Your point of view

Realize that your point of view on world events right now is entirely provided to you, and not really your own. How else to explain the vastly different points of view on the "war on terror" from region to region?

How else to explain why 19 men flew 3 planes into buildings, and 1 into a field in Pennsylvania? They obviously believed what they were doing was the right thing to do. American's are obviously horrified by it.

Iraqi insurgents are not attacking American soldiers because they are inherently evil. They believe they are being patriots. We think they are terrorists.

But why?

We are all human beings, and biologically the same. We all process information the same way. The only difference is where you are physically, and what information you have access to. Thus war, death and destruction, and the misery that goes along with it, is foisted on millions of people by the very few who control what is essentially propaganda.

Consider this editorial from the Arab News.

How can they possibly expect us to believe that the killings of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians at the hands of the US military were a series of unfortunate events? That the shoot-to-kill policy still being used against independent and unembedded journalists was an inadvertent outcome of beleaguered troops mistaking a journalist's binoculars for antiaircraft guns and the outsized Palestine Hotel - where journalists were based in the early days of war - for an Iraqi Army installation? (Why does the word Don Quixote who fought windmills mistaking them for oppressive giants come to mind?)

The US Army has absolved its troops - save a few who callously photographed themselves torturing and sexually abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib - from any wrongdoing. The message was: Do with Iraqis what you must; just don't leave any indicting evidence behind.

Iraq's series of unfortunate events, especially at US military-manned checkpoints continue unabated. One such episode that recently got its fair share of media coverage was the killing of an Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari on May 4. Calipari gave his life to save the recently freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena.

Obviously the writer has a much different point of view than your typical American. That's because he's presented with different information on the situation than you and I. His information may be considered propaganda just as much as the information we receive. It's just being fed to him by whatever structure is in place in the middle east.

Thus, extended to it's logical conclusion, the war really isn't between nations, and the people fighting it. The war is on a much higher level. It exists between whatever entities control the information and push the interpretation for what the information is intended to mean.

I'm not saying there is some person someplace that is directing all of this. I'm not saying there is some shadowy organization controlling what you know. A culture, determined by geography, may be the determining factor.

Example: "Freedom is on the march." That's Bush's mantra lately. It settles in on the American culture and shapes the perception that what we're doing is in the best interest of the middle east. We're there to liberate them from oppression, right? How do we know that. We're told that in countless ways.

But the Arab point of view is completely different because their information is completely different. American's are aggressive occupiers who are just in it for the oil, etc.

Until the war of information is settled, there will be wars of violence. One side has to win in order to consolidate control.

The news media has a lot to do with it. Eason Jordan, former head of CNN, was ousted because he made a comment that the American military was intentionally targeting journalists.

Think about how that fits in with the concept of an information war. Who are the real soldiers? The news media. They are on the front lines of presenting to cultures what their opinion is. Control the media, and you can essentially control what the opinion is of a large group of people; entire nations even.

Journalists are subject to the same formulation of opinion that the rest of us are. A journalist in the United States will likely have a much different point of view than a journalist for Al Jazeera. It's just really difficult to resist accepting what your point of view is supposed to be.

Example:

Suppose you go to work every day, and you work with the same group of people. You make, lets say, balloons. There are 4 different colors, red, yellow, blue and green. Every single day the people in your group keep complaining about the blue balloon. It's too dark. It's so depressing... whatever. The point is, every day blue is bad. Before long, you'll be socially accepted by hating the blue balloon also.

But - it's just a color, and you have essentially constructed a belief system around something that really doesn't make a lot of sense. Religion works that way.

So is it possible that Jordan is right, and the American military targets journalists? Absolutely. The recent conspiracy theory with the Italian journalist doesn't sound quite so far fetched in that context.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this rambling, but I guess my point is; You have an opinion. They have an opinion. What that opinion is, is not really a construct of your own mind independently processing truth. It really is a result of what you're told. For that reason, conservatives and liberals are really not so different. At least we have the commonality of the information we are presented.

So, while it's nice to believe in your own point of view, realize it's not entirely your own point of view. We are powerless in that regard. But, through all the ages of man, that's what has caused one soldier to fight the other.