Where does the individual come up against their ideals?
I made a lot of the proclamation that I would not be visiting the US in boycott of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq where it was patently obvious that there was war being created on a false pretence. I even remember the time when it was announced that the bombs started dropping in the Shock and Awe campaign that opened the ‘conflict’. I was waiting tables at a winery in Hobart (Moorilla Estate), and the radio was on in the kitchen and there were reports from journalists inside Baghdad who were reporting that a mass of explosions had gone off downtown in what was later to be revealed as a targeted bombing run of a suspected hideout of Saddam Hussein.
Flash forward almost 7 years and I ask myself why then did i visit Tiananmen Square? I just realised that the dialogue I had with myself before i went to Tiananmen Square was a backroom discussion not a blazing argument in front of the cameras. Something was niggling but not enough to stop me from going there. There, where people died.
Have my leftist ideals made it ok that I visit China but not the US? Even though the human rights records are the same? Or is it that the Tiananmen Square massacre happened 20 years ago and the invasion of Iraq happened almost 7 years ago? Or is it that when you are there you need to ‘see it with your own eyes’ as a friend told me…
