Opinion
 

Courage or cowardice? You decide

Richard Lutz

So the war in Iraq is staging a dramatic re-enactment, or maybe this is the director's cut version with bonus scenes -- like foreign workers being taken hostage. Meanwhile, gas prices are trying out for the high jump event, even clearing the two-dollar mark in some places. It would seem that if Bush declared war on Iraq as part of a clever blood-for-oil scheme then the plan fell about as flat as possible. It's enough to make me hope that our president had some reason other than low oil prices in mind.

OK, enough about politics. Like any red-blooded young American male, I'm going to talk about comic books. Some of you may recall that Batman is the coolest of all superheroes, but by no means is he the only cool one. Today I sing the praises of Spider-Man, one of the most "normal" superheroes around. He lives with his aging aunt, goes to school, tries frantically to earn money, gets bruises that last from one scene to the next and repairs his own costume at night. He also came up with the maxim, sometimes attributed to Superman, "With great power comes great responsibility."

For those who don't know, early on in Spider-Man's career (the first night, in fact), he had the chance to stop a criminal but didn't want to get involved. Shortly afterward, that crook shot and killed a man. While the victim happened to be the hero's uncle, giving the episode its dramatic weight, the lesson remains: If you have the ability to stop bad things from happening, you should. Or bad things will happen.

A news story I heard being discussed in my youth remains with me, involving two large young men assaulting a girl in a park. People passed by -- some stopped to watch -- but nobody stopped to help her. Nobody even called the police until another young man came by while working some wage job, gofering or delivering or such, and stepped in to save her.

How could all those bystanders allow a crime to be committed? Easy: They didn't want to get involved. They might have been hurt. Humans are hard-wired to avoid pain, work and trouble if they can. We have complex internal mechanisms to weigh the apparent costs and benefits of any action we take, and we act accordingly. Are you procrastinating on a paper? If so, it's because that mechanism is currently less afraid of a low grade than it is of the bother of paper writing.

So you, reader -- would you rather be like one of those bystanders in the park or like Spider-Man? If you personally see an innocent human being attacked, would you help? Or would you hold back for fear of getting hurt? Would you hold back if others accused your heroism of being selfishness?

Now apply your preference -- heroism or cowardice -- to our nation. When we see dictators like Saddam abusing civilians, should we leave them alone? Do we need to see the gun being pointed at Uncle Sam before we can justify action? I say no. We needed to act then, and we need to continue acting, to make the world a better place.

Lutz, a columnist for The Daily Cougar, 
can be reached at drahcir_j@hotmail.com.