Like everything in my life I waver between the worlds of war and anti-war. I don't know which stance to believe in, because frankly I am confused and apathetic, I suppose, to anything else other than my basic concerns. Perhaps. But such indecisiveness is part of my nature, as evident in my other dealings in life.

I vaguely know that war is bad because it is a cause of human suffering in the most simple of terms. Innocents die. People shed blood for something really intangible but rendered tangible because of so many deaths. And propaganda and the manipulation of emotions make it a really sordid business.

And Machiavelli somehow springs to mind but I can't for any conceivable reason think of why, or extract a suitable quote from The Prince which would explain this odd association. Perhaps because he spoke about war and strategy, and I forgot what else. I remember being embarassed in class for being unable to pronounce Cesare Borgia, but I digress.

I do know which stance my mom takes. She thinks that war is a necessary evil to weed out Saddam Hussein, simply because he is in her words, "an evil man". I suppose that an intellectual might argue that it is rather simplistic to demonise someone. Perhaps. I did hear from her that the papers in Singapore are demonising him to such an extent that even she thought that they were overdoing it. But it doesn't change her mind about the war.

My dad is just like a little boy over the war. He's excited. He chatters hyperactively about it. I can just imagine him bouncing up and down in glee at any kind of military action they show on the screen. Glued to the television screen and punctuating his various conversations with the type of weaponry and equipment used in the war. I should know. I called home and got a earful on the latest updates on the war (the first casulties on the American front), the Seventh Calvary (I think?) and the various "advance SCUD missiles" etc., etc.. Even when the phone was returned to my mom, I could hear him explaining the technicalities of some infantry movement to my sister in the background.

As for me, I am beginning to ponder on what Martin Luther King once said. He once expressed his disappointment with the people who prefered a "negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'". He was speaking about civil rights and the right to protest non-violently, but when I read this, I realised that perhaps it could be applied in this situation. Perhaps war is a necessary evil. Two sides to the conflict. The people who vilify the Iraqi leaders see it as necessary to protect their own. It is their right. I suppose it is the same on the other side.

But like my rather incoherent paragraph above, I waver somewhat, and then refuse to take a stance. After all, in the same Martin Luther King speech, we have "If his repressed emotions are not released in non-violent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat, but a fact of history." So you see, perhaps Saddam Hussein has been pressed into defiance, and so justified in his actions.

I don't know. What I do know is that perhaps being a moderate with little conviction in either stance is really a coward's way out. Maybe. But if I cannot even make a decision to put my own life in order, who is to say I should interfere in larger matters? Let someone else who is more capable of decisiveness do it. I will take the coward's way out and refuse to think about the whole thing at all and just focus on myself and let someone else do the dirty work. I reap the benefits without the blood and pain, or am able to blame the other for the retribution that might be visited on me. Either way, it is the coward's way out.

Yet being moderate has its own terrors. I feel guilty. It is a vague nagging guilt. War is bad. Perhaps, I can make a difference. But on the other hand...

You never know when you will be pressed to take a stance on things. Maybe it is the cultural climate I lived in for most of my life. Wasn't there a news article in The Straits Times about how apathetic Singaporean undergraduates are about the war? Because it doesn't directly affect them?

Maybe I just do not wish to argue whether the war is "just" or "unjust". These things get too heated and I do dislike confrontations.

Even on Battlenet, blows are exchanged between war and anti-war supporters. A team-mate turns round and starts killing our ally's troops simply because both of them couldn't agree on whether Bush is or isn't a (I quote) "bloody arrogant idiot". Needless to say, I lost that game. But it was interesting to say the least. A sort of entertaining tidbit of the very human side of the war/anti-war stance.

I apologise if this entry sounds stilted. It was cobbled together from bits and pieces to become a slightly neater whole. I think.

In class yesterday we were debating on whether an apology of such (as stated in the paragraph above) is a subconscious psychological adherence by the author to the modes of behaviour attributed to his culture and upbringing, an ironic afterthought, or merely a crass way of manipulating the reader's reaction.

I wonder which of the three categories I fall under.