed, I'm a “builder”. I would go so far as to say that I would NEVER purchase a pre-assembled PC. I'm very anti-Dell you could say. But I will admit that purchasing a pre-built computer rig DOES indeed have it's advantages. However, there are advantages to building a PC and there are (though I hate to admit it) some disadvantages as well.

The advantages of building a PC are as follows…..Why would anyone buy a Corvette and never drive it over 30 miles per hour? Go to a major computer store and shop for a computer and watch them try to sell you a powerhouse. Sure, you can spend $4500 US on a new kick ass brand name PC but if all you're going to use it for is surfing the web, email, and playing solitaire, you might as well have a Corvette and never go faster than 30 miles per hour. When you choose to build a PC, you can build it to do what YOU want it to do. Your tower can be any variety of the hot styles and colors, you can put as many bells and whistles on it when you build a PC. You can make sure that when you build a PC that it will be upgradable. You can build a PC a little at a time. There's no need to shell out 100% of the cost right away. You can buy the case, then little by little when your funds permit, you can add to it. Though you'll get a little bit of useless software included with your operating system, it will be MUCH less when you build a PC than it would if you were to purchase one.

And yes, there ARE (though it pains me to point them out) disadvantages when you build a PC. They are as follows…..Tech support? Look in the mirror. YOU built it, so now YOU are the most qualified to trouble shoot any hardware or software conflicts. You can get a new Dell PC these days for as low as $300. It's not likely that you can build a PC of that quality for that money. (but who would want to, those PCs are crap) I will say however that companies like Dell and HP have come up with some decent and upgradeable PCs recently that boast plenty of power. A friend recently purchased an HP media PC with a dual core processor, PLENTY of hard drive space a kicking video all in one card, a removable second hard drive and an included wide screen 19″ flat panel monitor for about $1400 US. I tried, I really did, I priced several different pieces of hardware to try to come up with a comparable PC and monitor but I couldn't build a PC of that caliber for $1400.

I didn't let my friend's HP sway me a bit though. I'm still “pro build” and suspect that I always will be. I'm a hardware freak. Hardcore. Down to the bone. When you build a PC, you can make changes during the construction. You can make your case look and perform as elaborate or as drab as you wish. I'd gladly pay more money, go without the “in home service” and tech support to be able to build a PC for myself. It won't be a Dell. It won't be a Gateway. It won't be an HP or even an Alien-ware, It will be “Karl's PC” through and through.

Little Rock, AK has a fairly mild climate but a variety of soil types. The city has some beautiful suburbs with fine homes and nice lawns, like most substantial cities. Any city with expansion and building needs services for the builders and contractors. Public areas and commercial parks have to be maintained. This means work for landscape companies and nurseries. Little Rock has its fair share of these businesses, but a growing interest in home gardening and lawn maintenance has also helped local and area nurseries and garden centers. Several nurseries in the area are good picks for locals.

http://www.growise.com/ar.htm
Growise really stresses its assistance to the home gardener above everything. On the web site, people can sign up to receive bi-weekly garden reminders and regional updates. This is an incredible tool, especially for people who have busy schedules and may tend to let fertilizing or mulching and other chores slip up on them. A visit to the center can help homeowners get kill slugs, kill crabgrass, get rid of hornets and tackle all sorts of problems. Growise is a franchise operation with local ownership. The local center is Green Tree Nursery and Landscape. They operate a complete Garden Center with shrubs, trees, tropicals, perennials, soil amendments and garden furniture and accessories. They offer professional landscaping as well.
Green Tree Nursery & Landscape,9305 Rodney Parham Road, 501-225-6305. They're open March 15-June 15 from 8-5:30, and after June they close at 5:00.

http://www.horticare.net/
Horticare Is a very large nursery that will either deliver or help customers directly at the site. The selection of trees and shrubs is tremendous and the staff is made up of professional horticulturists who have expertise in all aspects or garden and lawn care. They offer interesting and educational seminars to folks each spring and fall, plus sending out a helpful newsletter each month to over 5,000 customers who've requested it. I found it very nice that these people have experts in irrigation who can install, repair and service irrigation systems for the homeowner and commercial enterprises. They also do lawn and garden treatments on a scheduled basis for a wide area around Little Rock. The plants here are high quality, with a lot of choice. 7901 Stagecoach Rd., Little Rock, AK 501.407.2727/
Nursery Phone:
501.407.2729

http://www.greenthumblr.com/
Green Thumb is another nursery that specializes in a particular aspect of gardening. In this case it's water-gardening. Green Thumb can supply the person who wants to create a pond with anything and everything anyone could possibly want, from liners, filters, pumps, oxygenators, fish, fish food and, of course, hundreds of different water plants. They do have land plants, but water is their real specialty. Anyone needing to build, maintain, or restock a backyard pond need just take a trip here to find everything. Many garden centers have just a few items needed for water gardening, so Green Thumb is a welcome addition to the Little Rock area.
28025 Nichols Loop Road
Little Rock, AR 72223
Phone 501.821.4445
email: mark@greenthumblr.com

A description of the current Japanese government must begin with the fall of its last iteration. The glittering world-dominating supertechnological of the 1980s fell apart in 1990, when the real estate and stock speculation bubble burst, leaving the money in ’s banking system tied up in loans given to stock and real estate speculators. In the early 90s, with the borrowers nearly bankrupt and their collateral devalued, the banks lacked the resources to make any new loans (Lecture notes, 10/14). Only a massive restructuring and deregulation could increase the growth of the economy, but the Japanese electorate consistently voted against policies that would result in mass lay-offs and bankruptcy (McCargo, 68). This economically intolerable depression and its socially intolerable solution would form the fulcrum of political conflict until the present day.

As the business world fell apart, the politicians it supported became increasingly unstable. Soon, “the costly structure of doing business within the country—with its political bribes, high entertainment costs, and irrational and often whimsically interpreted regulations—led to demands for political reform” (Pempel, 141). This tension produced a crisis in 1993, when the Liberal Democratic Party, which had controlled the government since 1955 (McCargo, 93), fell to a vote of no confidence put forth by the opposition parties (Schlesinger, 268). The opposition had little hope of deposing the LDP alone, but the driven LDP reformist Ozawa Ichiro used internal tensions within his party to produce a splintering of new opposition parties (Schlesinger, 270). These new parties joined forces with the Socialist Party of Japan to take control of the government.

The new coalition pushed through a voting reform bill that replaced the old multi-member constituency, single non-transferable vote system with the current 60/40 split of lower house seats between single-member constituencies and proportional representation of 11 regional blocs (McCargo, 93). The new voting system was designed to break the LDP monopoly on parliamentary control, but in 1994, the LDP formed a coalition with the Socialists and resumed their seat of power in the Diet. The Democratic Party of Japan, composed of several of Ozawa’s splinter parties and the ideological purists excised from the Socialist Party, was the only powerful opposition party to emerge from the struggle (Schlesinger, 284). Although the DPJ and their allies gained power in the latter 1990s, however, they lost overwhelmingly to the LDP in the election of 2005, leaving the Liberal Democratic Party, once again, in near total control of the Japanese government.

The LDP learned from its defeat and, after its return to power, the ruling party initiated a financial restructuring, optimistically called the “Big Bang”, which decommissioned certain banks (such as the Hanwa bank in 1996) over the course of the latter half the 1990s (McCargo, 63). This reform may have helped to ease the economic crisis left by the collapse of the bubble economy, but in a further effort to encourage growth and create jobs, the government began a program of support for the construction industry. This traditional Keynesian approach had worked well in the 60s, but fared less well in the 90s as “this disastrous policy of subsidizing and artificially inflating the construction industry … employed over 6 million workers, many in make-work jobs that could never be sustained” (Kingston, 124). This “construction state” provided jobs, however, especially to rural areas, and the LDP’s long-running practice of defining their policy based solely on what will get votes seems unlikely to stop the concrete wave.

The adaptability of the LDP allowed the party to please a wide range of voters, but undermined the careers of individual MPs, who may find themselves left behind when their party’s policies change underneath them. The greatest of such shifts to occur after 1994 concerned the economic restructuring of the “big bang”, with much of the debate over the manner and timing of the restructuring taking place between two ideological groups within the LDP. The more conservative faction, outspokenly nationalist and heavily reliant upon the backroom business dealings that proved so lucrative in the past, had consistently blocked or slowed the restructuring. On the other side of the spectrum, the liberal faction advocated more rapid restructuring of the Japanese economy.

Beginning in 1998, one of the leaders of the liberal faction, Koizumi Junichiro, successfully wed the two groups together with a mixture of nationalism and vigorous demand for reform. Koizumi pleased the nationalists with avocation for greater mobilization of ’s military power, as well as several controversial visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors ’s war fatalities, including war criminals (Kingston, 238). Koizumi also advocated sweeping reforms, including the completion of the “big bang” deregulation program with “no sacred cows” (McCargo, 69). Running his campaign as if he represented a new, progressive movement against the conservative forces in his own party, Koizumi became Prime Minister 2001, and still holds the office (Lecture notes, 9/10). What little success the Prime Minister’s social reforms have enjoyed however, has come at the cost of a major overhaul of the LDP and an emergency reelection in 2005. The nominal fruit of this upheaval, the acceptance of a postal reform bill that will not take affect until 2017, pales in comparison to the actual result of a Japanese government now significantly consolidated under the rule of an LDP purged of opposition factions by the election. Whether the new stronger grip of Koizumi’s interests on Japanese politics will result in a solution to the post-bubble problems remains to be seen.

There is a saying,” Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” but one has to work towards looking beautiful and staying beautiful forever. In this article I have written few beauty packs and tips that will help you have a smooth and glowing skin and look beautiful and youthful forever. Take a few minutes day to pamper your skin.

Pack for a fair and smooth skin

Take 2 tsp lemon juice, 1 tsp glycerin and 3 tsp rose water and mix. Apply this lotion all over the body and keep it for 15-20 minutes and then wash with tepid water.

Take 1 tsp lemon juice, ½ cup yogurt and 1 tsp orange juice. Make a paste and apply this on your face and neck and keep for 15-20 minutes and then wash with water.

For dry skin this mask works wonders. Take one egg and beat it till frothy. Add 1 tsp honey. 1 tsp glycerin, 1 tsp mineral oil. Apply this on the face and other dry areas on the body and wash after 15 minutes.

Protein Pack: soak 1 tsp urad dal and 4 almonds in water overnight and then grinding them into a paste. You can then apply this protein mask to your face and wash it off after half an hour. This exceptional protein mask will not only nourish the skin but also bleach it.

Mix 2 tsp rice powder, 4 tsp tea water, 1 tsp honey. Apply this mask to your face and wash it off after half an hour with lukewarm water.

Take 1 egg and beat it in a small bowl. Add ½ cup coconut oil and 1 tbsp honey and beat it slowly bringing its consistency like mayonnaise. Spread the mixture into a toilet paper roll, and set in the freezer overnight. To use, peel away the top of the cardboard roll and smooth the frozen stick over your face. Leave it on for 5-10 minutes, and then wash off with warm water.

Take 1 tbsp powder milk, 1 peeled cucumber and 1 tsp yogurt. Mix all these together in a blender to a fine paste and apply on the face for 15-20 minutes and wash off with warm water.

Astringents

Take 1 peeled cucumber; add 6 tsp rose water, 4 tsp Eau-de-cologne and 3 tsp glycerin. Make a paste in a blender and strain to get a lotion. Refrigerate and use on face and body. 

Take ½ lemon, ½ orange and 3/4 cup ethanol alcohol. Blend in a mixer and strain. Refrigerate and use.

Mash strawberries, use as an astringent and cleansing facemask.

Lemon is a strong astringent, dilute with water before using, being careful to keep away from eyes

In the latter part of December 1994, a group of three French speleologists discovered what was to become one of the most marvelous and certainly the oldest gallery of paleolithic cave-paintings ever found. Using carbon-14 dating techniques, some of the art within Chauvet-Pont-D’arc has been identified as being from between 30,340 and 32,410 BCE, far older than those found at the incredibly famous Lascaux caves (Clottes). But despite it’s extreme age, and it’s wondrous depictions of ice-age animals never before seen on cave-walls, the “Grotte” was closed to researchers for several years following a spectacular series of lawsuits (Harrington1). Then, in late 1998, the cave was finally opened to researchers, allowing the greater anthropological community a look at a gallery that has, in the years since, “revolutionized hitherto accepted concepts on the appearance of art and its development”, proving “that homo sapiens learnt to draw at a very early stage” (Raynal).The art within Chauvet-Pont-D’arc is truly spectacular; this paleolithic gallery is not simply a handful of poorly done charcoal scribbles on the wall, and in some cases, the roof of a drafty old cave. No, the “Grotte” is a collection of fine art, and a record of creatures never before seen in the paintings of ancient humans, some of which are painted in places where the humans of today could not reach without leaving at least some traces (Raynal). Its walls depict a disturbingly large percentage of dangerous animals, predators and unpredictable herbivores that roamed through the Pont-D’arc area during the late Pleistocene; this alone makes Chauvet-Pont-D’arc unique, as the number of depictions of paleolithic animals that were hunted for food, which appear predominantly in paleolithic art elsewhere, are disproportionately low in the “Grotte” (Clottes). The use of shading and perspective in the art is incredibly advanced for the age to which it has been dated, and many researchers firmly believe that the paintings are a work not of a troop of paleolithic artists working separately in different areas of the cave, but instead a single master painter, possibly accompanied by a small group of what Jean Clottes describes as “acolytes,” or “assistants who shared the same conventions and techniques.” Later studies have come to show that our famous trio of speleologists, led by Jean-Marie Chauvet, were not the first explorers to come across the “Grotte.” Until 26,120 ± 400 years ago when the cave was finally sealed by a what is generally assumed to have been a rockslide, groups of intrepid, stone-age humans, assumed to be of the Solutrean or Magdalenian paleolithic cultures, made pilgrimages to Chauvet-Pont-D’arc, as evidenced by the appearance of torch marks over the calcite layers covering parts of the original paintings, (Clottes) as well as bits of charcoal that litter the floor of the cave. The evidence found by Jean Clottes’ team also shows that cave was not, however, used for human habitation; Bears lived within Chauvet-Pont-D’arc, and the paleolithic artists who painted the wondrous works of art within the cave were little more than frail, bipedal interlopers. When the “Grotte” was discovered by Jean-Marie Chauvet and his two associates, Christian Hillaire and Eliette Brunel, the French government, specifically the Ministry of Culture, for whom Chauvet worked as a part time park ranger, immediately began working to secure the cave and all the rights thereof, exclusively for themselves (Harrington1 ). Thus began a series of legal battles that left the cave closed to researchers for over three years, wrapped the Chauvet-Pont-D’arc cave in a mess of red tape, and effectively labeled the cave as having “provided more work for lawyers than for archeologists.”(Couvrette) Eventually, Chauvet and his two associates managed to navigate enough of the red-tape to assert that they, not the government, had exclusive rights to the pictures and video they had taken inside the “Grotte,” as the Ministry of Culture had used a false, backdated document to claim that Chauvet was “on assignment” when he discovered the cave with two “volunteers”(Couvrette). The court agreed, and the primary legal battle of Chauvet-Pont-D’arc was put to rest, though the compensation awarded to the three, as well as the profit from Chauvet’s book, scarcely covered the legal costs from the long and exhaustive battle with the French Ministry of Culture (Couvrette). But that is not the proverbial “end all and be all” of the Ministry’s legal actions concerning the “Grotte;” they themselves are loathe to mention and quite discreetly overlook these ethically questionable acts. It was only through third parties, that is, American periodicals, such as Time and Archaeology, that this mess was exposed, and the legal events leading up to the opening of the cave to the research community brought to light. Indeed, even the manner in which the government obtained the land on which the cave sits is direct and impersonal, if not a little harsh. The land on which Chauvet-Pont-D’arc sits was owned by three men, and once the cave was discovered, the government readily offered a total of 25,000 francs to the trio only to be turned down; The three men claimed that due to later tourist revenue, they would require at least seventy million francs before they would part with the property (Harrington1). Unfortunately for these three men, the government promptly expropriated the land, and extended their original offer as a sort of compensation (Couvrette).When the legal issues were finally solved, and the cave opened to researchers in the latter part of 1998, Archeologist Jean Clottes, a science advisor to France’s own Ministy of Culture, and a team of eager researchers were immediately given the go-ahead to begin working within the cave (Begley). Originally, Clottes’ team was given only a single year, but after later analyses of the cave and the art within, the Ministry of Culture authorized an additional term of three years, after which a “publication of these first research campaigns”(Clottes) was to be prepared. Unfortunately, this meant that the research team would only be allowed a four-year period in which to study the “Grotte,” and despite Clottes’ repeated appeals to the Ministry of Culture, each time saying that four years simply wasn’t enough time to properly analyze Chauvet-Pont-D’arc, the research being done within the cave itself all but ended with the close of the four-year period(Harrington2 ). Also unfortunately, there have been no public announcements as to whether or not the cave will be reopened to researchers (or the public, for that matter) in the near, or even distant future.The fieldwork that was being done at the Grotte de Chauvet during the original, four-year research period was well documented and meticulous to say the least. It occurred over two separate terms per year, each consisting of fifteen days, with two additional, stand-alone, week-long work-periods saved specifically for the floor specialists and the geologists (Clottes). Each member of the research team was provided with room and board, as well as space to work that afforded access to all of the computers and analysis equipment on site (Clottes). Due to conclusions originally drawn from the analysis of the cave’s own “micro-climate,” only about one-half of the team was allowed to work within the cave each six to seven hour day, generally bringing the total number of workers, at any given time, to about eight or nine people with the few specialists that made occasional appearances throughout the day (Clottes). Those members of the team not working within the cave still found plenty to do; back at “base camp,” the researchers would sift through data, exchange ideas, and generally work together in a relatively friendly and non-competitive environment (Clottes). In recent years, the analysis of the “Grotte” has managed to  continue; outside of Chauvet-Pont-D’arc, in the private laboratories of Jean Clottes and some of his closest colleagues, the tale of the cave is still being fleshed out. In truth, a complete report, in fact a book, was written by Jean Clottes on what the research team uncovered within the walls of Chauvet-Pont-D’arc, but he has released at least one more since that time, giving the public and the greater anthropological community a new, fresh look at the “Grotte” that includes the research and opinions of specialists in related fields, such as art history and ethnology (Amazon).Chauvet-Pont-D’arc is incredible to say the least; the art upon it’s walls is the earliest yet found and yet it is not the work of an amateur. The Grotte de Chauvet is paleolithic master’s canvas, a holy place where ancient humans came and saw that master’s art long after he had died, and kept coming for over four thousand years after his death. It is a window into the past, a place full of ancient masterpieces that archeologists, art historians, ethnologists, and anthropologists have stood and stared at for hours, contemplating art that has not been touched by human hands or seen by human eyes in over twenty-five thousand years and wondering: “what was that artist thinking about when he finally put paint, chisel, or charcoal to the wall and created something so strange, so enigmatic, and yet so beautiful?”   Works CitedBegley, Sharon. “Insert from Newsweek” The Bulletin, Australian periodical. May 25, 1999    http://www.hominids.com/donsmaps/chauvetcave.html*Clottes, Jean & Valérie Féruglio “ The cave of Chauvet-Pont-D’arc.” Official Site.    http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/index.htmlCouvrette, Phil. “Shadows on the wall.” Time Vol. 152, No.16. October 19, 1998:    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/1998/int/981019/europe.shadows_on_the_w18a.htmlHarrington1, Spencer. “La Débâcle Chauvet.” Archeology Vol. 50, No.2. March/April 1997:    http://www.archaeology.org/9703/newsbriefs/chauvet.htmlHarrington2, Spencer. “Chauvet Study Begins.” Archeology Vol. 51, No.6. Nov./Dec. 1998:    http://www.archaeology.org/9811/newsbriefs/chauvet.htmlRaynal, Florence. “Fur Clad Michelangelos.” Ministry of Foreign Affairs / Label France, Magazine    http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/label_france/ENGLISH/SCIENCES/CHAUVET/cha.html    www.amazon.com, Editorial review: Books: Return to Chauvet Cave: Excavating the Birthplace of Art: the First Full Report.*A loose collection of articles pertaining to the cave.

War is a fact of life. Republican, Democrat, USA, England, or Kazakhstan war permeates every facet of our culture. Therefore to ask if war is truly moral is a fallacy of composition. Certainly there are parts of war that are immoral. However, if society thought that war was amoral or immoral then I find it hard to believe that there would not be more massive protesting about “unwise” (Wasserstrom 100-108) wars. There was public support for WWII, yet this same support slipped away for the Vietnam War. There is some level of morality in war but it is based upon the perceived cause of the war. 

In World War II, we were attacked and Americans believe in self-defense at any cost. And unlike Wasserstrom in his feeling that only equal force is justified, public opinion strongly disagrees. “How about an unequal response,” President Bartlet asks in NBC’s The West Wing, “If an American is attacked anywhere in the world?” And he has it on the level. I will talk more on this later in the paper. The point being that self-defense is truly a reasonable defense of war. Any attack on a country’s sovereign soil is an invasion of that country’s right to exist, as such, any means of fighting is acceptable. In the Vietnam War, we invaded foreign soil, whether or not it was in defense, is irrelevant. We were the invaders. As such, the Vietnamese had every right to use guerrilla tactics, whether or not they were conventional warfare. 

Similarly, the Iraqi people have every right to fight the Americans in Iraq. We not only invaded, we overthrew the system of government that had been in place. I will not dabble in whether the government was just or kind to its people. However, it was a system of government that had left the region relatively stable for quite a few years. To invade a sovereign country’s soil despite differing opinions from within the Intelligence community and the academia community was a bold, incorrect move. Professor Quataert, a Middle East Historian, claimed that it was blatantly obvious to those in the Middle East History academic community, that Iraq contained no weapons of mass destruction. It was faulty and rushed and a terrible injustice to those in the independent Iraqi state. America being powerful should not be an excuse to do as it pleases; this is where the distinction of moral/immoral comes in. 

Being powerful and being bold and incorrect are two very different extremes. America, and I say America as polls showed Americans- at least initially- for the war, uses its power and regrets it. In Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf War, in the “War on Terror,” again and again America uses its power against defenseless countries and then comes to regret it. We saved the nation of Kuwait, not a particularly lofty goal if you devote the money to new energy sources; our dependence on oil could be lessened, so that gas wasn’t more than $3 a gallon in our country. If you take away all these aggressive wars and put them into education and social security, then we would not have failing education system or a slowly dying Social Security system. Our money is mal-spent on aggressive, immoral wars. Wars of aggression, despite what Wasserstrom says, are wrong. Always. There are diplomatic channels, like the United Nations which should have slowly dwindled away the sheer amount of war in our lives. 

My grandparents have been married sixty years and in that time there have been something like six wars. World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf, and the War on Terror have all taken place in their married lives. Most of these were wars of aggression. We were not attacked by Germany, we were not attacked by Korea, we were not attacked by Russia, we were not attacked by Vietnam, and we were not attacked by Iraq, either time. I am not saying that these wars had no point. They quite obviously did and they were effective and by and large societally right. However, to call any of the wars I mentioned moral is impossible. We were the aggressors of each of these societies. We are powerful but our rights should not extend to making the world right. We should be concerned with ourselves, with our America. This is an isolationist view, however, morally, country’s should be isolationists. Without aggression of the other party, there is no morally justified reasoning for war. It seems contradictory to say societally correct but morally wrong, however, society and morality are, in a vacuum, two different things. 

As in The West Wing example, Bartlet as America’s president and as an American rightly feels a kinship to his brethren Americans. We are cohesive groups of animals, us humans. We still feel as if the Western European Empires deserve special importance in our lives. We are by and large Caucasian, as are these countries. It is natural for human beings, in today’s society, to feel closeness to others that are like us. So a country’s war is simply a protection of our norms but not necessarily illogical or immoral. 

WORKS CITED Arthur, John ed. Morality and Moral Controversires. 2004, Prentice Hall NY. ISBN: 0131844040