Enemy of my enemy is my Friend?
Or is it friend of my enemy is my enemy? Oh really! You see I wonder about that.Being a faithful Oakland A's fan, I follow nightly the up-and-downs of baseball teams battling each other. The A's are currently 6 1/2 games behind their divisional rival the California/Anaheim/Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the divisional standings. So you would think that last night I would be cheering for the New York Yankees to beat the Angels, right? Not so fast. The Yankees, besides being the anti-thesis of the A's, were also 1/2 game in front of the A's in the wild card standings. You see, the goal of every team is to reach the playoff, and you can reach the playoff in two ways, winning your division or winning the wild card, i.e. the best winning record among teams that do not win the division. So in this case, enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. Since age immemorial, sports fans have been confronted with this quandary.
It seems that in these days of a world full of uncertainties, we often resort to deciding our friends and foes by their opposition/allegiance to our other enemies. Is this a good idea? "Enemy of my enemy is my friend" is such a black-and-white, all-or-none judgment. It reflects a polarized, inflexible view of how politics, society, and the world operate. Granted, this is not unique to our time. People tend to see their struggles in simplistic model of good v. evil, the protagonist v. antagonist through out history. We did it during the Cold War with China. Communist China was deemed our enemy once it appeared, if only out of the necessity of preservation, to align with the U.S.S.R. But twenty years later, when the fissure appeared between the two communist powers, Nixon quickly embraced the Middle Kingdom. In truth, China probably never views itself as on our side or that side--it always envisions itself to be equal, if not superior, of both the U.S. and the Soviets.
But it sure seems that we do this quite often these days. The U.S. embraces Pakistan and its President, overlooking his un-democratic ascension to power, purely based on their military support in the ever-last war on terror. And Vladimir’s Russia is our buddy, because they are also fight Muslims, forgetting it is a war for nationalism not ideology. Yes it is old news, but it is still ironic and cautionary to remind ourselves that we once supported the Muslims because they were fighting the Russians.
Yet, neo-conservatives are not the only ones to see the world in monochromatic colors. John G. Roberts has been nominated by President Bush as Supreme Court justice to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The Left's reaction immediately following the announcement captured perfectly on the John Stewart's satirical fake news show, was "they're outraged over Bush's pick, and they have been for weeks." Oh yes, friend of Bush is surely an enemy of mine.
To see the world as "with me or against me" is to admit all you care about is "winning." It does not matter what you win, how you win and why beating your enemy is so important. In today's politics, "winning" has come to overshadow all else. And it should not be. Even in a child's game, baseball, the alliance of friend and foe is difficult, what would one do when there are so many urgent issues that require our attention. Roberts may be a friend of Republicans, and likely to be confirmed. All will not be lost, since by all accounts, he is brilliant and
posted by hedgehog @ 2:19 PM
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